REGULATIONS PRESCRIBING PRECAUTIONS TO BE TAKEN BY PURVEYORS OF MILK, AND PERSONS SELLING MILK BY RETAIL AGAINST INFECTION OR CON

TAMINATION.

28. Every Purveyor of milk, or person selling milk by retail, shall immediately on any outbreak of infectious or contagious disease within the building or upon the premises in which he keeps milk, or amongst the persons employed in his business, give notice of such outbreak to the Board at their Office in Spring Gardens.

29. Every Purveyor of milk, or person selling milk by retail, shall immediately on such outbreak coming to his knowledge, remove all milk for sale, and all utensils for containing milk for sale from such building; and shall cease to keep milk for sale or to sell milk in such building until the same has been disinfected and declared by the Medical Officer of Health for the district to be free from infection.

30. Every Purveyor of milk, or person selling milk by retail, shall not keep milk for sale in any place where it would be liable to become infected or contaminated by gases or effluvia arising from any sewers, drains, gullies, cesspools, or closets, or by any offensive effluvia from putrid or offensive substances, or by impure air, or by any offensive or deleterious gases or substances.

31. Every Purveyor of milk, or person selling milk by retail, shall only keep milk for sale in clean receptacles; and all utensils used in connection with the keeping or sale of such milk shall be at all times kept clean.

32. Every Purveyor of milk, or person selling milk by retail, shall at all times employ such means, and adopt such precautions, as may be necessary for preserving the purity of milk, and for protecting it against infection or contamination.

REVOCATION OF FORMER REGULATIONS.

33. The Regulations made by the Board in pursuance of the Dairies, Cowsheds, and Milkshops Order of July, 1879, are hereby revoked.

NOTE. ANY PERSON GUILTY OF AN OFFENCE AGAINST THE FOREGOIng Order OR REGULATIONS, IS LIABLE TO A PENALTY OF FIVE POUNDS, AND IN THE CASE OF A CONTINUING OFFENCE, TO A FURTHER PENALTY OF FORTY SHILLINGS FOR EACH DAY AFTER WRITTEN NOTICE OF THE OFFENCE FROM THE BOARD.

The hides converted into leather by the tanner are divided by the trade into three classes, viz:—

(1) Fresh English hides, known technically as "market hides." (2) Salted hides, mainly from S. America.

(3) Dry hides, these come from S. America, the Cape, India and other places (kips).

These different classes all require variation in treatment but the essential process at the basis of all the modifications is as follows:

(1) Liming. This is the first process, the skins being soaked in pits containing lime and water.

(2) Unhairing. The hair loosened by the lime is removed. (3) "Fleshing." The hide after well washing in clean water to remove the lime, is "fleshed," that is to say the loose inner tissue

of the hide is sliced off with a very sharp curved knife. The matters sliced off are called "fleshings" and are sent to the glue maker.

(4) Rounding. That is the shoulders and irregular jagged parts are cut off to be separately dealt with, the small scrips being sent to the glue maker. This operation performed, the technical name for the hide is a "butt."

(5) The "butts" are put into clean water and soaked for a few hours to get rid of any lime still adhering. If the "butts are intended to be converted into "uppers" or soft leather they next go into a "cleaning pit;" this is a pit containing a solution of pigeons' dung, called "grainers," which softens the material. Instead of pigeons' dung, sometimes diluted urine is used, or fowls' dung or weak ammonia water. Probably the rationale of the action of the dung is the development of ammonia. The grainers are

used cold.

(6) "Scudding." All superfluous water and dirt are removed by a special instrument and the small hairs still remaining shaved off with a sharp knife.

(7) "Splitting."

Skins which are to be split are sent to a machine which separates them into two layers.

After these preliminary operations the actual tanning process begins, the butts being now sent through a series of "floaters and "dusters." The floaters are pits of tan liquor of gradually increasing strength, after passing which the skins go into the "dusters," which consist of pits containing tan liquor of 25° strength of the barkometer. The butts being laid in these pits are sprinkled over with crushed bark. The butts go through three or four such liquors, remaining a week in each. Other very similar operations follow, that is they are laid in pits of increasing strength, the whole process lasting as long as ten months.

The sources of nuisance from tanneries are: the passage to and fro of more or less offensive material such as imperfectly cured foreign hides; the putridity of "old soaks"-these not unfrequently become horribly offensive, especially when they are being cleaned, the most offensive being not the liquor but the deposit at the bottom. Added to these the scraping processes, the handling of the hides when transferring from one lime pit to another, and the running of old soaks into the drains. In some

places they have got rid of waste tan by burning, and this has caused nuisance. There may also be nuisance from general untidiness and uncleanliness.

The remedies for these causes of complaint are pretty obvious. In the first place, in the conveyance of offensive skins or other debris to and from the tan yard, covered carts should alone be used, nor is there any reason why a disinfectant should not be applied; the ordinary disinfectants will not hurt the skin nor injure its properties as regards tanning. Old soaks before being cleaned out can certainly be disinfected by iron sulphate or other cheap substance. It has been found, notably in Bermondsey, that attention to little details and great cleanliness confines the smell to the immediate neighbourhood of the yards, so that houses a little way off are but little if any affected. There has been no injury to health actually proved, but an ill-managed tan-yard, one that smells offensively 50 or 60 yards beyond the works, must be considered in itself a nuisance, one that fairly comes under the term of an "offensive trade."

