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shops. Certain laundries are excluded from the Act, such as laundries
worked by inmates of a prison, reformatory school, religious institutions,
or by members of the same family dwelling on the premises,
and in which not more than two persons from outside assist the members
of the family. The latter class of laundry is termed a domestic
laundry, and where they exist, are a standing menace to the public
health. They not only escape the attention ©f the Factory Inspector,
but are also outside the cognisance of the local sanitary authority,
and so go without supervision. The clean and dirty linen comes into
close contact in the narrow passage and in other parts of the house,
and there is every opportunity for infection to be conveyed from one
article to the other. The actual washing is done in some small outbuilding
reeking with steam and in an atmosphere loaded with all
forms of impurity. Where the domestic laundry survives, there is no
means of knowing where it exists. It is unregistered, and a list compiled
to-day would be practically worthless in six months time; they
spring up, change their abodes, or die out from month to month.
The importance of keeping laundries under observation is recognised,
but instead of noting where the real danger obviously lies, there
has been a tendency to harass the already much regulated and inspected
big laundry. In some districts the Medical Officer of Health
is given power to require laundrymen to furnish him with lists of
their customers. This is simply a source of exasperation to the wellconducted
laundries, which are the only ones really affected, whilst
the precaution is almost useless in the interests of public health. On
several occasions it has been shown that although infection may
reach a big laundry, when some of those who sort the foul linen may
contract the disease, yet it never gets beyond the washhouse. The
temperature in modern rotary washing machines is sufficiently high,
and thorough treatment is carried on for a sufficiently long time to
sterilize the linen. In a laundry properly planned and built for the
purpose, the sorting room, where the foul linen is received, and the
packing room, where it is put into hampers for delivery, are quite
distinct. They are frequently separated by the whole length of the
laundry, so that the risk of direct infection conveyed from the foul
to the clean linen is practically non-existent.
Fortunately, in Acton, there are not many domestic laundries,
and practically all places where laundry work is carried on. are under