View report page

127
Board, and the Home Secretary, that the Order, in the present
state of the law, imposes on Sanitary Authorities an almost
impracticable duty.
It will not be altogether out of place here, to mention that
the Factory Acts, as I pointed out in my eleventh Monthly
Report for 1891 (November 9th, page 140), impose a variety
of duties upon Sanitary Authorities, to which practically little
effect has been given hitherto. It would be well, therefore,
that the list of occupiers of factories and workshops, requisite
forgiving effect to the recent Order, should be extended, so as
to include the occupiers of all workshops and work-places
where work is done exclusively on the premises, which it is
the duty of the Sanitary Authority to inspect, and which obviously
should be inspected in the interests, alike of the occupiers,
the employes, and of the public health. It is hardly necessary
to observe, having regard to the definition of the expression
"workshop" in section 93 of the Act of 1878, that the
work thus foreshadowed would be considerable, and could not
be done effectually without material interference with the current
work of inspection of dwelling houses, unless local
inspectors of factories and workshops should be appointed, to
whom might be delegated the duties devolved upon the Sanitary
Authority by the smoke consumption clauses of the
Public Health Act, which at present are practically in
abeyance.
In January of the present year, the London County
Council forwarded for the information of the several Sanitary
Authorities, a report by their Medical Officer of Health on
the results of an inspection of numerous workshops in certain
East-end districts, with a request that the Council might be
informed what arrangements had been made for carrying out,
in the respective districts, the provisions of the Public Health
(London) Act, 1891, with reference to workshops, having