Bread, bakehouses, and bacteria : reprints of various papers / by F. J. Waldo and David Walsh.

  • Waldo, Frederick Joseph, 1852-
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bread, bakehouses, and bacteria : reprints of various papers / by F. J. Waldo and David Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    May number of the New Review, under the title ‘ The Truth about the London Bakeries.’ The writer of the article in question is the editor of a trade journal, the Bakers' Times. He admits that the state of some of the bakehouses is bad, and that unwhole- some places of the kind should not be tolerated ; that is to say, he agrees with two of the doctor’s chief premises. At the same time he argues that Dr. Waldo’s objections are based upon sentiment rather than upon reason; that the evils are grossly exaggerated; that the bad bakeries are few in number; and, lastly, that the existing law is sufficient to meet the requirements of the case. These assertions may, for the most part, be at once refuted by the following short summary of facts regarding the cellar bakery. Broadly speaking, the underground bakehouse is the direct outcome of want of building space. It is not a specially-constructed workshop, but is made by fitting up the cellar of an ordinary dwelling-house with an oven and furnace, a few gas jets and a water tap, together with some shelves and kneading troughs. Such a place has all the attributes of a cellar. It is small, low, roughly paved, damp, dark, airless, and has the house drains in close contact with its walls and floors. When used as a bakery, the stagnant air of this small space is fouled with the waste products of the gas flames, of respiration, of fermentation, of the ovens, of putrefying dough and filth, and often with sewer-gas from untrapped sinks and drains. The atmo- sphere is further charged with poisonous fumes from the furnace, for the baker, in order to save fuel, closes the damper when his oven is hot. This effect may he rehearsed by the reader if he first gets up a good fire in his sitting- room grate, and then suddenly blocks the chimney by pull- ing down the register. Modern furnaces are provided with what is known to the trade as a ‘ sulphur flue that is to