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Sanitary Officers.
Under the provisions of the Local Government Act, 1888, sanitary authorities were empowered
to require payment by the County Council of a moiety of the salary of any medical officer of health of a
district appointed or re-appointed after the passing of that Act.
The Public Health (London) Act, 1891, provides that this contribution shall be made in the case
of every medical officer of health and sanitary inspector elected or re-elected after the passing of the Act.
Appointment or re-appointment of the medical officer of health had taken place in the following
districts at the end of the year 1892, and the Council is therefore required to pay a moiety of the salaries
of such officers—
Chelsea, Mile-end Old-town, St. George-in-the-East, Limehouse, St. Giles, St. Olave, St. Saviour
(Southwark), St. Luke, Plumstead, St. George-the-Martyr, Islington, Fulham, Woolwich, Battersea,
St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Collegiate Church of St. Peter (Westminster).
Statistics.
The order of the Local Government Board of the 28th March, 1889, prescribing the duties of
medical officers of health, requires the reports of these officers to be made to the end of December in
each year. Only those officers are subject to the order who are elected or re-elected after the date of the
order. In 1891, however, the Council addressed to sanitary authorities a letter pointing out the
desirability of the annual reports of all medical officers of health being made to relate to the same
period, and as a result all the statistics in the reports for the year 1892 are for the first time made to the
end of that year. With few exceptions each medical officer of health had received returns which enable
him to exclude from his statistical tables the deaths of persons occurring in public institutions in his
district, but who are not inhabitants of the district, and to include the deaths of persons belonging to
the district but which occur in public institutions situated in other parts of London, or in public
institutions belonging to London but situated beyond the limits of the county. The reports of the
medical officers of health in the majority of cases contain tables recommended by the Society of Medical
Officers of Health, but it is not a uniform practice to correct these tables in respect of the deaths
occurring as above stated. The tables are not therefore in all cases comparable. There would obviously
be much advantage if these corrections were made and if each report contained certain tables identical
in each district. Medical officers elected or re-elected subsequent to the order of the Local Government
Board are required to supply two tables giving certain particulars, but the reports contain other tabular
statements of much value and giving more detailed statistical information than is required by the Board.
The general adoption of tables strictly comparable on a uniform system in the several districts would
enhance the value of these records.
London Water Supply.
Dr. E. Frankland, reporting to the President of the Local Government Board on the chemical,
physical and bacteriological examinations of the waters supplied by the metropolitan water companies
during the year 1892, states that, except in November and December, the weather has been on the whole
not unfavourable for the operations of the companies who derive their water from the Thames and Lee, and
the quality of their supplies has, except in December, been much more uniformly good, and less subject
to violent fluctuations than during the previous year. Dr. Frankland adds that the want of additional
storage reservoirs, and in some cases of larger filter areas, is still very emphatically declared both by the
chemical and bacteriological examinations, and he proceeds to contrast the quality of the water of the
Chelsea Company, which draws its water from the Thames and has 14.2 days' storage, with that of other
companies drawing their water from the same source, but having a storage of from 7 to 2.5 days only.
But even the storage of the Chelsea Company, he points out, was insufficient in January, February and
December, and in like manner the 13.7 days' storage of the East London Company, which draws its
supplies from the Lee, was insufficient in January and November and still more so in December.
Dr. Frankland, however, states that the samples examined by him were invariably clear and bright, and
that even when analysis showed the admission of flood water, the water actually supplied to consumers
was always efficiently filtered.