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28
Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
Special Report upon overcrowding in Domestic Workshops.
With reference to the following direction from your Vestry, passed on the 21st
September, 1897:—
"That the Medical Officer of Health be instructed to bring up to the next
meeting of this Committee (the Public Health and Sewers Committee) a
Report on twenty cases of overcrowding in domestic workshops where a
certificate can be given and a legal prosecution instituted and a conviction
obtained."
I beg leave to apply for further directions, as I have found great legal difficulties
in the way of interpreting the terms of your resolution. It may be well to state
shortly the position of a Medical Officer of Health with regard to domestic workshops.
The sanitary control of domestic factories and workshops has been exempted
from the Factory and Workshop Acts, 1878 to 1895, and placed in the hands of the
Medical Officer of Health and his Sanitary Inspector. The domestic workshops
mentioned in your resolution, therefore, fall under the supervision of the Sanitary
Authority of this parish, according to the Public Health (London) Act, 1891. By the
latter Act the Medical Officer of Health is empowered to fix his own standard as to
the amount of cubic space to be allowed to each worker and to use his own judgment
as to what constitutes overcrowding. The magistrate judges each case on its own
merits and may or may not adopt the views of the Medical Officer of Health.
In view of the extreme difficulty of these overlapping Acts, I have thought it
best to make the foregoing satement as to the powers of the Sanitary Authority and
its Medical Officer of Health in regard to domestic workshops, which may not have
been quite clear to the Vestry when the resolution was passed. At the same time it
would materially lighten the position if the Vestry would inform me whether the
terms of that resolution were suggested by any specific written statement made by me
as Medical Officer of Health.
It need hardly be added that this important matter of overcrowding in domestic
workshops will engage my best attention.