The Water Board is still too young to have a record.
The Poor Law Guardians had improved the workhouses and the infirmaries, and the dispensaries were continuing to do their useful work.
The Metropolitan Borough Councils were grappling with their numerous duties. The perusal of the annual reports of these bodies shows their multiplicity. House-to-house inspection—the inspection of factories and workshops, and workplaces, and outworkers; of bakehouses, cowsheds, dairies, and milkshops; of food and the places where food is prepared; of offensive trades and slaughter-houses, and of houses let in lodgings; the management of baths and wash-houses, the removal of dust and filth, disinfection, proceedings under the Housing of the Working Classes Acts; measures for the prevention of disease, for the abatement of nuisances, and many other duties connected with sewerage, drainage, and paving and cleansing of streets—all and every one of which closely affect the health of the people.
The amount of work done varied considerably. In a well-administered municipality the number of Sanitary Inspectors had been increased, the number of inspections was high, and the work continuous and heavy. In some, however, the work was less satisfactorily done, and the old Vestry antipathy to the expenditure of money upon Inspectors appeared to have been handed on.
Much, nevertheless, was being done, and on the whole matters appeared to be progressing satisfactorily, and in many respects undoubtedly were doing so.
But every now and then some revelation occurred of insanitary conditions under which large numbers of the people were living which showed a grievous omission somewhere, and for which some persons were responsible.
Thus when, under the Education (London) Act of 1903, the County Council had to take over the non-provided schools in London, the schools were inspected, and it was found that their drains were generally in a very bad condition. No fewer than 342, or 78 per cent. of the school drains which were tested, were declared unsatisfactory. A most prolific source of disease and death was thus laid bare, a source which for years must have been working grave evil—and as in these schools there were about 135,000 children in attendance, the number of persons involved in danger was enormous.
Again, some of the figures published by the Census Commissioners in 1902 disclosed a condition of things of the utmost gravity.
Similar figures in the census of 1891 had passed almost unnoticed; these of 1901 reiterated the story, and as the evils they laid bare were on a somewhat smaller scale they were hailed more as a mark of progress and improvement, than as something portentous in themselves. Yet they go down to the very roots of the sanitary condition of the people of London, and show how great is the task to be accomplished before the sanitary condition can be considered satisfactory or even safe.
They bring into sudden view the fact that the problem of the housing of the people is still unsolved.