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192
REFUSE MATTER.
The prevention of nuisance from accumulations of
offensive substances, coming under the general description
Refuse, is a matter of no little difficulty. It is one, moreover,
which, as I had often stated in these reports, could
not be settled satisfactorily without the intervention of the
Legislature. Such intervention has now taken place by
provisions in the Public Health Act, enabling the County
Council and the Sanitary Authority to make bye-laws for
the prevention of nuisances: but whether the powers conferred
are adequate remains to be pioved. This subject, in relation
to certain important parts of it, was very fully dealt with in
my Annual Report for 1887 (at pages 153 and 176), in connection
with a Report by the Law and Parliamentary Committee,
and in my observations on a communication received
by jour Vestry, November 1887, from the Metropolitan Board
of Works, under the heading "Conveyance of Offensive Substances
through Streets."* A copy of this Report was sent
to every member of the London County Council, which, as I
observed in my last Report, "is the proper and only body
able to deal effectively with the matter, viz., by procuring
legislative power enabling them to frame sanitary bye-laws."
HOUSE REFUSE.
The collection of ashes and miscellaneous refuse from
22,000 inhabited houses, spread over an area of some 2200
acres, and to the extent of 46,270 loads in 1891, is no light
task. That it is on the whole satisfactorily performed, may
be inferred from the comparative fewness of complaints,
which used to be numerous when the work was in the hands
of contractors. Relatively few as the complaints now are, a
not inconsiderable proportion of them results from the neglect
of domestic servants to allow the refuse to be removed when
Viile page 176.