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rather than how it was cooked or handled—good progress has been made.
The proprietors themselves are, on the whole, becoming acutely aware of
any shortcomings and most are anxious to raise the standards of their
equipment and restaurant practice. So much publicity has been given
to the need for improved methods of preparing and handling food, that
the impression may get abroad that in this country we are very far
behind, and to have a meal away from home involves a certain
amount of risk. Such an impression would be utterly misleading and a
dangerous distortion of the truth. When it is realized that the number
of meals consumed in this country cannot be fewer than 140 millions
per day and the known outbreaks of food poisoning widely differing in
importance and dimensions, many affecting mildly only two or three
people, reveal themselves as, say, 1,000 a year, or just over 2½ per day,
the true relationship of the incidence is clear.
In Westminster alone with some 3,000 main restaurants, cafes and
canteens selling rationed food and providing over 360 million meals of
all kinds in a year (according to the assessment of the Local Food Office),
the number of persons known to have been affected with food poisoning
during 1948 was 106. The percentage of the total number of meals
consumed in such establishments, which may have been the cause of
food poisoning, is therefore infinitesimal. Surely then there are no
grounds for crying "stinking fish" which might well discourage intending
visitors from overseas and even intimidate those already here.
When the changes envisaged by the National Health Service Act were
first discussed it was suggested that the duties of a public health department
would be greatly reduced, and that in fact, if the personal health
services were transferred to the control of the London County Council little
of importance would remain the responsibility of the City Council. This
is far from being the case. The importance of these personal health
services in relation to other public health work in districts of a suburban
or semi-suburban character with extensive vistas of small dwellings and
a large child population cannot be gainsaid. Such services, however,
never assumed a major part of the work of the Medical Officer of Health
and his department in Westminster which is not such an area and never
was. Within its boundaries are the great departments of State, it is
the focus of the social and entertainment world and the home of the
learned and scientific societies. Before and since the war it has tended
to become the headquarters of many business corporations. It is therefore
in the main "adult" in character. That being so much of the work of
the public health department has been concerned with the lives and conditions
of people at work or at leisure, and the nature and conditions of
premises where they congregate. It must be remembered that although
the Registrar General gives the resident population of Westminster as
100,900, the population of non-residents in that constant inward and
outward flux which continues till late in the day must be at least five
times as much.
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