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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1895. 43
Correspondence re Cellar Bakeries.
PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT,
Vestry Hall,
St. George the Martyr, Southwark,
January 17th, 1895.
Rt. Hon. Sir,
The Sanitary Authority of St. George, Southwark, has instructed me
to address this letter to the Home Office as the Supreme Executive entrusted with the
carrying out of the Factory and Workshop Acts.
During the past two-and-a-half years St. George's has had, and still has,
considerable difficulty in construing their legal powers and duties in regard to retail
bakehouses.
This uncertainty is in great part due to the obscure wording and lengthiness of
the three Acts of Parliament in which the whole of the Factory and Workshop law
of. the country has been consolidated. These Acts contain 160 sections and eight
voluminous schedules.
The St. George's Local Authority, however, has not been lacking in zeal in its
attempt to perform a thankless and difficult duty. Its attitude may be gathered
from the fact that within the last eighteen months I have been instructed, as Medical
Officer, to take action against nine occupiers of retail bakeries, under Section 16 of
the Factory and Workshop Act, 1883.
In all these cases the Authority was of opinion that the premises were on
sanitary grounds unfit for use as bakehouses.
Brief particulars of the cases, with results, are given in the following table:—