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26
A number of visits were paid to all the houses from time to time by officers of the
department and the attention of the person in charge or the London County Council
directed to any matter calling for remedy.
Underground Rooms.—Prior to the war and particularly after the coming into
operation of the Council's regulations with regard to underground sleeping rooms
very active work was carried out by the department with a view to ensuring the
discontinuance of occupancy of such as appeared to be unsuitable or did not come
up to requirements.
As a result a very large number of underground rooms were closed and many
basement rooms and areas were filled in. Part of the routine work of the District
Inspectors was to visit and see that rooms that had been closed by order of the
Public Health Committee for sleeping purposes were in fact not occupied as such
and to see also that underground rooms were not being used in contravention of
the Public Health Act. Each year showed a considerable reduction in the number
of illegal occupations. In 1914 only 27 were dealt with in respect of which
17 notices were served. In 1918 the number dealt with was 14 and 14 notices were
served.
In 1919 owing to housing difficulties and the practical impossibility of driving
any individual out of any place in which he had found accommodation it was
considered necessary to be even more vigilant than in the past.
Despite all efforts, however, quite a number of rooms that had been closed and
disused for some years were once more found to be occupied. In these cases
practically all that could be done was to warn both the person who had let and the
person who had taken the rooms and to ensure that the rooms should be put into as
good condition as possible. Fortunately only the best of the rooms were re-let and
many that were, or on account of neglect had become, unsuitable, remain empty.
C.—PREMISES THAT ARE NOT BUT SHOULD BE
REGISTERED.
For a variety of reasons the number of premises in the Borough in which meals
are provided or food is sold ready cooked or is prepared for sale is very large. At the
end of 1919 there were 634, this number including: restaurant, dining room and
coffee shop kitchens, 156; tea-rooms and pastry-cooks, 50; hotel kitchens, 38; fried
fish shops, 24; and fish-curers, 3. In addition, there were a number of shops in
which meat, ham, sausages, &c., were cooked and sold only over the counter.
None of these premises is or is required to be registered, and apart from
fish-curing and fish-frying premises, which are required to be in compliance with
certain requirements contained in by-laws of the London County Council, none of
them is subject to any very special provisions. Any individual, in short, may take
any sort of premises, and proceed to cook and prepare food for sale; no notice to the
local authority is required, and unless complaint is received, or infection or
suspicious illness occurs, or the premises are visited by an inspector, the fact that
they are so used may never be discovered.
That this is so appears to be at least unsatisfactory. On account of changed
conditions the amount of home cooking done is steadily diminishing, and more and
more the cook-shop, the restaurant, and the cooked-food shop are being resorted to.
In the poorer quarters of the Borough the extent to which the fried-fish shop, for
example, is depended upon may be judged from the number of children making