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43
Prior to 1896 our efforts to deal with overcrowding during
overtime met with some measure of success. Magistrates
took a serious view of this offence, and inflicted heavy
penalties, and occupiers were beginning to learn that
the game was not worth the candle. In my own district
I had 11 convictions for overcrowding during the last two
months of 1885, and I am confident that, if the power to
deal with it had been left with one department, the evil
would have gradually disappeared under firm repressive
treatment. Contrast the course pursued at present. A
workshop is found overcrowded and a complaint is sent to
the local authority. In due course the sanitary inspector
visits the workshop, and if it is then found to be overcrowded
a notice is served on the occupier to abate the nuisance.
On the expiry of the time allowed in this notice, another
visit is paid, when the occupier takes good care that his
workshop does not contain more than the legal number of
hands; the nuisance is 'written off as abated, and the
occupier starts with a fresh lease of life. He again overcrowds,
until he is again caught, when the same tortuous
interminable procedure is re-enacted with the same abortive
result. The occupiers in the East end are quite alive to
the change in the mode of attack, and are beginning to
enjoy a new sense of security in the presence of an enemy
who only employs blank cartridge. Moreover, even if the
overcrowding is not abated on the expiry of the notice
served, the local authority is under the disability of being
obliged to satisfy a court that it constitutes an injury to
health under the Public Health Act. One of the ablest
and most conscientious of the medical officers of health in
my district told me that he would under no circumstances
take proceedings in court for overcrowding, on account of
the uncertainty of obtaining a conviction. Again it is
anomalous that we enforce the exhibition in a workshop of
a notice specifying its cubic capacity and the numbers who
may be employed, thus touching the fringe of the evil,
whilst the evil itself is left to the control of an authority