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Bermondsey, and the Public Health Department was put in the
charge of one Chief Sanitary Inspector and six Sanitary Inspectors.
This continued to the Spring of 1901, when I was appointed as the
first whole-time Medical Officer of Health, with the responsibility
for the administration of the whole of the Public Health Department.
In 1901, therefore, the Department consisted of a Medical
Officer of Health, a Chief Sanitary Inspector, eight District
Inspectors and three clerks. The only Wharves Inspector was
Mr. Ashdown, who was doing this duty by giving attention to the
wharves in the St. Olave's district. There were no special inspectors,
and the districts looked after by each Inspector were
carefully allocated during this first year, and have, more or less,
continued the same up to the present time.
About six months after my appointment the Council decided
to have a bacteriological laboratory of their own. The work
was necessarily restricted to the examination of specimens for
enteric fever, diphtheria and tuberculosis. For many years this
was the only Council that had its own laboratory.
The first serious change which took place on the retirement of
the Chief Inspector, Mr. Thomas, in the Autumn of 1907, was that
the Council decided not to continue the position of Chief Inspector,
but to leave the entire control of the department in the hands of
the Medical Officer of Health. Two of the existing Inspectors
were to be appointed as Food Inspectors, and the districts for the
remaining Inspectors were to number six.
In March 1907 I recommended the Committee to retain the
same number of District Inspectors, and at the same time appoint
an additional man to do the Food and Drugs work and a woman
Inspector to look after the workshops where women were employed.
As a result of this recommendation, one of the members
of the Committee, Mr. F. E. Eddis, the Chairman, was appointed
to make a complete report of the work of the Department. This
he did in February 1908, and, in the meantime the Chief Inspector
had resigned. The Committee, as a result of Mr. Eddis' report,
did not see their way to make the appointments I had suggested,
and as the refusal to do this came to the knowledge of the County
Council, a representation was made to the Local Government