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classes can be effected without this apparently harsh
but wholesome interference with the rights of property.
The dreadful havoc committed annually by a
preventible class of diseases, whether by the Zymotic
diseases in early life, or the tubercular forms of disease
a few years later, or the feeble constitution of many of
the survivors growing up to early maturity, entails
intolerable burdens upon the rate-paying community.
The absolute unfitness for toil and honest labour
which arises from vicious habits of domestic culture
in large masses of the town populations, are circumstances
that indicate the necessity of a future reform
in municipal policy, having for its primary object the
improvement of public health.
Medical Officers of Health have hitherto had but a
limited range of powers over certain causes of disease
and death; but it is their duty to study all causes of
premature and excessive deaths; and I may be excused
in drawing attention to matters not generally discussed,
but which I believe Local Authorities must sooner or
later begin to deal with, rather than leave them to
imperial or central administrative action.
Road Scavenging.
The general Scavenging of the Parish has much
improved, but the streets are far from that state of
cleanliness that ought to be. All main thoroughfares
should be kept daily and hourly cleansed of horse
droppings in summer. Some of the mews, and the
roadway leading from the Great Western Goods Station,
generally, are in a very unsatisfactory state. Constant
removal of horse dung is rendered absolutely necessary