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anticipation of three years since, has been realized, for there are
certainly signs of much neglect, which nothing but constant supervision
will remedy.
It is true that a smaller number, 101 against 133, requires
limewhiting, but that has always been the case at midsummer as
compared with the spring, when a much larger number was always
found to require cleansing after the winter months.
But 45 accumulations of refuse under the troughs against one
in 1879, and 25 untrapped drains against none, are matters of
serious import, and prove conclusively that the average three visits a
year of your sanitary officers were far more effectual than the one
possible visit of H.M. Inspector in every two years and six months,
that being the time it would take him on his own calculation to
make one visit to each of the 1890 bakehouses included in the
district referred to in the Report of H.M.Chief Inspector of Factories
and Workshops.
The change was evidently a step in the wrong direction
for what was wanted then and what is still wanted was not
centralization but registration, which should have been left in the
hands of the local sanitary authority, for this it is which would
alone absolutely prevent the use of unfit places as bakehouses, as it
would also prevent the improper construction of places intended
for this purpose.
In my opinion The Bakehouses Regulation Act, 1863, should
not have been revoked, but it should rather have been amended in
the direction now indicated, in which case, I am sure that the
results would have been most salutary and beneficial.
I know it is the fashion to decry the Vestries of the Metropolis,
and that their powers have been sometimes curtailed owing
partly to this fashion, and partly to the centralising tendencies of
our present legislation, but in the case of the bakehouses, there is
no doubt that centralisation has produced very decidedly bad results.