View report page

86
multiplication of all kinds of microbie and other injurious growths. This is all
the more important for the reason that cow's milk is almost the sole food of
many of the infants in our population. The use of contaminated milk for this
purpose is one of the factors maintaining the high rate of infantile mortality
which prevails in the poorer parts of the Borough, where the worst type of
milk shop is commonest. Disturbance of the digestive system is, in years of
hot summers, the largest cause of death in infants under one year of age, and
some of this form of illness must be attributed to the use of contaminated milk.
It is very significant in this connection that breast-fed children are far less
liable to this malady than are those fed on cow's milk.
There is no doubt that, so long as milk is stored and sold as at present in
open vessels, the milk shop ought to be so ordered as to minimise the risk of
the milk becoming contaminated. At present, i.e., at the end of 1913, many
of the milk shops in the Borough are far from such a standard.*
Besides the shops which strike one at once as being quite unsuitable for the
sale of milk, many of the others require certain improvements. For instance,
many need more ventilation. Nearly 70 per cent. of the whole are without
any fixed permanent ventilators. Again, a few (25) are in direct communication
with sleeping rooms. Another important matter is the vessel in which
the milk is stored. Many of the dealers keep their milk on the counter in
open pans, or in other vessels which do not protect the milk from flies and
particles floating in the air. Only one quarter of all milk shops are furnished
with milk-pans provided with proper metal covers.
The 107 milk shops which are here classed as "dairies," and a proportion of
the other milk shops cAn readily, where necessary, be made suitable for the
sale of milk. In the case of the remainder this will depend upon how far the
vendor is prepared to go in order to bring his milk shop into line with any
standard that may be set up. In over a hundred shops the conditions are very
bad, and so long as the class of trade that is carried on in them remains as it
is they can hardly be made suitable.
Conversation with the shopkeepers makes it clear that the majority of
those who sell only small quantities of milk do not do so for the doubtful
profit which they make, but in order to attract customers for their other goods,
and many would even be pleased to give up the trade if their competitors
did the same.
The above facts are sot out in a report which was presented by the Medical
Officer of Health to the Public Health Committee on 7th January, 1914, and
in the early part of 1914 the matter was under the consideration of the
Council.
In addition to the 389 registered milk shops where milk is sold by retail,
four itinerant vendors and one dairy farmer without milk shops, and two
wholesale dairymen who do not sell milk by retail, are also on the register.
*During 1914, a number of milksellers with unsuitable premises have been removed from
the Register.