View report page

104
House-to-House Inspection.
To the Chairman and Members
of the Public Health Committee.
Gentlemen,
In reporting on the above reference it is my duty in the first
place to point out that in my Annual Report to the Borough Council
for the year 1908 certain figures occur relating to House-to-House
inspection made during that year in the Borough. They occur in
the tabular statement on page 90-91 of the Report, headed "Register
of Sanitary Work, 1908," and are as follows:—
House-to-House Inspection. Totals.
Number of Inspections 1,554
Defects Discovered 1,278
The proportion of defects discovered to the total inspections
made amounts to 82 per cent., and it is because of the large percentage
of defects discovered that the attention of the Public
Health Committee is drawn to the subject. The reference uses the
term "nuisance" in lieu of "defects," as used in my Report. It
is difficult to give an exact definition of the term "nuisance," but
there is implied in the term as originally used the idea of danger
or injury to health. This has been extended in recent years to include
any condition interfering with the comfort or convenience of individuals.
Bearing this in mind, I have preferred to confine the term
"nuisance" to the idea of conditions either actually dangerous or
injurious to health; and as the house-to-house inspections above
referred to revealed conditions shading off from those actually
threatening health, to others interfering with the comfort or convenience
of individuals, and some only in a small degree, I considered
it better to use the more general term "defects" when
detailing the result of such inspections.