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48
[1911
discussed, not only in the County Council, in Parliament, but in the Press, the
credit for it is invariably given to the great central body, while the borough
councils, to whom is due nearly all of it, are either forgotten or ignored,
although it was the local ratepayers who provided the funds, and their councils
who directed the expenditure which has made the combined boroughs, called
London, so healthy. They have long deserved far more applause and praise
at the hands of the public than they have received for the enormous amount of
really good work that they have done, and merit increased moral support and
encouragement to enable them faithfully and fully to discharge the very weighty
duties which, during recent years, have devolved upon them. They have
been, however, unfairly handicapped, because they are the authorities who raise
the moneys, which not only the London County Council, but also the Metropolitan
Asylums Board, the Boards of Guardians, and the Metropolitan Police
spend; and, consequently, when owing to the increasing demands of these
bodies — and they are made by precepts—the rates go up, the blame,
as a rule, falls, not upon the offenders, but upon the borough councils, who,
themselves, in all probability, have curtailed their own expenditure so that
the rates may be kept down to the lowest possible point. Consequently the
work of the borough councils suffers, and, therefore, from this point of view
it is to be regretted that they make and collect the rates, and that they are not
able to present precepts on a central authority for the sums necessary to enable
them to comply fully with the obligations which the legislation of recent years
has imposed on them, and particularly on their public health departments.
Perhaps if this were done the provisions of the Factory Acts, the Housing and
Town Planning Act, the obligations of the Notification of Births Act, and of
the Tuberculosis Orders could be carried out in their entirety, with results
that would make London even a healthier place than it is at present, good
though its state of health undoubtedly is. Islington has shown what
a borough council can do to improve its health conditions, for it happens that
here the County Council has done nothing during its existence, beyond building
two blocks of artizans' dwellings, to improve the sanitary conditions
under which the people live. It is not represented that Islington has done
all that it ought to have done, especially in respect to some recent legislation,
but it is contended that it has done all, or nearly all, that it could afford to do, and
that what it has done, as a rule, it has done well. That this statement cannot
be denied is proved by the figures given in Table XXIV., that the deaths
which would have been (3,745 in 1911, if the conditions that obtained
in 1893 had continued, were in fact only 4,810, or a decrease of
28.7 per cent. This is a truth of which the Borough Council and