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61
APPENDIX S.
RAG FLOCK ACT, 1911.
One sample only of "rag flock" was taken during
the year. Owing to the extremely narrow construction
placed upon the Act in the Courts, as was pointed out in
my Report for 1913, it had become almost a dead letter,
but the sanguine hopes which were then expressed in many
quarters that the shortcomings of this very unsatisfactory
Act would speedily be remedied were unfortunately not
realised.
The practical object of such an Act should be to prohibit
the making up into any form for use, any flock or
similar material which does not conform to the standard of
cleanliness prescribed by the Regulations made under the
Act, but this is far from the result which has been
attained.
In "Gamble v. Jordan" a mattress maker had
undertaken in his spare time and at his own house, to "remake"
a mattress, the property of a relative, for the sum
of one shilling. He remade the mattress with the same
flock and in the same cover; the flock did not conform to
the standard of cleanliness laid down, but it was held that
what the man had done was not the "making" of an
article of bedding within the meaning of the Act.
On the other hand, in "Guildford Corporation v.
Brown" a person who performed exactly the same operation
with flock of the same description as the mattress