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46
Motor-van for Disinfecting Work.—The Council decided to provide
a van with interchangeable bodies for the two-horse vans which had
hitherto been used for the purpose of conveying bedding, &c., to and
from the disinfecting chamber.
Tenders were obtained on a specification drawn up by the City
Engineer, and that of Messrs. John I. Thornycroft was accepted for
£448 10s., and was brought into use on the 17th August. The motorvan
(a photograph of which is given) has a 4-cylinder engine, an E.A.C.
rating of 19'6 horse-power, worm gear transmission, a maximum speed
of 13.7 miles per hour at 1,000 revolutions per minute, solid tyres, a
petrol tank capacity of 14 gallons with, in addition, means for carrying
one tin of petrol, and an arrangement of rollers for changing bodies.
It is provided with two bodies, one for clean goods, the other for infected
articles, the latter being lined throughout with aluminium. The van is
designed to carry a gross load of one ton. All necessary accessories
were included in the price. The van is to be maintained during the first
year by the builders, and during the next four years for £45 per annum.
There is a guarantee for the tyres for 10,000 miles. At the end of
1914 the van had been used on 120 days, during which it ran 2,651
miles. It consumed 276 gallons of petrol (9.6 miles per gallon), and
carried 60 tons 3¾ cwt. of material. The maximum amount carried on
any one day was 58½ cwt.
The work has been greatly facilitated and expedited by the substitution
of a motor-van for the horse-drawn vans.
Verminous Children and Second-hand Wearing Apparel.—The
Hackney Borough Council wrote asking the support of the City Council
to a resolution they had passed dealing with the question of the
frequency with which children who have once been cleansed became
re-infected, and recommending that the sale of wearing apparel from ragshops
should be prohibited by law. It was suggested that such wearing
apparel was often a source of infection. This is not the experience in
Westminster, where re-infection is found to occur from other members
of the family or from infected clothing which has escaped disinfection,
but it is thought desirable that existing powers for dealing with secondhand
wearing apparel should be obtained.
The Metropolitan Borough Councils, as the Sanitary Authorities,
have certain powers with regard to dealing with filthy, dangerous, or
unwholesome articles, for Section 19 (1) and (2) of the London County
Council (General Powers) Act, 1904, provides:—
(1) Where on the certificate of the Medical Officer of Health of any
Sanitary District it appears to the Sanitary Authority of that
district that any articles, in any house or part there of in that