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139
in the matter. From time to time, people concerned with the
removal of refuse have appealed to the Council for permission
to remove such refuse at other than the prescribed hours, upon
the ground that it was not " offensive," and have received
answer that the bye-law applies to " offensive " matter only. I
am not prepared to admit that any offal of the trade of fishmonger,
poulterer, game dealer, &c., is inoffensive, but I do
contend that all such offal can be removed inoffensively. My
views on this subject were fully set out in a communication
addressed by your Vestry to the late Metropolitan Board of
Works in 1887, and are contained in the annual report for
1887 (page 177).
The main proposal submitted to the County Council by
your Vestry, in 1895, was that the offal of the trade of fishmonger,
poulterer, &c., should be stored in galvanized iron
receptacles with tight-fitting covers, and that the offal should
be removed in the vessels, a subsidiary advantage of the plan
being that the storage vessels could be effectually cleansed
before being returned to the shopkeeper. That this course
will have to be adopted, sooner or later, I entertain no doubt.
Removal could then be effected at any hour without nuisance.
But removal should, in my opinion, be effected in the evening,
after business hours. The existing arrangements, apart from
the sanitary question, entail disagreeable consequences to contractors,
who, to escape prosecution for breach of bye-law in
London, become liable to prosecution for breach of bye-law,
say, at West Ham. Offensive matter may not be removed
through streets in London excepting in the forenoon. Such
matter may not be removed through streets at West Ham
excepting in the evening. Could anything be more unfair
than the position in which the contractors are thus placed ?
between the upper millstone of the County Council's bye-law,
and the nether millstone of the bye-law made by the Corporation
of West Ham—a locality to which much of London's
" offensive matter," i.e., offal, is conveyed for transmutation to
useful products.