264 MILK AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH ch. xv 



Apart from the actual conditions of transit serious sanitary 

 objection may be raised to the treatment of the milk before and 

 after transit. Churns of milk are sometimes left for considerable 

 periods on dust-exposed railway platforms standing in the sun 

 (see Fig. 19). It is usually left to the milk vendor to fetch 

 away his milk, and if any arrangements exist for transferring 

 the milk to special cooled sheds they are only employed in a 

 very few places. For example, Walford ^ writes as regards 

 milk for Cardiff: "Most of the milk supplied to the in- 

 habitants of Cardiff is delivered at the G.W.E. station, and 

 remains either on the passenger platform or on a separate 

 part of that platform overnight, the local milk dealer 

 usually fetching it for delivery to his customers in the early 

 morning." 



A most objectionable practice, sometimes carried out, is for 

 the milk to be actually distributed into the milkman's vessels 

 at the railway stations. This leads to much contamination. 

 The two following quotations will illustrate the practice. 



Orr mentions that in 14 out of 34 deliveries at railway 

 stations the churns were taken straight to the dairy and there 

 transferred, but that in 16 the churns were emptied in bulk 

 at or in the neighbourhood of the station, in places which were 

 often in a dirty or dusty condition. In 4 the milk was 

 transferred by measuring. The last procedure, involving as 

 it does the dipping into the churn of doubtfully clean vessels 

 by probably dirty hands, is a source of much pollution. 



Manley ^ remarks : 



The milk supply of this town (West Bromwich), with very few 

 exceptions, arrives by rail per the G.W.E. ; there, every morning 

 about 11 o'clock, the cans which contain the milk are opened, and 

 the milk mixed, served, and decanted from can to can by men and 

 boys, who plunge their dusty coat sleeves in the depths of the can, 

 and who usually have a pipe or a cigarette in their mouths ; if 

 the serving is not done here it is done in the course of the round. 



The conditions under which milk is transported from the 

 cowshed to the purveyor are becoming of increased importance, 

 owing to the long distance which much of the milk which 

 goes to large centres of population has to travel. Swithinbank 



^ Medical Officer, January 1, 1910, p. 5. 

 Annual Heport, West Bromwich, 1909. 



