View report page

64
remainder of the Inspectors be assigned districts. To cope with the increased clerical
work likely to be entailed, it was recommended that two additional clerks should be
appointed.
The Committee's recommendations were adopted by the Council at their first
Meeting in March, 1920, and the Sanitary Staff was increased accordingly. The
staff has since been reduced by one Sanitary Inspector and one Clerk. The staff of
the Sanitary Inspectors at the present time therefore, including the Senior Inspector,
numbers twelve.
Taking the figures for the Metropolis as given in the last Annual Report of the
County Medical Officer of Health, the number of Sanitary Inspectors in proportion
to the number of inhabitants in Shoreditch is approximately 43 per cent, above the
average for London. It is for your Committee to consider whether this proportion
is justifiable upon the ground that the same is necessary to adequately cope with
the sanitary needs of the Borough.
The adverse conditions under which a very large section of the inhabitants of
Shoreditch live and move and have their being are, I believe, well within the knowledge
of your Committee and need not be dwelt upon in detail. It will suffice to emphasise
the fact that from the Census figures given above, it is clear that in Shoreditch we have
a resident population, mainly working class, dwelling under conditions which
undoubtedly require an amount of sanitary supervision above the average as
compared with the requirements of the Metropolis generally. That this is so is
borne out by the fact that the public health of the Borough, as gauged by the general
death-rate, the death-rates from infectious disease including tuberculosis, and the
infantile mortality, is markedly below the general level for the Metropolis.
Taking these excessive rates as a guide, there is not the least doubt that the
Borough, from the point of view of sanitation, requires a far larger staff of Inspectors
than the general average for the Metropolis.
With the present staff of twelve Inspectors, from an estimate based upon the
number of premises inspected and dealt with during a period of twelve months
approximately two years are required for a general inspection throughout the Borough.
A considerable amount of house-to-house inspection is now being carried out, but
the Inspectors' time is much broken up, and only a fraction is available for this owing
to the routine work arising from complaints, from infectious disease, from factory
and workshops inspections, from proceedings under the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts
and other matters of an urgent character which necessarily claim a large proportion
of the time of the Sanitary Inspectors.
The amount of sanitary work now being done in Shoreditch by the existing staff
is large, but considering the needs of the Borough, it is by no means excessive. The
average number of visits of inspection, including primary and revisits, made by the