View report page

26
A mortuary keeper is also paid and resides close by. This mortuary
has proved to be an immense boon to the poor, moro especially in cases
of doath from infectious disease.
[And hero should be recollected the kindness of the Marquis of
Northampton in granting the Vestry a piece of land for the purpose,
at a nominal ground rent, which got over an almost insurmountable
difficulty at the time.]
It will thus be seen that notwithstanding the excessively hoavy taxation
for other purposes in this parish (including new paving and
other street improvements, at a cost of some £ 1 y0,000, which has rendered
this parish, consisting of about 380 acres, the Rateable Value
of which has noarly doubled of late years, ono of the best paved in
London), tho Sanitary Committees of past years, and the Vestry, have
not been unmindful of sanitary requirements, and when tho elected of
the peoplo thus voluntarily tax themselves it is impossible that I could
in my evidence make or endorse any statemont implying that there is
any combination between the "house farmers" and "publicans," or any
othor class, having for its object tho mal-administration of the parish,
whether the numbers on the Vestry or committees, as quoted, be right
or wrong—statements which have been recklessly made locally, and
have misled people in high places, and dono the parish a groat and
unmerited injury in tho estimation of the public.
A feature is made in tho Roport that, according to my evidence, we
have two sanitary inspectors, and an assistant-inspector, the latter of
whom was "something in the jewellery trade." True. But I stated he was
employed mainly as a messenger, to deliver Vestry notices, &c., but that,
being an active and intelligent man, his spare time was often utilised
by the medical officer of health to assist the other two inspectors in
looking up sanitary matters for the modical officer's information, and
that I thought a man of good common sense sufficient for that purpose.45
A feature is also made in the Report that Clerkenwell has not been
sufficiently alive to the 35th clause of tho Sanitary Act of 1866, em
powering the Vestry to make regulations for houses let in tenements
or occupied by more than one family, and quoting Chelsea and Hackney,
as examplos in this respect. But tho Report has unfortunately
forgotten to notice tho fact that Clerkenwell was perhaps foremost in
being alivo to tlio provisions of tho same Act, which empowers proper
Mortuaries to bo provided, and which Clerkenwell has done in a manner
which has elicited expressions of admiration from many visitors
from other Sanitary authorities, and which might perhaps be an oxample
to both Chelsea and Hackney.
* The above quotation, in the Report, without the context, is calculated
to create an erroneous impression of what I said, hence nay remark here.