Report on the public health of 1902.

  • Finsbury (London, England). Metropolitan Borough.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Report on the public health of 1902. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    116/266 (page 100)
    100 A Register book is kept containing the name of the occupier, situation of premises, and date of registration. In the same Register is kept a record of all cases of infectious disease occurring at milk-shops and dairies, with the dates of occurrence and disinfection. It will be understood that, with few exceptions, these 280 milk-sellers receive their supply from wholesale dealers and contractors. Contractors not infrequently receive their wholesale supply from places in the country at a considerable distance from London; such a supply, often thousands of gallons in quantity, reaches London by rail; the contractors' carts convey the milk in milk-churns at an early hour of the morning from the railway station to the milk-shop. Such a contractor would supply scores of milk-shops. He does not, however, know at which shops the milk from certain farms is delivered. Moreover, in many cases a milk-shop will deal with two or more contractors, thus still further complicating the business. At present it may be said that whilst we have in operation registration of milk-shops and some control over their manage ment, there is little or no protection of the milk itself. A person buys some milk at his doorstep which comes from a small milk shop, which is supplied by a milk contractor, who is supplied by a large number of farmers in remote districts of the country, the purchaser, the purveyor, and the contractor all being entirely ignorant of the fact that this particular milk may be derived from a farm on which an infectious disease is prevalent. I am strongly of opinion such a contractor should, in the first place, keep a register of the farms from which he obtains his milk supply and every part of his supply; in the second place, he should keep an exact register of the destination, the milk-shops, to which the milk from every farm with which he deals is delivered; and, in the third place, he should only deal with farmers willing to furnish him with a written guarantee that they will inform him immediately of any outbreak of infectious disease in man or animal upon their farms. By these three comparatively simple