London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
View report page
Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Finsbury 1938
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Finsbury Borough]
This page requires JavaScript
110
Ice Cream.
There were 137 vendors of ice-cream on the Register at the end
of the year.
Three hundred and sixteen visits of inspection were made and
five notices served for cleansing and other purposes.
The number of premises at which ice-cream is sold in wrapped
portions of various values is now 59. This ice-cream is purchased
by the retailer already wrapped by the manufacturers, and affords
a very cleanly method of dealing in ice-cream.
The number of retailers in this Borough manufacturing their
own ice-cream with electrical freezers has increased.
Compared with the old method of "ice-tub" freezing, these
electrical freezers are a marked improvement. The "custard"
or "cold-mix" (a method of making "custard" without having
to boil the mixture) is placed into a container which is put into a
totally enclosed apparatus, and without further handling is frozen
into ice-cream.
The working of these freezers is quite simple, and, as far as
the user is concerned, there is no complicated mechanism to receive
attention, and the cleansing is an easy matter.
Twenty-five samples of ice-cream were examined last year
bacteriologically, and the results are summarised below.
Total bacterial count:—
| Per ml. | No. |
|---|---|
| (a) Less than 2,000 | 2 |
| (b) Less than 5,000 but more than 2,000 | 1 |
| (c) Less than 10,000 but more than 5,000 | 4 |
| (d) Less than 100,000 but more than 10,000 | 10 |
| (e) Less than 750,000 but more than 100,000 | 5 |
| (f) Over 100,000 | 3 |
| 25 |
B. Coli were present in 1/100 m.l. in 4 samples
B. Coli were present in 1/1,000 m.l. in 1 sample.
B. Coli were present in 1/10,000 m.l. in 2 samples.