London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

View report page

Poplar 1913

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Poplar, Metropolitan Borough]

This page requires JavaScript

157
There are two registers of workshops kept, one for females, and the
other for males.
A register of bakehouses is also kept.
The registered workshops were inspected two or three times in the
year, some every month.
The number of premises notified within the district as used by outworkers
is 1,254, but this number varies with each six monthly return,
see Table A, page 161, and Tables C and D, pages 164 and 165.
The places where the outworkers are employed were all of them
inspected twice during the year, some more frequently.
See Miss Tattersall's report, pages 252 and 253 and the Sanitary
Inspectors' reports, pages 216-251.
For outworkers connected with infectious cases, see page 96.
* A special form is submitted by the Secretary of State for the guidance
of Medical Officers of Health (see pages 164-167) in preparing the report
on factories and workshops in pursuance of Section 132 of the Factory and
Workshop Act, 1901.
In order that the form may be filled in without any difficulty from year
to year, the Sanitary Inspectors have been urgently requested to give full
and complete descriptions of the premises visited where any work is carried
on, and to classify such premises in their note books before handing them
to the clerks for the particulars to be entered in the journals, registers and
index files.
It can be easily understood that the classification of premises where
work is executed will vary from time to time, according to the pressure of
work or the nature of the work carried on—outworkers' premises may become
domestic workshops, and also workshops* and even factories ; workshops
may become factories ; and workplaces may become workshops or factories,
betueen the visits of the Sanitary Inspectors.
* To wit, in Table A, under "Laundries, Domestic Workshops," there were 10 on
the register at the end of the year, but during the year, especially in the summer, some of
these premises were "Workshop Laundries," and the inspections would come under
Workshop Laundries.