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46
Annual Report of the London County Council, 1914.
of milk from any dairy, or from any cow kept therein, the Council may make an order prohibiting
the supply of such milk in the County until the order has been withdrawn, and any person contravening
the order is liable to a penalty not exceeding £5, and for a continuing offence to a daily penalty not exceeding
40s. Appeal may be made against the Council's order.
On 11th February, 1908, the Council delegated to the Public Health Committee the authority
conferred by Part IV. of this Act, dealing with tuberculous milk, and fixed the 1st July, 1908,
as the date upon which the Act should become operative. The method of procedure adopted is as
follows : samples are taken by the Council's inspectors from churns of milk consigned from the country
to the various London railway termini, and these are submitted to the Lister Institute for bacteriological
examination. In the case of those samples in respect of which the examination proves that there is
evidence of the presence of tubercle bacilli, a clinical examination of the cows at the dairy farm from
which the milk is consigned is made by a veterinary inspector appointed for the purpose under the
Act, and cows found to have tuberculous udders are certified for the purpose of the Dairies and Cowsheds
Orders and copies of the certificates are forwarded to the local sanitary authorities concerned.
During the year 1914, 2,925 samples of milk were taken. The milk had been sent to London
from the following counties: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire,
Derbyshire, Devonshire, Dorsetshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire,
Huntingdonshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire,
Oxfordshire, Rutlandshire, Shropshire, Somersetshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire,
Wiltshire and Worcestershire, and from Wales; the samples were taken principally from
churns at stations of the Great Western, the Great Eastern, the Great Northern, the Great Central,
the Midland, the London Brighton and South Coast, the London and North-Western, the London and
South-Western and the South-Eastern Chatham and Dover Railway Companies.

This table shows that out of 2,839 completed examinations of samples taken from churns consigned
to London, 224 proved to be tuberculous, i.e., 7.9 per cent. Some of the samples were