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79
in the room where fish was cleaned and cooked and immediately
below a room in which many people sat to eat the finished
product. The assistants informed me that these guts were their
perquisites and brought them in 5/- a week, being sold for the
purpose of fining wine.
BAKEHOUSES.
There are 78 bakehouses in the Borough, and these have
been fairly regularly inspected, and a number of minor alterations
and repairs carried out. Inspector Phillips made 220
inspections of hotel kitchens, restaurants, coffee-shops, and the
like. The experience of the Department in respect of these
places is that even the very best of them require persistent
supervision.
DIRTY Bread.— I have in other Annual Reports alluded to
the very casual manner in which bread is protected from extraneous
dirt. It is a matter which may be verified in the streets
of any town on any occasion, that bread by being carried about
in baskets in which it is openly exposed to all the dust which is
blowing about the roads, by being not infrequently dropped
in the roads, and hastily wiped on the hand or clothes of the
carrier, and so forth, is as regards the cleanliness of the crust
bound to be a matter of public concern. I have communicated
with the largest bread companies in London, and those
who have taken the trouble to reply have admitted the
importance of delivering bread to the public in a cleanly state,
but beyond seeing that their vans and baskets arc kept clean,
they take no precaution to ensure its arrival at the table in a
clean condition. It is stated that bread cannot be put into a
wrapper while warm ; again in large businesses, as soon as it is
cool, it must be loaded into vans for quick delivery. It is further
stated that it would require a large staff and entail very great
extra expense to wrap each loaf individually in paper, and,
finally, that the public would probably not be prepared to pay
any additional cost for bread so protected. Of the truth of
some of these assertions I have very serious doubts. Some
firms, whose output it is true may not be very large, do deliver
bread to the public wrapped in non-absorbent paper. A man in
the business, who has been engaged in it for 33 years, tells me
that every loaf which leaves his shop (and the shop, I know, is
one where a by no means small trade is done in bread) is
wrapped in clean paper and tied up with string, the paper being
stamped with a small rubber stamp. The cost of paper and
string for this is about fourpence per hundred 2 lb. loaves.
This gentleman tells me that he has very frequently seen—what I
suppose everyone else has seen—children and errand boys