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38
CLEANSING OF PERSONS' ACT, 1897.
During the year under report 61 male and 17 female adults
used the Verminous Baths, and had their clothing disinfected.
The total number of articles disinfected for this purpose was 831.

STREET MARKETS.
Before giving the extracts from the various reports that
have, from time to time, been submitted to and adopted by the
Council, I would like to give a general foreword about the circumstances
which led up to the Bermondsey Borough Council (Street
Trading) Act, 1926. Ever since 1901, when I became Medical
Officer of Health to this Borough, the question of the
street markets has been at intervals brought before me. I used to
visit them with the late Chief Inspector, Mr. Henry Thomas, and
the need of some form of regulations became at that time
apparent. The matter, however, never got beyond the stage of
investigation, as to the legal powers under which it might be
possible to regulate the markets, but it became evident that these
were quite inadequate, and the task of getting further powers
seemed hopeless, mainly because public opinion, for the first ten
years of the Twentieth Century was not sufficiently enlightened
as to the necessity of pure food. This is quite evident when we
consider that an Inter-Departmental Committee at the beginning
of this century published a long and valuable report on food
preservatives, which was never acted on until a couple of years
ago, when the matter was taken up again.
The next step was in February, 1923, when the Council gave
us permission to appoint a man for six months to go up and down
the street markets, with a suitable hand barrow, collecting bad
food from the stalls. This proved so successful that at the end
of six months the Council decided that the collection of unsound
food should be made permanent.