The Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's Handbook

by H. Percy Boulnois

(11.) As accountant to examine and rectify the workmen’s wages sheets, and all tradesmen’s accounts for work performed or goods supplied.

The foregoing list is no exaggeration of the onerous duties of the town surveyor, and it seems to be a grievous mistake that this officer, whose importance in all practical sanitary work cannot be over-stated (as without him no useful municipal work could go on) has been left unprotected by the Public Health Act of 1875.

In that Act both the medical officer of health and the inspector of nuisances have received Government protection, whereas the surveyor, the very officer of all others who necessarily is more likely to come into collision and to be unpopular with his employers in the faithful discharge of his duties, has been afforded no protection whatever, but has been left to the tender mercies of an annually changing body of municipal governors, “to be removable at their pleasure” (38 & 39 Vic., c. 55, s. 189).

On this highly important point I cannot do better than quote several passages from Mr. Lewis Angell’s interesting address to the Association of Municipal and Sanitary Engineers and Surveyors on the occasion of their inauguration in the year 1873:[2]

“The ‘town surveyor,’ according to his opportunities, has done the country good service, but, surrounded as we have been with obstructions and difficulties, cramped and restricted by popular prejudices and private interest, subject to clamour and attack, without protection and without appeal, it is indeed surprising that we have accomplished so much. Had such officers been from the first judiciously selected, adequately remunerated, properly supported, and duly protected, our influence upon sanitary progress would have been more conspicuous and our office better appreciated.

“As engineers we do not pretend to a knowledge of medical science, but it is equally within the knowledge of the average sanitary engineer as of a medical officer of health that pure air, pure water, properly constructed houses, and an unpolluted soil are the cardinal conditions of health. These are mere sanitary axioms. The means by which such conditions are attained are drainage, ventilation, water-supply, and other matters entirely within the functions of the engineer. It is the function of the sanitary engineer to prevent that which the medical officer of health is called upon to detect. . . .

“In many cases the unprotected surveyor may be required to report to a protected medical officer the negligence of his own employers. No local surveyor or engineer can be expected to give cordial and active assistance in compulsory sanitary work when he is conscious that his action would be opposed to the views or the interests of his employers, the public upon whom he is dependent. The existence of such a distinction between the medical officer and surveyor under the same board will produce a want of harmony in interest, and must lead to a divergence of action between the two departments. . . .”

And speaking of the multifarious duties of the town surveyor, Mr. Angell says: “Any one section of his duties would, under commercial circumstances, command fair pay according to its importance; but where cumulative duties are included in the same office, they demand constant attention, special knowledge, professional experience, and administrative ability; to which is added the anxiety which the responsibilities of public office always involve. Such a position in a commercial concern would receive high remuneration in proportion to the extent of the undertaking, but unfortunately, our work does not pay a dividend: it is all expenditure from which the town derives no return excepting in health and comfort, matters which are neither fairly assessed, nor duly appreciated; consequently, the municipal engineer is paid less for his professional knowledge than the contractor’s agent whose work he directs.”

Speaking further on the subject of Government protection, Mr. Angell says: “Surveyors appointed under the Towns Improvement Clauses Act were protected during the existence of the General Board of Health. Sir C. Adderley’s Public Health and Local Government Bill of 1872 proposed similar protection. Officers employed under the Poor Laws are fully protected as to position, emoluments, and superannuation. The administration of the Poor Laws and the Public Health Acts is now united in one department under the newly established Local Government Board: it is therefore in my opinion equally due to Local Board officers, that they also should be recognised and protected. Without such protection, sanitary legislation cannot, in the words of the Royal Sanitary Commission, be ‘active and effective,’ because local officers are too dependent on their immediate employers to be thoroughly efficient.

“In advocating protection let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean centralisation or the removal of that proper control which every local authority should maintain over its own officers. I would maintain intact the great principle of local government, which has been the bulwark of our social and political freedom. But local government may degenerate, and in small towns deteriorate into littleness: local affairs are too frequently avoided by those who are most fitted by intelligence and social standing to take part therein. I would simply control in the most constitutional manner the short-comings or excesses of local government as is already done in various other departments. I would require that local officers should be properly qualified and adequately remunerated; that in the honest discharge of their duties and during good behaviour they should be protected from the effects of ignorance, narrow prejudices, and interested clamour, and that they should have an appeal to a disinterested and judicial body, superior to local feeling. The demand is reasonable—I ask no more. . . . .”