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1912] 238
DISTRICT INSPECTION.
This work, which is very heavy, devolves on 14 District Inspectors, to
each of whom is allotted one of the 14 districts into which the Borough is
divided for the purpose of sanitary inspection.
It is their duty to inspect the houses in their districts; to attend to complaints
as to insanitary conditions made by owners or occupiers; to inspect
ice cream factories, dairies and milkshops, stables, yards, manure pits, passages
and courts, vacant plots of land, urinals attached to public houses, premises
for which certificates under the Customs and Inland Revenue Acts have been
sought, and premises for which water certificates are required; to make
observations of smoke nuisances; and to inspect the shops, stalls, and markets
where food is sold on Saturday evenings. In addition to these multifarious
duties they are required to inquire into the cause and circumstances of every
case of infectious disease that is notified in the Borough under the Public
Health (London) Act, 1891, and to make inquiries respecting similar diseases
such as measles, whooping cough, etc., which are notified by the teachers of
the public elementary schools; to make inquiries respecting the failure of
persons to notify the births of children under the Notification of Births Act,
1907, and also respecting persons who have been notified under the Public
Health (Tuberculosis) Regulations.
It will thus be seen that the amount ot work devolving on the Inspectors
is very great, and, therefore, at times it is with the greatest difficulty that they
are able to perform it. Some of this work, in the opinion of the Medical
Officer of Health and of medical men, is not such as should be performed by
men, and there can be no doubt that so much of it as devolves on the staff
under the Notification of Births Act and the Tuberculosis Orders, should be
done by women who have had the necessary training and experience to enable
them to undertake it. Unfortunately for Islington we have no Health Visitors.
Last year the Medical Officer of Health in his Annual Report expressed himself
as follows :—
" Of course, no man can make more than a certain number of visits in
" his usual working day, and as there is no reason to suppose that, hitherto,
" each inspector has not done a fair day's work, but every reason to suppose
" that he has, it is clear that the additional duties cast on the staff by modern
" legislation can only be undertaken by neglecting their sanitary proper work,
" to perform duties for some of which they come very inadequately equipped,