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As this document represents the final report on the health of
Wembley, it might be advantageous to review some of the comments
made by my predecessors in office.
In the Annual Report of 1894 it was stated, in relation to one
part of the Borough—"There are also complaints, which come to
hand with almost regular periodicity, of nuisances in and around
Alperton. I have over and over again reported on them to the old
Board. A committee has inspected the whole district and, though
from time to time the complainants admit that there has been some
improvement, still complaints are made, sometimes as to nuisances
from pig-keeping (which appears to be a considerable industry here),
sometimes from gas-lime, and at others from the importation of
'hard' and 'softcore' and 'rough dust'."
And the Report of the following year seemed to indicate that the
difficulties of Alperton were not solved. "Alperton, as one of the
Councillors recently observed, is NOT a Garden of Eden. It
threatened at one time to become the dust-hole of the Metropolis,
but I am in great hopes that better times are in store for it. It is, of
course, absurd to suppose that it will be regarded as a model residential
neighbourhood, but everything will be done to render the
village quite healthy and habitable, and a constant watch kept on those
(and they are many in number) who persistently, for their own private
ends, make the air pestilential and the place intolerable by noxious
importations.
"There is another evil threatening us at Alperton and that is the
manufacture of manure and oil from the REFUSE FISH FROM
LONDON. How the proprietors came to build their factory almost
in the heart of the village is inconceivable!
"The odours from the BONE MANURE FACTORY on the
canal side close by may possibly be mistaken for those from this fish
factory so that you can easily imagine it requires a wise discriminating
power to accurately differentiate the source of these various odours in
Alperton."
These were comments made in the early reports on this area
and, indeed, examination of more recent reports indicates that although
conditions have changed, complaints still emanate from residents and
often indeed are justified. The Department continues to do
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