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14
under no obligation to report, although they are precisely the class of vessel
likely to further the spread of infection.
Your Committee have on several occasions tried to induce the Local
Government Board to class them as Canal Boats under Section 10 of
Canal Boats Act, 1884, which provides that " if it shall at any time appear
" to the Local Government Board, on the representation of any Registration or
" Sanitary Authority, or of any Inspector appointed under this Act, that the
" principal Act and this Act ought to apply to any vessel or class of vessels
" which would be within the definition of Canal Boat contained in Section
" 14 of the principal Act if such vessel or class of vessels were not registered
" under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854, and the Acts amending the same,
" the Local Government Board may declare that the principal Act and this
" Act shall apply to such vessel or class of vessels, although the same may be
" registered as aforesaid, and thereupon the same shall be deemed to be a Canal
'' Boat or Canal Boats within the meaning of the principal Act and this Act,
" and the definition contained in Section 14 of the principal Act shall be
" amended accordingly ; " but the Board has not seen its way to include this
class of vessel.
Obviously the carrying out of this Act will entail a considerable amount of
extra work for your Medical Officers, but its value from a public health point
of view is so great that no difficulty could possibly be 'raised on that score.
It is interesting to note that, although the adoption of the Act outside the
Metropolis is voluntary, already 700 sanitary districts have availed themselves
of it, which means (including London and 59 towns with local Acts) that
more than 18,000,000, or two-thirds of the total population of England and
Wales, are under an obligation to notify.
The fee to be paid to a medical practitioner is 2s. 6d., which amount will
be repaid by the Metropolitan Asylum District Managers for ail cases within
their jurisdiction.
By Section 13 the provisions of the Act apply to every ship, vessel, boat, &c.,
and in the definitions the expression "Port Sanitary District" is stated
to mean the Port Sanitary District of London, and any port or part of a port
for which a Port Sanitary Authority has been constituted under the Public
Health Acts, and any such Port Sanitary District shall form no part for the
purposes of this Act:
The "occupier'' in the case of a ship, vessel or boat is defined to be the
master or other person in charge thereof.
SMALL-POX.
The fact that London has been entirely free from small-pox naturally
makes the early isolation and treatment of cases brought into London of the
utmost importance.