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trace historically the development of the steadily growing sense of the need for strengthening existing
powers, and for reconsidering the question of division of responsibility between the various authorities
concerned in enforcing the law.
One of the first difficulties to attract attention was that of obtaining knowledge as to the arrival
of foodstuffs in the port. This difficulty, formidable at the outset, has continued to be felt in boroughs
in which special food inspectors have not been appointed. Great importance was attached, at
the inquiry of 1903, to the need of such information being made more readily available, and it
was suggested that all that was necessary was that sanitary authorities, which had not already done
so, should make arrangements to place at the disposal of their officers the Customs' Bill of Entry known
as Bill A. This bill, published each evening by the Customs Commissioners, is available for use on
the following morning and contains particulars as to vessels arriving in the port during the preceding
three or four days. Three years' experience of the use of these bills in some of the riparian districts
shows that in the case of perishable goods the information comes as a rule too late, for such goods are
necessarily rapidly cleared away and indeed have gone before the officer who relies upon the bill for his
information arrives upon the scene. The main outcome of the experience gained in districts with
a special food inspector is that this officer learns all that is necessary in the course of his daily round
and often many hours in advance of the arrival of the bill. It is possible that improvement might be
effected and information of value afforded by telephoning news of the arrival of food stuffs in the
port, but in particular districts in which special inspectors have been engaged in keeping the riverside
wharves and warehouses under close observation, the need for Bill A, or for acceleration of the arrival
of the information contained in Bill A, has not been felt.
A second point more than once referred to at the inquiry of 1903 raises issues of great importance.
It concerns the distinction drawn between goods " surrendered" and goods "seized." Prior to 1903 it
seems clear, reading between the lines of the evidence given, that seizures, properly so-called, were
rarely, if ever, made; the inspector was merely called in to certify that unsound food was not fit for human
consumption, and such food was then in some instances handed over to be disposed of by the sanitary
authority. The fact that the port authority, for example, had never obtained a conviction was stated at
the inquiry, and in the evidence given by the Medical Officer of Health of Poplar it was expressly
observed " There have been no seizures from the wharves." In the event of its being held that goods
in transit were not subject to inspection, the last-named witness seems to have considered that some
of the largest wharves and food preserving places in Poplar were exempted from the supervision of his
authority, and this view is, I learn from recent inquiry, still accepted in Poplar and limits the action of
the officers in that district with regard to such premises. I propose later to refer to the legal
difficulties, actual or imaginary, in question, merely noting here that in Poplar they are assumed to
be real.
I proceed now to comment upon the chief questions of importance which study of the working
of the present system of inspection, as practised more particularly during the last three years, brings
into prominence.
In the first place, it needs to be clearly understood that it is not practicable, even if it were desirable,
to inspect in detail all the food-stuffs entering the port. As a matter of fact, the chance any particular
article of food will come under examination is exceedingly remote. The mechanical difficulties, coopering,
cartage, etc., prohibit anything more than a process of sampling, and the ideal aimed at must
necessarily be that of providing an efficient detective agency, which will serve to bring to light the
underhand methods of the dishonest trader, rather than that of establishing a scheme of inspection
which shall (after examination in detail) guarantee the fitness for human consumption of all the food
material now in question. The staff at present engaged in the work of food inspection is small;
indeed, the number of inspectors employed for the control of the entire food supplies of the London
population is less than that engaged in protecting a comparatively small Prussian town from the
risk of one food malady alone, viz., the trichinosis caused by eating measly pork. The disproportion
becomes the more striking when an attempt is made to realise the vastness of the food supply of a huge
aggregation of population such as that of London. The statement that some 1,500,000 tons of food
comes into the Thames in a year, and that this, if closely packed, would occupy some 3,000,000 cubic
yards, conveys but little to the mind. A writer in the " Quarterly Review " in 1854, when London numbered
only half its present population, endeavoured to fix the ideas of his readers by picturing in
imagination a series of armies converging to " their ultimate destination—the great red lane of London
humanity "—an army of oxen ten abreast stretching from Peterborough to London, the great western
road thronged with a "bleating mass of wool " from as far away as Bristol, seven and a half miles of
calves ten abreast, nine long miles of swine, and so on. To bring this picture up to date would involve
increasing the size of the armies, but they would not now be ten abreast; the avenues of approach
while far less densely packed, would, of course, require to be extended, in the case of oxen to Argentina
and Canada, in that of sheep to New Zealand and Australia, the corn must be made to com& from
America and Eastern Europe, and there would be need for recognising an almost unending array of preserved
and tinned goods which must be thought of as stretching from San Francisco, Texas, Chicago,
Alaska and China.
The question as to changing proportions borne by land and river traffic during the last fifty years
is one, too, which would need in this connection to be borne in mind, but there is another change also,
which consideration of the alterations effected in half a century brings to the forefront, and which
must be here referred to. London, in 1854, was supplied to a preponderating extent with corn and meat
from neighbouring counties, some of its fish came from the Thames,* and it was surrounded by market
*The Wandsworth "bawley boats" supplied the London poor with fish caught between Batt.ersea-reach and
Kew-bridge, and theie were upwards of 100 "trolling boats" of Barking belonging to different companies. The
"British Queen" flourished at Deptford and watercress "luxuriated" in the Fleet ditch in Camden Town.—
(" Quarterly Review," 1854.)