The clause I have above referred to is as follows:—
“Every rural authority shall from time to time appoint fit and proper persons to be medical officer or officers of health and inspector or inspectors of nuisances; they shall also appoint such assistants and other officers and servants as may be necessary and proper for the efficient execution of this Act . . .” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 190).
The following clauses apply to officers of rural as well as urban authorities:—
“The same person may be both surveyor and inspector of nuisances . . .” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 192).
“Officers or servants appointed or employed under this Act by the local authority shall not in any wise be concerned or interested in any bargain or contract made with such authority for any of the purposes of this Act . . .” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 193).
“Before any officer or servant of a local authority enters on any office or employment under this Act by reason whereof he will or may be entrusted with the custody or control of money, the local authority by whom he is appointed shall take from him sufficient security for the faithful execution of such office or employment and for duly accounting for all moneys which may be entrusted to him by reason thereof” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 194).
In addition to these clauses there are several regulating the receipt of money by officers, but these should not affect the town surveyor. Although in many places he has the onerous duty of paying workmen, certifying tradesmen’s accounts, and other financial transactions, he ought under no circumstances to have anything to do with the receipt of money. Unfortunately, in some of the smaller towns the surveyor is also employed as rate collector; but as this is evidently a very improper proceeding, I shall not further allude to it in any manner.
It will be observed that in the foregoing clauses of the Public Health Act the word “surveyor” is always used, and thus this is the legal title of those holding such appointments. It is obvious, however, that, although this title may have well suited the office up to the year 1847, when it was made the legal title, the prodigious growth of municipal work during the last 35 years has made it necessary that some change should be made, and the title altered to that of “engineer,” or some other similar suitable name. At the present time several different meanings and occupations are attached to the word “surveyor,” as the following list will show:—“land surveyor,” “district surveyor,” “county surveyor,” “road surveyor,” “surveyor of taxes,” “surveyor of customs,” “quantity surveyor,” “fire insurance surveyor,” “Lloyd’s surveyor,” and a still more curious instance where an urban authority is itself dubbed “surveyor of highways” by the 144th section of the Public Health Act 1875; and the title of town surveyor as now applied cannot but lead to confusion and to perfectly erroneous impressions as to his work and duties.
Dr. Ackland, in a paper read before the Association of Municipal and Sanitary Engineers and Surveyors, at a district meeting held at Oxford, makes the following remarks on this point:—“In the Public Health Act 1875 (the summary of all health enactments) the name of ‘engineer’ does not once occur in the 343 clauses. He is still the old ‘surveyor’ we all remember, the plodding, energetic man of highways and byeways . . . but then the surveyor of the present day may be called on to advise on anything, from the form and cost of an earthen syphon trap to the calculation of work to be done by engines which are to supply half a million of persons with water; to be responsible for the construction of sanitary mechanisms, from a housemaid’s sink to an intermittent downward filtration farm.”
There can be but little doubt that it is absolutely necessary for the town surveyor of the present day to be a competent civil engineer of great knowledge and varied experience, for he may at any moment be called upon to advise his corporation upon any of the following subjects, or to act in any one of the following capacities, in addition to the multifarious ordinary duties legally devolving upon him as surveyor under the Sanitary Acts:—