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4
The rule has been to hold each Inspector responsible for his
own district; and each Inspector has accordingly reported the
result of his inspections direct to the Sanitary Committee; but the
Medical Officer of Health, though freely applied to for advice and
assistance in difficult cases, has never been considered responsible for
the manner in which the work of the department was conducted.
Owing to there being no clerical assistance provided in the
office, the book-keeping has been most imperfectly done. The
Inspectors have never kept diaries, and no proper record of the
results of inspections, or the action taken thereon, has been
preserved. It is, however, distinctly laid down in the Metropolis
Local Management Act, that the Nuisance Inspectors shall keep a
complaint book, in which shall be entered particulars of all complaints
of nuisances, or of any infringement of the provisions of tho Act,
together with a record of any action taken by the Vestry thereupon :
further, this book is to be open to the inspection of the parishioners
at all reasonable times. A book called a complaint book certainly
has been kept in the office, but very few complaints were ever
entered in its pages; while the results of inspections, and the
action taken in consequence, were never recorded therein. The
Inspectors have never kept daily records of their work, and they
have been perfectly irresponsible agents ; in fact, there has been in
the past no system or method whatever.
I had long felt discontented with the manner in which the Sanitary
work of the Parish was transacted, and in 1883, the year of "The
Bitter Cry," I prepared and presented to the Vestry a report,
in which I sketched out a scheme for the better management of
the department, from which I quote the following recommendations:
1st.—Mr. Burrows, Sen., should be relieved of his duties as Inspector
of Nuisances for the No. 3 District, and be appointed Food Inspector
and Disinfecting Officer for the whole Parish.
2nd.—A new Officer should be appointed for the district thus
vacated.
3rd.—The Inspectors of the other districts should confine themselves
to Sanitary work and perform no duties under the Food and
Drugs' Acts, and do no Disinfections.