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43
believe, to the very judicious rearrangement of the Inspectors'
duties made by the Sewers' Committee. Hitherto the Parish
had been divided between the four inspectors; each inspector
having to perform for his own section of the Parish every
sanitary duty required within that section, including a daily
visit, if not two, to the Vestry Hall, in order to receive and
to register complaints, and not merely the serving, but the
writing out of all orders and notices of the Vestry or Sanitary
Committee having reference to sanitary matters. Thus
it happened that some two or three hours of each inspector's
time were daily lost to the active performance of his duties;
and as the inspectors had always to attend to their daily quota
of complaints, to serve notices, to see that works that had
been ordered to be done were carried out, to attend at police
courts, and to perform other imperative duties, it happened
also that the systematic inspection of houses (a most important
part of their duty, and certainly the most shewy
statistically) had necessarily but little time comparatively
allotted to it, in fact only the varying time left in the intervals
between other labours. After very careful enquiry and consideration,
the Committee came to the conclusion that the
mere clerk's work of the inspectors was of itself nearly
sufficient to occupy the whole time of one man, and that by
assigning to one of the inspectors the duty of attending daily,
and for the whole day, at the Inspectors' Office, to perform
there all the clerk's work of the other inspectors, to receive
all complaints, to give information and advice to all applicants,
and to distribute to the acting inspectors the complaints
and other incidental duties which daily accrued, and
by dividing the Parish between the other three, who would