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CLEANSING OF PERSONS' ACT, 1897.
During the year under report 163 male and 19 female adults
used the Verminous Baths, and had their clothing disinfected.
The total number of articles disinfected for this purpose was 1,753.
MORTUARY.
Total number of infectious bodies removed 5
Total number of bodies removed 73
STREET MARKETS.
Full details of the staff, with the various reports made on the
above to the Council, were given in my last annual report for
1925. There is very little to add, except that the Bermondsey
Borough Council (Street Trading) Act, 1926, came into force in
November, 1926, and hereunder will be found the various details
concerning applications for licences, finance, etc.
At the present time the Act is working very smoothly, and
the experience gained, not only in our voluntary market scheme,
but in the scheme as it is under the Act, has formed the basis of
legislation for London generally by the London County Council
(General Powers) Bill. Of the various public health measures
which have been brought forward of late years, this is one of the
most useful, but it is a case in which much more depends on the
good-will displayed, not only by the Borough Council, but the
trader himself in carrying out the provisions of the Act, than in
merely trying to enforce the provisions of the Act. Those who
take a superficial view of it look upon it as one of the simplest
things in the world to get an Act to regulate the markets, and
then simply sit down to regulate them on paper, but anybody who
gains a little practical experience in the working will find that this
is an entirely erroneous view, and that the question of street
trading, from the point of view of both the street trader and the
Borough Council, is a very complicated affair, and the question
of pleasing the traders themselves, who may be presumed to know
their own business best, is one requiring an immense amount of
patience, knowledge and general goodwill on the part of the
officials who are charged with carrying out the Act. We have
been very fortunate in Bermondsey in this respect, since we have