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146
It would appear, then, that the wholesale dealers who supplied
the milk by contract to Messrs. Spiers & Pond, were the actual
purveyors in this instance, and who ought possibly to be registered
with the Local Authority.
It must be noted, however, that the Contagious Diseases
(Animals) Act, 1878, and the Order do not say that every purveyor
must be registered, but only such persons as carry on the trade
of purveyors of milk.
This point was considered in the case of Emmerton v. Hall,
102 L.T. 889; 74 J.P. 301. In that case the defendant, Hall, who
had a milk shop in St. Pancras and was there registered as a
purveyor of milk, sold from a churn carried on a hand-cart one
pennyworth of milk within the limits of the Borough of St. Marylebone.
It was contended that he ought to have been registered
as a purveyor of milk in Marylebone.
The magistrate refused to convict, and was of opinion that the
actual trade or business of a purveyor was carried on in St. Pancras
where the defendant had a shop and kept his cans and cart. The
mere selling of milk in a neighbouring borough did not make him
a purveyor within that Borough.
The case eventually reached the Court of Appeal, who held that
the Magistrate's decision was correct.
As a consequence of the case Green v. Spiers & Pond, it is
decided that the owner of a small general shop who sells milk
in small quantities need not be registered with the local authority,
so that it follows that the knowledge of his existence and of his
trade will now become the result of casual detection rather than
the consequence of systematic application for registration by the
shop owner.
Moreover, the disciplinary Section 5 of the London County
Council (Genera! Powers) Act, 1908, has its application to small
traders now nullified. This section gives the local authority
power to remove from the register or to refuse to register persons
who carry on the trade of cowkeepers, dairymen or purveyors of
milk upon unsuitable premises.