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1928]
60
Domestic Water Supply:
Cisterns provided —
Cisterns repaired and cleansed 5
Water supply provided to dwelling house —
Water supply provided to tenement house 15
Walls and Ceilings of Rooms cleansed and
redecorated 655
Other Improvements:
Staircase and passages repaired, cleansed
and redecorated 93
Floor space ventilated 3
Floors repaired 103
Guttering and rain water pipes repaired —
Roofs repaired 171
Overcrowding abated 1
Illegal use of underground Rooms for sleeping
discontinued —
Other Improvements, or Nuisances abated 910
Rooms Disinfected —
Total Improvements 2329
Total Premises Improved 471
RATS AND MICE (DESTRUCTION) ACT, 1919.
(9 and 10 Geo. 5. Ch. 72.)
This Act came into operation on the 1st January, 1920, to make
further provision for the destruction of rats and mice.
During Rat Week our usual transparencies announcing Rat Week were used
in the places visited by the Public in the Public Health Department. There was
sold from our department a vermicide for rats put up in convenient containers
with full directions.
SUMMARY OF WORK, 1922-1928.
During the year 1928, among the reports of work done under the above Act,
points of interest may be noted. For example:
1. Advice was asked regarding the extermination of rats from a dogbreeding
establishment extensively infested. In this case a particular
vermicide was recommended and the clearance effected in three weeks.
2. A butcher's shop: the nuisance here was overcome by concreting
the site and pointing the party walls.
3. In a private house in one instance "rat varnish" was used with
good results.
4. In a series of adjacent houses, more or less affected by rats, the
rats were eventually located in a shed in a garden at the rear of another
house, where the occupants carried on surreptitiously a business of white
mice breeding for the bacteriological department of a hospital. Undoubtedly,
the food for these mice attracted the rats.
5. In investigating an invasion of rats in a house where the site was
concreted and it would be presumed impossible for the rats to get through,
it was found that when the site had been concreted thirty-five years ago a
short-end of 9in. x 3in. deal had been left embedded in the concrete. Rats