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22
TO THE VESTRY OF ST. MARY, ISLINGTON,
Gentlemen,
Your Sanitary Committee Report:—
That for a considerable time past they have had under their
anxious consideration the necessity of re-organising and materially
increasing the sanitary staff' of this large and important parish.
That the amount of the work devolving upon the present
comparatively small sanitary staff' has for many years been gradually
increasing is clearly apparent to your Committee, as they think it must
be to the Vestry at large. One of the more immediate causes of this, as
it is eertainly the most striking, is no doubt the enormous growth of the
district, as shown by the great and rapid increase of the population.
To illustrate this it may be stated that upon the formation of the
Vestry in 1856, when two Inspectors were appointed, the population
was 125,000, and in 1866, when two additional Inspectors were
appointed, the population was 183,695, the increase being about
58,700; whilst in 1885 the estimated population was 310,000, showing
an addition in the 19 years of 126,000.
This vast increase in the population has, therefore, of itself, added
very much to the work of the Sanitary Department, not only in respect
to the proportionate increase in the number of deaths arising from
infectious and other diseases, and in the number of complaints received
from the inhabitants, but more particularly in the extension of those
unsanitary conditions resulting from the greater density of population.
Legislation has also added largely to the work to be performed,
the Sanitary Act of 1866, and other subsequent Sanitary Acts, the
Bakehouse Regulation Act, recently re-enacted by the Factory and
Workshops' Amendment Act, the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings
Acts, the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts, being some of the enactments
which have tended in this direction.