CLEANLINESS BEGINS AT HOME 69 



trict will come under the influence of executive 

 sanitation, and organised fly-reduction will become an 

 established fact. At the same time an exact knowledge 

 of many insanitary places will be forthcoming. Besides, 

 there will be a trained organisation to deal with such 

 places as they are found. 



But the inspectors and their workmen must be 

 careful and tactful. If the proprietor of a fly-lair or 

 other insanitary place is willing to put his house in 

 order, and agrees to undertake reforms himself, he should 

 be encouraged to do so ; but he must be made to do 

 the work thoroughly and properly. The half-hearted 

 cleansing of a premises is only half-hearted sanitation. 

 But the officials need not be officious. The gangs will 

 visit every house at a certain hour of a certain day 

 every week. Each house will have its time of inspec- 

 tion once every week. Then the courtyards will be 

 cleaned out, scoured, examined, and made healthy and 

 wholesome. This is true sanitation. The houses them- 

 selves will come under the influence. Modern hygiene 

 is learning that it is not sufficient to build cities and 

 towns architecturally beautiful directed by elaborate 

 town-planning schemes ; but it is necessary also that 

 each individual house is clean inside as well as outside, 

 and to insist that the sanitary condition of the interior 

 is as important as the exterior. The whitewashing of a 

 wall, the throwing of a disinfectant down a drain, is 

 not enough. Disease foci must be laid bare, not covered 

 up and hidden. The duties of the anti-fly inspectors 

 are to consist of finding out disease foci, exposing them 

 to view, and then to remove them or to render them 

 harmless. This is their work. If the gangs of work- 

 men such as here described were appointed to inspect 

 the back-streets of Lambeth and Bermondsey, what 



