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Sanitary administration.—The sanitary authority for the parish of Eltham is the Lee District
Board of Works, which has also jurisdiction over the parishes of Lee, Kidbrooke and Charlton. There
are local committees, consisting of the members elected to the board by each vestry, which deal with
matters relating to each parish. The Board of Works meets fortnightly, and the local committee for
Eltham also meets at similar intervals in the week alternating with that in which the board meeting
takes place.
For the parish of Eltham the Board have appointed a medical officer of health and a sanitary
inspector. There is in addition an inspector who carries out the duties connected with the Food and
Drugs Act for the four parishes. The medical officer of health is also engaged in private practice in the
neighbourhood. Until quite recently the work of sanitary inspector has been allotted to the officer who
filled the post of road foreman under the surveyor of the parish. The Board have now decided to
relieve him of the duties of the latter office, with a view to his devoting his whole time to those of
sanitary inspector.
A complaint book, incompliance with section 107 (3) of the Public Health (London) Act, is kept
at the vestry office. Past entries in this book do not show in any detail the conditions found to exist
in premises which have been inspected, though in this respect improvement is to be observed in the
entries of the last few months.
Among the entries in this book are included houses which have been visited by the inspector
owing to the occurrence of infectious diseases. As a rule in few of these entries is there any record of
the existence of sanitary defects having been noted at such premises.
The entries on the counterfoils of the books of intimation and statutory notices also show that
during the last few months the requirements in each case are set out in greater detail than formerly.
The clerical work involved in filling up the notices and in keeping the complaint book appears to be
carried out by a boy clerk in the vestry's office.
At each meeting of the local committee the inspector reports as to whether intimation notices
have been complied with or not, and in those cases for which it is necessary a resolution is passed for
the service of a statutory notice, and this is then entered in the complaint book.
The sanitary inspector has not in the past been under the supervision of the medical officer
of health, his time appears to have been chiefly taken up with the duties of road foreman; but
during the last few months more time has been given to the work of the sanitary department, and
notices have been served in the case of a large number of premises for the execution of necessary works.
At a large proportion of the houses visited I found work in progress in connection with waterclosets,
the provision of water supply, the provision of proper traps to drain inlets, and the ventilation
of drains, and in the case of others where defects were noticed, I was informed by the inspector that
notices had been served on the owners with a view to remedying the existing conditions.
The vestry have an office, which is shared by the surveyor of the parish with the medical officer
of health and the sanitary inspector, at a house on Eltham-green.
There is little doubt that there has in the past been neglect in carrying out a proper inspection
of the houses in the parish, probably due to this duty having been placed upon an officer whose time
was also engaged as foreman of roads, and the Board of Works have appreciated this in deciding that the
duties of sanitary inspector are sufficient to engage the whole time of one officer. In view of the conditions
which have been found to exist, and of the fact that the present inspector formerly was largely
occupied in the work of road foreman, it would, I think, have been a better arrangement to have retained
his services for that purpose, and to have appointed as sanitary inspector an officer who had been more
actively engaged in sanitary work.
C. W. F. Young,
Assistant Medical Officer of Health.
Public Health Department,
Spring Gardens, S.W.,
11th June, 1896.