View report page

63
Surrey Magistrates, who are the Local Authority for the county of
Surrey, as before stated, have followed suit. It is to be regretted,
however, that the Middlesex Magistrates should have taken so narrow
a view of their duties under the Act and the Order, and—thus setting
an example which is but too likely to be followed by other Provincial
(especially rural) Local Authorities—contented themselves with framing
two meagre "regulations for prescribing and regulating the cleansing
of dairies and cowsheds" (under clause 7 of the Order), and not have
adopted any "standard of requirements" for the guidance of their officers
(whomsoever these may be); so that it will be difficult for interested
persons to know what is necessary to be done for the "reasonable satisfaction"
of the Local Authority in respect of the lighting, ventilation,
drainage, and water supply of the dairies and cowsheds in extra-metropolitan
Middlesex. The probability, therefore, is that nothing will be
done, and that numerous dairies and cowsheds, from which London
obtains a large part of its milk supply, may, for the present at least,
remain in statu quo ante.
It would not be difficult to suggest particulars in respect of which
the regulations of the Metropolitan Board of Works might be mademore
efficacious in accordance with the highest requirements of sanitary
science. But even as they are, I have no doubt they will lead
to considerable improvement in our cow-sheds. The regulations, and
those framed by the Surrey Magistrates, are based on a code of "proposed
bye-laws for regulating Metropolitan and Urban cowsheds and
dairies," published in 1876 by the Society of Medical Officers of
Health.
I trust I may be pardoned for referring to the circumstances under
which the subject came before the Society. Having in two papers
read in 1874 and 1875, dealt with the subject of the slaughter-houses
and contributed in some slight degree, as I hope, to the improvement
of those establishments by promoting the formation of a code of good
bye-laws, and by striving in this parish to get the bye-laws carried
out in the letter and in the spirit, I then turned my attention to the
subject of the cowsheds, and in December, 1875, I read a paper thereon
before the Society. In this paper I first gave formal expression to
those views on the subject of dairies and cowsheds, with which your
Vestry are so well acquainted, pointing out "the considerations which
in my judgment called for the intervention of the law." I stated we had