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some places, unfortunately, seem to be the rule. To purchase
articles irregularly—to find them adulterated, and then to tell the
tradesman (which the Act does not sanction) rather than to summons
him, is merely playing with an important Act of Parliament; it
is treating it as a creature of circumstances, to be toyed with
after one's own liking, and it can only end in bringing disgrace on
chemical analysis and on the law which employs science for its help
to punish the guilty and to let go the innocent. To prevent the
Act being a means of persecuting the dealer, and of interfering with
just trading on the one hand, or allowing our certificates to be the
means of trade advertisements on the other, should be a matter of constant
concern—whilst at the same time we should allow no false
feeling to prevent our putting a stop to what has been too long an
enormous source of addition to the money bags of the fraudulent
dealer, and so necessarily a cheat on the poor, and a curse to us all.
This is, I believe, the true object of these Acts of Parliament, and
to carry them out honestly and faithfully is the duty of those to
whom the working of the same is entrusted.
Another matter to which it is my duty to draw you attention,
involves perhaps one of the most important sanitary questions that
has been brought before us of late. In the year 1844 (7 & 8 Vict.
cap. 86) an Act was passed relating to the continuance of noxious
trades. The Act refers especially to the following businesses:—
Blood-boiling, Bone-boiling, Fellmongery, Slaughtering of Cattle,
Sheep or Horses, Soap-boiling, Tallow-melting, Tripe-boiling, and
any like business offensive or noxious, so far as relates to the killing
of animals for human food. These, if carried on in the Metropolis
at limited distances from houses and roads, were to be abolished.
In order that due respect and consideration might be paid to
interests existing at the time the Act was passed, thirty years were
allowed before it was to come into operation. In 1874 (next year)
the thirty years have expired. At this very time, and be it
remembered not until this very time, sanitarians having considered
the whole matter settled and arranged, the butchers raise an outcry
against the abolition of private slaughter-houses. Convinced it seems
that their appeal would fail if they urged it on the ground that the
Act of 1844 was an attack merely on their own till, they have, with
an importunacy worthy of a better cause, tried to persuade the