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* Includes 382 males and 1 female who had no home address.
The school children included in the above table have, in the main, been brought to the
cleansing station from the public elementary schools by officials of the London County Council
as the Education Authority under the powers conferred upon them by their Ceneral Powers
Act, 1907, sec. 36, and the Children Act, 1908, sec. 122. In respect of cases of pediculosis in
school children dealt with in this way, payment is made by the County Council to the Borough
Council at the rate of 2s. per child cleansed. In these cases an intensive method of dealing with
the hair is employed, whereby the operation of disinfestation is limited in many cases to one
cleansing only. The payment in respect of children suffering from scabies, who generally receive
a series of baths, is 1s. per bath. 4.311 cases were paid for during the year at the rate of 2s.
per case, and 1,215 cleansings at the rate of 1s. per bath.
School children with head lice have also been dealt with by the London County Council
at the Prince of Wales Road clinic.
58 verminous persons from common lodging houses outside the borough were paid for
by the London County Council at the rate of 1s. per attendance. There were no Finsbury cases
in 1922.
Apart from the above-mentioned classes of cases, in respect of which payment is received
from other authorities, any verminous person resident in St. Pancras is dealt with without
payment.
Disinfection of Verminous Articles.—Very useful new powers in this respect have
been conferred on metropolitan borough councils by Section 9 of the London County Council
(General Powers) Act, 1922, which enables the borough council to disinfect or destroy, compulsorily,
not only articles which are verminous, filthy, dangerous or unwholesome or likely to
endanger health or promote infectious disease, but also any articles which are likely to be verminous
by reason of having been used by any person infested with vermin. These powers are exercisable on
a report from the medical officer of health, and the definition of verminousness include scabies,
as well as lice, bugs and fleas. They are much more useful than the corresponding provisions
in Section 19 of the London County Council (General Powers) Act, 1904, which only dealt with
articles which the medical officer of health could certify as being filthy, dangerous or unwholesome
or likely to endanger health or promote infectious disease. The latter section was not found a