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43
houses of woodwork before disinfestation could be carried out. It
is possible that a sum of between £5 and £8 was expended per house,
apart from disinfestation as such, in removing this woodwork,
replacing it, and making good the damage caused thereby.
In that Heavy Naphtha was used throughout 1937, no such
expenditure was incurred, with a saving of some hundreds of pounds.
The van has been demonstrated before the Society of Medical
Officers of Health, and Deputations from several Local Authorities
have been received in order that the Enfield method of disinfestation
could be examined and adopted elsewhere.
Enfield has specialised on a simplified, but nevertheless thorough,
technique. The procedure in respect of empty Council houses is
as follows.
Every Council house, on becoming empty, is inspected by my
Department to see if vermin are present, or the evidence thereof.
In some cases sulphur is used as a detector for it tends to bring
the bed bug from its hiding place into the open.
Of the 216 houses thus inspected during the year, suspicions
that infestation might be present warranted the disinfestation of 80
houses, a percentage of 37. Of these 80 houses, 78 were treated
with Heavy Naphtha.
I would not like to argue that as a result thereof one could assume
that this percentage represents a fair idea of infestation of Council
houses throughout the District. In the first place it is possible that
some houses were disinfested although they were not verminous;
this figure, however, is extremely low as in practically every case
dead bugs were found in the house after the use of Heavy Naphtha.
On the other hand it must be remembered that some of the houses
are empty because their occupants have failed to pay rent, and these
may be considered the more feckless tenants of the Council, and
those more likely to allow their houses to become infested.
It was the practice during the year to use Heavy Naphtha and
if dead bugs were found, to use it a second time or a third time until
no dead bugs were found. In this way we could be reasonably certain
that a house had been completely disinfested. It may be assumed,
therefore, that houses in which Heavy Naphtha was used once or
twice were really successfully disinfested in one process, and those
disinfested three times in two processes.

During 1936, four houses were disinfested by means of Heavy