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132
Public Health Department
Town Hall, Hackney, N.E.
To the Chairman and Members of the 30th June, 1913.
Public Health Committee.
Gentlemen,
Proposed Regulations for Preventing Contamination
of Food.
I have carefully considered the letter of the Town Clerk to
the Borough Council of St. Pancras on the above subject and beg
herewith to report thereon.
The proposal of the St. Pancras Borough Council is that the
London County Council should be asked to promote legislation, in
one of their General Powers Bills, to enable them to make regulations
with the object of preventing the pollutions, resulting from the
exposure of food and food receptacles by butchers, fishmongers
and provision dealers in public places or places adjacent to the public
streets, and suggesting that a regulation should be made, requiring
such perishable goods to be p!aced not less than 3 ft. above the
pavement.
That there is need for some such measure, no one will, I am
sure, dispute, who has observed the way in which articles of food,
are exhibited for sale in our busy market thoroughfares.
A walk through Chatsworth Road, London Fields, Ridley Road,
Kingsland Road, Well Street, or any of the market thoroughfares
of the Borough, on a Saturday will convince the most sceptical,
that there is room for the adoption of further precautions against
contamination of food supplies. In the thoroughfares mentioned
above, there are, in addition to many provision shops, a large number
of stalls, some owned by the shopkeepers themselves, but the
majority belonging to costermongers, who may be living in the
neighbourhood or may be visitors, for the purpose of business,
from other districts. To whichever class of trader the stalls