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31
Upon this basis, which would allow of additional registration, we
consider that eight District Inspectors should he employed, each of
whom would then, upon an average, have charge of a district containing
in round numbers 40,000 inhabitants, and about 5,000 inhabited houses
of which, at least 1,500 would require either annual or more frequent
inspection.
According to our experience, the systematic inspection of 1,500
houses would represent three visits in addition to the primary
inspection, so that the annual visits to these 1,500 houses would
number 6,000 for each Inspector. But in addition to these 1,500
houses there may bo taken to be 300 complaints, and 200 primary
inspections on account of disease from the remaining 3,500 houses in
each district. This would together (500 by 4) represent 2,000,
additional visits, and the bakehouses, cowhouses, and slaughter-houses,
&c., would increase the number by 250 visits for each Inspector per
year.
The total inspections, therefore, assigned to each Inspector would be
8,250, or an average of 27½ visits per day. The average daily number
of inspections now made varies from 20 to 25 visits daily.
In this calculation we have not taken into account the extra visits
necessary in the case of registered houses, which at present number
only 200, nor the time occupied in connection with proceedings at the
police-court, nor the purchase of samples under the Sale of Food and
Drugs Acts, nor the inspection of food exposed for sale, &c.
In the Report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the
Poor, it is stated that Islington has an Inspector to every 56,000
inhabitants, but the Commission, in making that calculation upon the
census population of 1881 (280,000) have obviously included the
Superintendent, and also the Inspector of Dust, because each of the
three District Inspectors had at the time charge of areas containing an
average number of 94,000 inhabitants.
As a matter of fact, the average number of inhabitants to each of
the three districts has varied from year to year, commencing with 63,000
in 1867, and reaching 100,000 in 1884, the work having been carried