Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington]
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that the danger of the spread of infectious disease through the
medium of clothing manufactured by outworkers, is one not
to be disregarded, having respect to the limited domestic
accommodation usually possessed by such persons; and
assuredly it is desirable that the places where they carry on
their avocation should be known to the Sanitary Authority, so
that "any sanitary evils existing in them "may be dealt with;
and especially that work in them may be caused to cease at
any time when infectious disease prevails in them—a fact
with which the Sanitary Authority are made acquainted
through the operation of the notification clauses of the Public
Health Act. Hut if due effect is to be given to the requirements
of the law, there must be co-operation between sanitary
officials throughout the Metropolis, in carrying out the duties
devolved upon them by Sanitary Authorities, so that the names
and addresses of outworkers, not residing in the parish or
district in which the factory or workshop is situated, may be
communicated to the Medical Officer of Health of the parish
or district in which such outworkers reside. But for the
purpose of giving that "full effect to the object
which Parliament had in view when passing the enactment
under which the Order is issued," which the Local Government
Board stated the Home Secretary was anxious to secure,
I am of opinion that the machinery provided by the Act is
ineffective, and in the interests of public health should be
amended. Provision should be made so that occupiers of
workshops, and their under-contractors, should be required to
send periodical lists of their outworkers to the Sanitary
Authority, whose proper duty, of inspection of the places
where the said outworkers live, would then begin. Given a
sufficient staff, there would be no difficulty in making "frequent
inspection "of the said "places," in order to measures being
taken "to deal with any sanitary evils existing in them." But
any present attempt to carry out the law, as comprised in
the Act and the Order, will, I fear, end in comparative failure,
and it would be well to intimate to the Local Government