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The Board of Trade, moreover, undertook to appoint a
scientific Committee to consider what the standard of light
should be; but having no fund out of which to defray the
costs of the contemplated enquiry, they asked if the Council
would defray the expense? a course the Committee were not
prepared to recommend, as the Council have no power to
make any payment for such a purpose. The Committee,
therefore, recommended that steps should be taken to promote
a Bill "for substituting a more exact standard of light for that
now prescribed," and this course, doubtless, would have been
adopted, but for the liberality of the South Metropolitan Gas
Company, who undertook to bear the whole of the expenses
of a Committee, which the Board of Trade, therefore, agreed
to appoint. The Committee was to be composed of two
members nominated by the Council, one by the Corporation,
three by the London Gas Companies, together with the
three Gas Referees, and two independent scientific men.
What result, if any, has followed the investigations made by
the Committee, I am unable to state, not having seen any
reference to their proceedings.
A RETROSPECT.
In my fourth monthly report, dated April 26th, 1892, I
referred to the fact that I had that day completed twenty-one
years' service as your Vestry's Medical Officer of Health.
" Kensington," I then observed, "has undergone considerable
development in that period. The population which in 1871
was 121,000, is now 167,000 : increase, 46,000. The inhabited
houses which then numbered 15,700, now exceed 22,000:
increase, upwards of 6,000. The rateable value of the parish,
which then was not much more than £900,000, now exceeds
two millions : increase ,£1,100,000. Considerable advances
have been made in sanitary legislation, mainly by the consolidation
and amendment of Public Health, Sanitary,
Nuisances Removal, and Artizans' Dwellings Acts, and by
the passing of Factory and Workshop Acts. Considerable