[Report 1900] / Medical Officer of Health, Aberdeen City.

  • Aberdeen (Scotland). City Council.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Report 1900] / Medical Officer of Health, Aberdeen City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    partly from a more complete protection of the machinery with wooden casing, and the ventilation of the fumes into a tall chimney stalk, and partly from the process being carried on to a less extent than at first. During the past year scarcely any complaints were received until towards its close, when further warnings led once again to an abatement of the nuisance. But at the time of preparing inis report, several fresh complaints have been received, and steps are being taken with a view to a prosecution. Slaughter-houses.—One of the chief problems facing the Local Authority at the present time is the provision of proper accommodation for slaughtering. There are 10 slaughter- houses—3 of considerable size, and accommodating several butchers, and 7 of smaller size, and used privately. Most of them, including all the larger ones, have been many years in existence, and are, accordingly, not of modern construction and not equal to modern requirements. With p< ssibly one or two exceptions, the smaller houses are no better. The slaughter-houses ar<> scattered throughout the city, and are mostly situated in populous districts. In no single instance is the situation such as to enable the cattle or the carcases to be transported without passing along public thoroughfares—in most cases, crowded thoroughfares* The amount of slaughtering done in Aberdeen is large, and greatly beyond the city’s own requirements, there being an extensive exportation of dead meat to London; and the quality of the animals slaughtered is probably not surpassed in any town in the kingdom, though, of course, there are exceptions, as everywhere else. The inspection of the meat in the various slaughter-houses, as well as in the butchers’ shops, is undertaken by one inspector, who has also to inspect the huge and growing quantity of fish at the Fish Market and elsewhere. He does his work as well as it can possibly be done under the circumstances, but he is obviously given an impossible task, if the work is to be performed thoroughly. The system of inspection is necessarily detective in character, and not systematic. There is no assurance that every carcase has been seen by the inspector before being removed for sale and consumption. It is obvious from these facts that the arrangements for slaughtering and for inspection in Aberdeen are, to put it plainly, disgracefully out of date and unsatisfactory, and that the one remedy is centralised slaughtering with complete and systematic inspection, as is now the practice in almost every town of importance, and even in many towns with not a fourth part of the slaughtering done in Aberdeen. The Town Council have given the subject much attention in recent years, and a special committee has the matter in hand, with a view to providing a Corporation slaughter-house. But progress has been impeded by the opposition of vested interests and by a difficulty—not, however, insuperable—in securing a suitable site. It is to be hoped for the credit of the city, and in the interests of the public health, that definite steps will be taken, before the close of the present year, towards providing a public slaughter-house. It ought, as in nearly all other places, to be self-supporting; and, if not, the margin of loss would prove a trifling burden, and would be more than compensated for by the increased guarantee of the soundness of the meat consumed. Flock-mills.—Such mills, of which there are a few in this city, are not ranked among offensive trades, and, perhaps, they are not offensive in the ordinary sense of being a nuisance to neighbouring residents. But there can scarcely be any doubt that their manufactured products are not without serious menace to the public health. These mills receive large quantities of used and filthy rags and clothing, which, without any previous cleansing or disinfection, are teased by suitable machinery into so-called flock, which again, without any cleansing, is sold and used for the stuffing of mattresses, couches, chairs, and other articles in which flock is of service. The process elsewhere does not, I am told, differ materially from what it is in Aberdeen. If so, it is far from satisfactory that what would be described and sold as a new flock bed or flock-stuffed article of furniture is really stuffed with teased filthy rags, collected throughout the town and country from all kinds of places and people. It cannot fail that in many instances the rags are part of the clothing of persons suffering from various kinds of infectious and even loathsome diseases. It is obviously