LOCAL AUTHORITY AND MILK SUPPLY 467 



is such a milk-shop, doing no wholesale but only a retail trade in 

 Finsbury. A brief consideration of this chart will reveal the 

 complexity of the trade, and the extreme difficulty of tracing 

 the exact source of the milk sold by wholesale or retail in any of 

 these 32 shops. Nor is this a matter of merely theoretical 

 interest. It involves the entire question of tracing infection and 

 adulteration, and until a Local Authority possesses at least this 

 minimum amount of information respecting the milk-shops under 

 its supervision, it is unprepared for the emergency of a milk-borne 

 outbreak of disease. It cannot be too clearly understood that a 

 knowledge of the ramifications of the trade in every district is a 

 requirement sine qua non. 



Information is also required by the Local Authority in respect to 

 milk-shops in a district. Probably here also it will be the simplest 

 course to pursue the matter in relation to Finsbury as an example. 



There are registered in that district 261 milk vendors, of whom 

 40 are confectioners or maintain coffee-shops, leaving 221 milk 

 vendors who sell milk for consumption off the premises. These 

 221 milk-shops are divisible into two groups, namely {a) dairies 

 and (J)) general shops selling milk. There are 39 so-called dairies, 

 and 182 general shops. At the dairies only milk, butter, cheese, 

 and mineral waters are sold as a rule. At the general shops every 

 kind of provision and grocery is sold, and in many cases spices, 

 soap, wood, paraffin oil, blacking, etc., in addition. This, there- 

 fore, is the great dividing line between these milk-shops, and, 

 as would be expected, the dairies sell most milk (about 60 per 

 cent, of the total), and are managed in a more satisfactory and 

 cleanly manner than the general shops. It is, of course, evident 

 that it is impossible to manage a general provision shop, selling 

 all sorts of miscellaneous materials, in a cleanly way. Hence it 

 comes about, that most of these general shops are open to criticism 

 from the point of view of a pure milk supply. 



Milk storage. — When the milk arrives from the farm or from 

 the contractor, which it generally does, as we have seen, in the 

 early morning, it is necessary to store it on the milk-shop premises. 

 Such milk may be stored for two or three hours only, or for twenty- 

 four hours or more. In 16 per cent, of the shops in Finsbury it is 

 stored in the churns in which it arrives, or in special vessels kept 

 for the purpose, and protected in a greater or lesser measure from 

 pollution. In 84 per cent, the milk is at once placed in the 

 counter pan (metal or earthenware) in the shop. As every one 

 knows, these counter pans are exposed in the shop, and dipped 



