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George-in-the-East 27, Limehouse 88, Mile-end Old-town 83, St. George, Southwark, 52, Newington
75, St. Olave 7, Bermondsey 81, Lambeth 247, Battersea 104, Clapham 46, Streatham 39, Wandsworth
40, Lewisham 92, Woolwich 41, Plumstead 38. The number of underground bakehouses is
stated to be as follows—Hammersmith 40, Fulham 70, Chelsea 47, St. James, Westminster, 25, St.
Giles 18, St. George-in-the-East 17, St. George, Southwark, 16, St. Olave 5, Plumstead 18. The
medical officer of health of St. Pancras gives the distance of the floor of the bakehouse above or below
the ground level; it is thus seen that the floors of 146 are 6 feet or more below the ground level. In
Shoreditch there are 57 bakehouses wholly and six partly underground, in Lambeth there are 125
wholly and 22 partly underground. The medical officer of health of Kensington again comments on
the fact that, according to magisterial rulings, the disuse of an underground bakehouse subsequent to
the 1st January, 1896, by the premises becoming empty, does not prevent the use of them for the
purposes of a bakehouse, however unsuitable in character they may be, upon the premises being
re-occupied.
Unsound Food.
Food was condemned as unfit for human consumption in a number of the districts. It usually
consisted of fish, fruit, vegetables, eggs and poultry. Reference to condemnation or seizures of food
of this kind is found in reports relating to Chelsea, Marylebone, Hampstead, St. Pancras, Islington,
Hackney, St. Giles, Strand, Bethnal-green, Whitechapel, St. George-in-the-East, Limehouse, Poplar,
St. Saviour, Southwark, St. George, Southwark, Newington, St. Olave, Bermondsey, Lambeth, Battersea,
Wandsworth, Greenwich, Westminster, St. Luke, City, Shoreditch and Mile-end Old-town.
The medical officer of health of the City states, 175,251 tons of fish were delivered at Billingsgate.
and 959 tons, or 0.5 per cent., were condemned by the "meters" at the expense of the Fishmongers'
Company.
In Mile-end Old-town seizures were made of 1,645 eggs intended for use in the making of
biscuits. A prosecution followed and the defendant was sentenced to 21 days' hard labour. A number
of tins of meat were also seized in this district. Tinned meat weighing 4¼ cwt. was condemned in St.
Olave.
The largest amount of meat condemned in any district was in the City. The medical officer of
health of that district states that in the Central Meat Markets, Smithfield, 768 tons of putrid meat,
102 tons of diseased meat, 45 tons of meat unsound from accident or causes other than the foregoing,
and 3 tons of offal, or 918 tons in all were seized. In Holborn, where the premises of a number of meat
salesmen are situated, 1,881 stone 2 lbs. of diseased meat, and 2,331 stone of decomposed meat, or 4,212
stone 2 lbs. in all, offal excluded, were seized. In the remaining districts the amount of meat seized was
as follows— in Marylebone, f cwt. were seized ; in Hackney, 1½ cwt.; in St. George, Southwark, about
3 cwt. of pork, beef, and mutton, and 8 ox tails; in Lambeth, 19 pieces of meat; in Greenwich, the
carcase of a pig; in Whitechapel, 2 sheep, 1½ tons of bullocks' heads, and 1½ cwt. of sausage-meat; in
Shoreditch, 75½ stone of mutton, 3 breasts of mutton, 14 lbs. of mutton cuttings, 8 lbs. of beef, 24 lbs.
of mixed cuttings ; in St. Luke, 17 lbs. of beef, 204 lbs. of pork, 7 lbs. of liver, 30 lbs. of tripe ; in
Westminster, 2,717 lbs. of mutton, 1,249 lbs. of beef, 154 lbs. of lamb, and 1 barrel of pigs' kidneys ;
in Fulham, a box of loins of pork ; in St. Olave, 2 cwt. 2 quarters 20 lbs. of pickled brisket of beef,
and 1 cwt. 3 quarters 4 lbs. of pickled tongues ; in Islington, on one occasion meat was seized;
in Woolwich, one carcase of beef was seized, to which reference is thus made by the medical officer of
the City—
Two pieces of beef sent from Woolwich were seized at the Central Market. This place being within
the Metropolitan Police area, the usual plan of investigation through the local police could not be
adopted, and your officers went to Woolwich to serve the notice of seizure and make inquiries. The
owner of the beef kept a butcher's shop in a quiet street, and on the inspectors calling there they saw
another badly-diseased carcase of beef hanging in the shop, and at once informed the local sanitary
authority, whose officers seized the meat. The owner was summoned at the Justice Room, Guildhall,
and sentenced by Alderman Samuel Green to three months' hard labour without the option of a fine.
On the next day the defendant was summoned at Woolwich police court, where he could not appear,
being in prison; the case was heard in his absence, and he was fined 30s.
The smallness of the amount of unsound meat seized in London districts is no doubt due to the
absence of proper opportunity for its inspection at the time of killing.
In Holborn, the meat seized in 1897 was only about a third of the amount seized in the preceding
year; abundant opportunities, however, still exist for the supply of unwholesome meat in
London, although the supply of this meat to the Holborn market is decreasing.
It is satisfactory to note that magistrates are inflicting considerable penalties when persons are
convicted of selling unsound meat. The medical officer of health of Holborn states that one of the meat
salesmen by whom large quantities of diseased meat used to be deposited for sale was sent to prison
for four months with hard labour and without the option of a fine. In several other cases the defendants
were imprisoned. In St. Luke, a defendant was fined £20 ; in Marylebone, £7 7s. In the
City, convictions were obtained in 16 instances, in one case the defendant was sentenced to three
months imprisonment with hard labour without the option of a fine, in the other 15, fines amounting
to £335, exclusive of costs, were inflicted; the defendants, however, in three instances, accepted the
alternative of imprisonment, which reduces the amount of fines recovered to £205.
An interesting account of meat poisoning is contained in the report of the medical officer of
health of Marylebone for the month of March. Four persons had on the 25th March partaken of
boiled pork and fowl. The following morning three were attacked with choleraic symptoms, the fourth
being attacked in the afternoon. The pork was analysed by Gautier's process, and a crystalline substance,
not present in normal pork, was separated. The quantity was very small, and owing to
this circumstance it could only be ascertained that this substance was alkaline in reaction, that it gave
fine crystals when united with hydrochloric acid, and gave precipitates with the ordinary alkaloidal
reagents except the chlorides of gold or platinum.
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