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117
Commons. The necessity for legislation upon the lines of the
Bill is generally admitted, but it would be regrettable should the
House be induced to perpetuate the exclusion of Metropolitan
Sanitary Authorities from control of cowsheds, dairies, etc. ;
seeing that in every other part of the kingdom, including the City
of London, the Sanitary Authority would be the local authority
should the Bill become law. Efforts are being made in the
proper quarters to have the matter reconsidered.*
BAKEHOUSES.
In previous reports I had occasion to deprecate the transfer of
the duty of supervising bakehouses from the Sanitary Authority
to the Factory Inspector, under the provisions of " The Factory
and Workshop Act, 1878," by which "The Bakehouses Regulation
Act, 1863," was repealed. The effect of the transfer was
to put an end to systematic inspection of bakehouses in the
Metropolis as a whole ; for the Factory Inspectors were too few in
number to take up the duty, which the Sanitary Authorities, as a
rule, ceased to perform; the result being that many of the bakehouses
fell into a deplorable state of neglect, as testified by
reports of the Factory Inspectors themselves. Happily, the
representations addressed to the Government by the Society of
Medical Officers of Health and others, endorsed as they were by
the admissions and recommendations of the Chief Factory
Inspector himself, convinced the Government that the Act of 1878
qua bakehouses was a mistake ; and so it came to pass that, in
the last days of the Session of 1883, by the enactment of the
" Factory and Workshop Amendment Act," the Vestries and
District Boards were restored to their former position, and they
are now the " Local Authority," so far as relates to cleanliness,
ventilation, overcrowding, and other sanitary conditions of
* POSTSCKIPTUM.—The Bill passed into an Act whilst this Report was going
through the press. Its passage is matter for congratulation, excepting as
regards the denial to the Sanitary Authorities in London of statutory power
of control over registered premises as local authorities, for the etforts referred
to in the text of the report were unsuccessful.