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63
of Parliament to the inclusion in the Liverpool Corporation Act of 1898
of the following provisions—
1. Any person being a manufacturer of, or merchant or dealer in,
ice creams or other similar commodity who within the City—
(a) Causes or permits ice creams or any similar commodity
to be manufactured, sold, or stored in any cellar or room in which
there is an inlet or opening to a drain; or
(b) In the manufacture, sale, or storage of any such commodity
does any act or thing likely to expose such commodity to infection
or contamination or omits to take any proper precaution for the
due protection of such commodity from infection or contamination;
or
(c) Omits on the outbreak of any infectious or contagious
disease amongst the persons employed in his business to give
notice thereof to the Medical Officer of Health for the City;
shall be liable for every such offence on summary conviction to a
penalty not exceeding forty shillings.
The Liverpool Corporation Bill of 1898 contained provisions requiring
the registration of all itinerant persons selling articles of food, but this
proposal had to be abandoned.
We are advised that the provisions of the Dairies, Cowsheds and
Milkshops Order cannot, without special legislation, be made to apply to
this business. In Scotland an attempt of the Glasgow Corporation to
make them apply was defeated on appeal.
A number of Boroughs have obtained by local Acts powers similar to
those of Liverpool stated above, viz., Manchester, Salford, Stockport,
and Newcastle in 1899, and in 1900 Halifax, Oldham, Scarborough and
Southport, and a number of other towns.
The great difficulty has been as regards registration, several towns
having included in their local Bills provisions requiring registration,
which were rejected by Committees of Parliament, apparently for the
reason that such registration would apply to the numerous confectioners,
hotels, &c. No sufficiently precise definition of the particular class of
ice cream with which it was intended to deal has been formulated.
As a matter of fact, the Officers of a Sanitary Authority must in
practice know where the itinerant ice cream vendors in their own district
obtain their ice creams, and we believe it would meet all practical purposes
if every itinerant vendor were required to exhibit on his barrow a notice
showing the name and address of the person from whom he obtains his
ice creams.