(195) Leather Dressing.

There is a distinction between a leather dresser and a tannerthe leather dresser only deals with "pelts," the tanner with bullocks' hides.

The only operation in leather dressing calling for comment is the one known as "puering." At a certain stage the pelts are soaked in a solution of dogs' dung, technically called "pure or puer." In the summer the solution is used at the ordinary temperature of the air, in winter it is warmed. The "puer," as might be anticipated, has an abominable odour, and unless this process is performed in a suitable shed so constructed that the contaminated air sweeps up either into a lofty chimney or through a fire, a nuisance is likely to be created.

(196) Manufacture of Chamois Leather.

In the making of chamois leather it is necessary to work fish oil (generally cod liver oil) into the skin; afterwards the skin is dried in a hot chamber; at 120° the odour of acrolein and fish oil is usually very perceptible. The remedy should complaint arise

is obvious, viz., to insist on arrangements to carry on the oiling in sheds properly constructed, so that the foul vapours are either led into a shaft so as to discharge into the air at a sufficient height or are swept into a furnace fire.

(197) Glue-making.

The manufacturer of glue boils out the animal gelatin from the following materials.

(a) Wet. Sheep pieces or "spetches' from fellmongers, "fleshings" from the leather dressers and tanners, the "roundings of hides previously limed, portions of bones to which tendons are attached, ears of animals, clippings of salted and alumed skins used for covering cricket bat handles, &c.

(b) Dry. Damaged pelts, salted ox feet, calves pates, horn sloughs (that is, the core or pith of horns), the clippings and roundings of parchment, glue pieces from fellmongers, leather dressers and tanners, and other similar substances.

These matters are first "limed" and the lime afterwards well washed out with water. The matters are then boiled, the fatty matters being skimmed off the top, and the warm liquid glue run into shallow troughs and allowed to solidify. The solidified mass is then cut into slices.

Nuisance is liable to arise from the offensive nature of the raw material, and the process of boiling is accompanied by a good deal of odour. In one case there seems to have been fair grounds for ascribing direct injury to health from emanations from a glue manufactory.

This case is related by Ballard in the following words: "Probably the high rate of mortality in the population immediately exposed to the effluvia arising from Hunslet Works just mentioned, has been due to this cause. Dr. Goldie, Med. Officer of Health for Leeds, in whose district the works are situated, is decidedly of opinion that such is the case. He tells me that during six years ending December, 1875, in an estimated population of 1,935 persons, not exceptionally poor or overcrowded, and situated in a comparatively open part of the borough, the mean annual mortality from all causes amounted to 35'6 per 1,000, while that from the five zymotic diseases-small-pox, scarlet fever, measles, fever,' 1 Ann. Report Local Gov. Board. Med. Off. Report. 1876.

and diarrhoea, amounted to 9:12 per 1,000. Taking the whole of the Hunslet ward in which this little colony is situated, the annual death-rate from all causes during the same six years varied from 270 to 299, the mean being 279, and the death-rate from the five zymotic diseases mentioned varied from 46 to 60, the mean being 54. The annual mortality of the whole borough during the same six years varied from 264 to 28 5 per 1,000, and that for the five zymotic diseases mentioned from 36 to 59 per 1,000. Dr. Goldie tells me from his knowledge of the district that he is not aware of any conditions of locality or character of the population that could possibly account for so great a mortality about the glue works other than that of the presence of the offensive works themselves."

The greatest source of nuisance is without doubt accumulations of "scutch," that is the deposit left in the pan after running off the glue; besides this there are, as before stated, the emanations from the boiling, and the fleshings are apt to putrefy, especially if a greater store is obtained than can be immediately used. It is stated that the best way to deal with a stock of fleshings which cannot be at once utilized is to dry them, and if this cannot be done the next best thing is to stack them, alternate layers of lime and fleshings being piled in a well drained spot. The method adopted to prevent nuisance from the vapours given off from the glue pots in boiling is to operate in closed vessels, each pot having a pipe leading the steam into the furnace flue. In some places the " scutch" instead of being carried off for manure is first boiled up with acid, and the fat it contains extracted by skimming the residue is utilized as manure. No accumulation of offensive scutch should of course be permitted. The general rules and regulations to be put into force in dealing with such manufactories, may be gathered from the London County Council's bye-laws, which are as follows:

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL.

THE SLAUGHTERhouses, &c. (METROPOLIS), Act, 1874, 37 and 38 Vic., c. 67. BYE-LAWS for regulating the conduct of the business of a Glue and Size Manufac turer, and the structure of the premises on which such business is being carried on; and the mode in which application is to be made for sanction to establish such business anew; within the limits of the Metropolis (except the City of London and the liberties thereof).