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75
Brown's District of that time; during the three half-years afterwards,
46. 83, and 116 houses were not inspected in Inspector Brown's
altered District.
(3) During the three first half-years 33, 1, and 42 houses were not
inspected in Inspector Rackham's district of that time; during the
second three half-years 161, 133, and 125 houses were not inspected
in Inspector Rackham's altered District.
With regard to house-to-house inspections in North St. Pancras during the
last six half-years, these are set out in table "D." This table shows that in
the first three half-years the house-to house inspections were done by Inspector
Rackham except the 30 in the first half of 1906. Attention naturally settles
on the 195 house-to-house inspections done by Inspector Rackham in the first
half of 1907.
If the recollection of your Committee be carried back to the beginning: of
1907 it will be remembered that early in January of that year the removal of
some houses in North St. Pancras from the Register was contemplated, and the
reason advanced was that as the Inspector could inspect from house-to-house
registration was not necessary. This arose from the fact that just previously
Inspector Rackham hud informed me that he was short of work and I had
instructed him to inspect from house-to-house certain streets which had not
been inspected for a long period. This appears to have given rise in the mind
of your Committee that there was not sufficient work for three Inspectors in
North St. Pancras. The reason Inspector Rackham imagined himself in this
position appears to have been due to the fact that from the middle of February
to the middle of October, a period of nine months, he did no inspections of
Registered Tenement Houses, but in the last quarter of 1906 he inspected the
whole of his Registered Tenement Houses, so that at the beginning of 1907 he
found himself temporarily so slack of work as to be able to do 195 house-to-house
inspections in the first half of 1907, and in the same half-year omitted to inspect
42 Registered Tenement Houses, the numbers of which omissions have largely
increased since Mr. Storer's departure.
To analyse the Registers and Returns in such detail as to exactly find the
point where the misconception arose has not been a brief nor a clear task, but
it is not by the Registered Tenement Houses and House-to-House Inspections
alone that the amount of work to be done is to be judged. Apart from the
question of distance and extent of area in North St. Pancras the figures in
table "B' show that the average half-yearly number of inspections and
re-inspections when there were three Inspectors was 5,559, and since there
have been two Inspectors 3,939, a diminution of 1,620. Assuming 1,900 as the
average number of inspections and re-inspections by each Inspector half-yearly,
then 1,620 represents four-fifths of an Inspector's work short during each of toe
three half-years since the middle of 1907. On the other hand, if the North
Division is divided between three Inspectors, whereas the Inspector having
Sub-Divisions 5 and 4, and the Inspector having Sub-Divisions 3 and 2, will
have sufficient work to fully occupy their time, the Inspector having SubDivision
I, although it is the largest in area of all the Inspectors' Districts
in the Borough, will have the fewest probable number of inspections of all
the District Inspectors (as shown in the table accompanying my Report of
the 24th June, 1908) unless the new roads in Brookfield Park in the meanwhile
become lined with new buildings. Of course, there are some 300