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65
Councillor Pascall in a report made by him to the Public
Health Committee when Chairman.
It was recommended by Dr. Young that the Borough be
subdivided into six districts, that an Inspector be appointed
to each district to carry out the whole of the sanitary duties
with the exception of the Factory and Workshops Act and
the inspection of houses let in lodgings. These duties were
to be undertaken by Special Inspectors.
I have gone into the question very thoroughly, and find
that there is under the present system a considerable amount
of overlapping, unnecessary labour and waste of time.
In my opinion the work can be much more efficiently
done by dividing the Borough into eight districts. The
inspectors appointed to the districts to carry out the whole of
the sanitary duties with the exception of the Food and Drugs
Act, Ice Cream Vendors and Milk Vendors. These duties for
the present to be carried out by a Special Inspector.
In this scheme each inspector will be responsible for his
own particular district. His work will be condensed into a
comparatively small area, and he should be able to keep every
street and house under perfect control. In this particular I
should like to emphasise the importance of each Inspector
becoming intimately conversant with every street, alley and
house in his own district. It is only by this close knowledge
that it is possible to achieve satisfactory results in public
health work.
At the present moment this country is in some danger of
serious and widespread epidemics of smallpox, enteric fever,
and possibly cholera being introduced through soldiers returning
from the front and immigration of refugees, some of whom
are resident in Hammersmith even now. Therefore the
Committee will see how essential it is to organise the Public
Health Department to its best possible degree of efficiency,
and that this should be done without loss of time.
Of course it is quite possible that this scheme which I
advise the Committee to adopt may require, at a future time,
revising in some of the details. In that case I shall bring the
matter to the notice of the Committee.
On the appended sheet the boundaries of each suggested
district are given with population and number of tenements.
In mapping out the districts regard has been paid to the
population, number of tenements, and character of each area.
In this way the Borough has been divided in such a way as
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