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55
East will be the sufferers from pestilence, in what form precisely no human
prescience can foresee.
In reference to the generel business of the Medical Officer, the year
186G-7 has not been unattended with useful results. Amongst Nuisances, so
important a feature in contemplating this district, I may allude to Messrs.
Seaborne's bone-boiling premises at Shadwell as having undergone great improvement
by the removal of the more offensive operations to Stratford. It
is right still to say that I feel, from representations made, and from personal
inspection, that this factory still needs vigilance with the advance of the
season.
Mr. Hawkridge's skin-dressing business, long complained of by the respectable
portion of the locality, has also had a similar translation, to the great
relief of Limehouse.
Messrs. Radloff's cotton oil works, of Bow Common, the centre whither all
pursuits of tilth do gravitate, as though by common consent, have, after a
former legal prosecution, with the threat of another, been wholly abolished.
A complaint was made of the stowage of nearly 400 barrels of petroleum,
at Colonial Wharf, 331 and 332, High Street, Wapping, which led me to
inspect the premises. I found the oil not inflammable under 100° of
Fahrenheit, which so far constituted it no illegal deposit. But the quantity
so Urge, in the midst of so much shipping and merchandise, must be regarded
as dangerous, and led me, with the sanction of your Committee, to communicate
the facts to the Metropolitan Board, from which I had a reply generally
in the affirmative, intimating, at the same time, the necessity for an express
legislative measure to remedy the evil—of so great a magnitude—at the earliest
possible opportunity.
In the ordinary sanitary business, I may speak of the house-to-house inspection
during the year, along with the Inspectors. In this way 1,075
houses have fallen under minute examination in Limehouse, Ratcliff, Shadwell
and Wapping.
The following are to be reckoned amongst the details of the sanitary
reparations of the year's work
Houses limewashed 404
Drains and closets cleansed and repaired 279