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9
clinics. Correspondence on such matters as these delayed the
putting into operation of the scheme—fortunately, as it turns out,
because, in the summer of 1940, entirely new arrangements were
made by which the supply of milk, either free or at low rates to
those mothers and children entitled to it, is by the Ministry of
Food with their own staff of local officials. Theirs is frankly a
distributing scheme in which there is no assurance of the safety of
the milk supplied. The application of this scheme does not detract
from the powers of the maternity and child welfare authority to
grant assistance under its powers and by a continuation of its
previous arrangements, but it does, of course, considerably reduce
the free issues made by the Council as a maternity and child welfare
authority. Owing to the difficulties of the local milk officer in
arranging for the supply of dried foodstuffs to those recommended
to have dried rather than local milk, the local authority staff at the
clinics, acting as the agents of the Food Ministry, have had to come
to his assistance. It will be of interest to follow the working of the
scheme, more particularly to learn if the milk supplied under the
Food Order is to be additional to or a substitution of that formerly
purchased for the household. Under the maternity and child welfare
arrangements for distribution it was appreciated, of course, that
there was little enough assurance that those for whom the milk was
intended actually consumed it. Now, it seems, there can be none.
Since amalgamation the Public Health Committee has had
under constant review the housing conditions in the area, and
numbers of individual and of groups of houses have been considered
with a view to their capability of being rendered habitable, or,
alternatively, to being made the subject of demolition or clearance
orders. Starting with those properties in the worst conditions,
where there could be no question at all that they were, in their
existing state, entirely unfit for human habitation, and were
obviously, because ot the unsoundness of the framework, not
capable of repair, there is no sharp line of demarcation between
these and those properties which admittedly are in need of attention,
and where the conditions must be, in some degree, prejudicial to
the health of the occupants, but which, because the framework of
the house is more or less sound, can be rendered habitable, but
again, with some, only at a cost for which there would be no return.
Fully to appreciate the way in which the medical officer of health
has had to have regard to the cost of repair of houses—a matter
on which few medical officers of health will claim to have any
knowledge—it is necessary to review the provisions of the enactments
dealing with the improvements of housing conditions.
Amongst the statutory nuisances included in section 91 of the
Public Health Act, 1875, were "any premises in such a state as
to be a nuisance or injurious to health." By the Housing of the
Working Classes Act, 1885, sanitary authorities had to secure the
proper sanitary condition of all premises within their districts. In