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79
BAKEHOUSES.
The special duties formerly devolving on your Vestry's officers under
the provisions of the Bakehouse Act were transferred on the first day
of the year 1879 to Government Inspectors appointed under the
provisions of the Factory and Workshops Act, 1878. The Sanitary
Inspectors, nevertheless, have continued to exercise a considerable
amount of supervision over the bakehouses as a part of their routine
work, and I have no doubt that a continuation of their periodical
visitations is desirable in the interests of the public. There are
about 128 bakehouses in the parish, 79 north and 49 south of
Uxbridge Road.
DUSTING.
The collection of dust and ashes from upwards of 20,000 houses,
covering an area of nearly 2000 acres, is no light task, and complaints
of neglect were habitual when the work was carried out under the
contract system. So frequent, indeed, did complaints at last become,
that a desire to satisfy the legitimate requirements of the parishioners
in respect of the removal of house refuse, had no little influence in
determining your Vestry, in 1877, to abolish the contract system
altogether, and undertake the duty with an ample staff and plant.
The result has justified the decision, for the work has been done in an
increasingly satisfactory manner : complaints are now rare, and even
applications for removal of the dust are comparatively few in number.
Oftentimes, moreover, when the dustmen, or your Vestry, get censured
for alleged neglect, it turns out on enquiry that the domestic servants
are to blame; the hour of the dustman's call is " inconvenient"; or "the
steps have just been cleaned"; such excuses, or some other excuse equally
valid from a servant's point of view, being deemed sufficient for the perpetuation
of a nuisance. And nuisance always arises from improper use
of the receptacle by the deposit therein of animal and vegetable refuse;
of which it may be said that the former has an appreciable value and
should be utilised, while the latter admits of being burned on the
kitchen fire. A notification to this effect was left at every house in the
parish in 1873, and subsequently repeated, not, I fear, with any conspicuously
good results.