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each year, remitted the surcharge at Battersea, and has intimated
that it will do so in the case of Lambeth. It is the object of this
Bill to remove that difficulty, and to confer power upon such
councils as wish to adopt this Act to maintain milk depots free
from the fear of surcharge." There are three operative clauses.
The first gives power to the Council to establish milk depots; the
second enacts that the expenses shall be paid out of the general
rate, and the third defines a milk depot to mean " an establishment
for the purification, improvement, preservation, sterilization, and
sale of milk and cream."
It will be remembered that at the Conference of Representatives
of the Metropolitan Borough Councils held at the County Hall at
Spring Gardens in July, 1904, a resolution in favour of such power
as the Bill proposes being conferred on the Borough Councils, was
unanimously adopted in the following terms : —
Municipal Milk Depots—That, having regard to the
declining birth-rate and the high rate of infantile
mortality in the metropolis, it is desirable that the
Metropolitan Borough Councils should be empowered,
at their discretion, to provide in their respective districts
depots for the preparation and sale of sterilized and
humanized milk for the food of infants, and that the
London County Council be requested to insert a clause
in their General Powers Bill for the Session of 1905 to
confer such power upon the said Borough Councils."
age mortality.
The number of deaths from one year to 65 years of age was 582
for Poplar, 646 for Bromley, and for Bow 382, making a total for