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"4. Further, it must be noticed that the Local Government Board, who
are the department charged with the execution and supervision of
the Public Health Act, have been parties to similar enactments in
Provisional Order Bills passed by their authority through Parliament;
notably in the case of the Manchester Provisional Order Act, 1878.
"5. The terms of thi3 Order have been followed in the clauses which
the Committee have sanctioned for insertion in several of the Bills
under notice, and they recommend that, in any future amendment
of the Public Health Act, similar powers should be extended to all
urban sanitary authorities, or, at least, that means should be devised
for clothing them with such powers on application. A copy of
these provisions is appended to this Report.
"6. As to the second ('the prevention of, or otherwise dealing with,
infectious diseases,') the clauses which have been submitted to the
Committee were, generally, of a different character.
"7. They were to a less extent supported by precedent, were viewed
with disfavour or with hesitating approval by the Local Government
Board in their report on the several Bills, and were obviously, in
many cases, premature, as the powers for providing hospital
accommodation, and for the compilation of bye-laws open to the
promoting authorities under various Acts, have been inadequately
availed of. Some of the powers sought appeared excessive and
objectionable, others in conflict with the general law.
"8. Those which have received sanction were, accordingly, few in number,
and will be found in the Appendix to this Report."
The Committee refused the powers sought, "to close schools
and to exclude scholars during the prevalence of infectious
diseases," on the ground that they seemed "objectionable and
unnecessary,
"First, because the managers of public elementary schools (which form the
vast majority of day schools within urban districts) ought to be held
exclusively responsible for the exercise of a proper discretion on
so important a matter; and secondly, because the managers have
been, recently, under the 18th Article of the New Code, expressly
required by the Education Department (presumably as a condition
of participation in the grant) to conform to any intimation they
may receive from the Sanitary Authority in regard to the necessity
of such closing or exclusion."
In Appendix No. 1, "Notification of Disease," it is stated that—
"'Infectious disease' means and includes small-pox, cholera, typhus,
typhoid, scarlet, relapsing, continued and puerperal fever, scarlatina, and
diphtheria, and such other disease as the Corporation under the provisions
and for the purposes of this Act may from time to time declare to be
infectious."