View report page

187
intended for the food of man, instead of only certain ones, may be seized, if
diseased, unsound, and unwholesome. The Act transfers from the district
surveyors the duty of discovering and reporting all cases of underground
rooms illegally occupied, and all cases in which the Act is infringed must be
reported and registered. This will involve numerous careful measurements
in each case, as the requirements have been made much more exacting than
formerly; and will throw a considerable amount of extra work on the staff,
especially at first. Most of this, doubtless, will be done when the register of
houses 'let in lodgings, or occupied by members of more than one family,' is
being compiled; a work which will necessitate the ascertaining the exact
cubical capacity of every room in such houses, of which there are a very large
number in the parish. The Act imposes upon the Vestry the duty of
regulating and supervising the sanitary conveniences in factories and workshops,
and of dealing with the subject of smoke consumption, which has
hitherto required the sole attention of a special body of police constables. If
this duty is to be vigilantly carried out, it will make very serious demands
upon the time of your sanitary inspectors. Besides these increased duties,
there will be a very considerable increase in the number of notices to be sent
out, and all notices and orders given under the Act must be in writing.*
The sending out of these, together with the writing of reports (copies of
reports by the Medical Officer of Health are required to be sent to both the
Local Government Board and the County Council), and the work of registration
of houses, will greatly increase the amount of clerical work and reduce
the time of your inspectors available for out-door work.
"Even this incomplete synopsis of the duties imposed upon the sanitary
department, will convince you, I am sure, that it will be necessary in some
way to make provision for their efficient performance.
"In the first place it seems that it will be necessary to make some
alteration in the allocation of duties to be performed by your sanitary staff.
There are two ways usually adopted for carrying out sanitary work:—under
one, each inspector takes charge of certain departments over the whole parish,
and under the other, a division of the parish is allotted to each inspector, and
he is responsible for the sanitary work in all its branches in that division; or
it may be while the latter plan is adopted, certain special duties may be
reserved.
"The first-mentioned method is the one which has obtained in this parish,
but it is one which in an extensive district like this must lead to the loss of
much time in travelling about from one part of the parish to another. It is
possible now for all three inspectors to be in one neighbourhood about the
same time, for different purposes ; while both Mr. Lear and Mr. Stiles have
almost daily to pay visits to the more distant parts of the parish in all
*Reference to the Table under the heading "Sanitary Work." will show that the increase
anticipated in all branches of the department was fully borne out by the experience of the past year.