ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 31 



able Report on Sanitary Legislation in England, where we read 

 that " the number of lives preserved to the country which would 

 have been lost if the old high death-rate had been maintained " 

 was in 1889, the last year given, no less than one hundred and 

 forty -two thousand four hundred and forty-six. The reduction 

 of the fever (typhus, typhoid and simple) mortality alone is im- 

 mense — from nine hundred and ninety-four per million before 

 1871 to one hundred and ninety-seven per million in 1890, or a 

 total saving in the whole population of twenty-two thousand nine 

 hundred lives in that one year alone from this one cause. As 

 Dr. MacLaurin remarks, " This is truly a result of which the 

 English sanitarians may be proud." In that same year in Sydney 

 it was four hundred per million. 



NOXIOUS AND OFFENSIVE TRADES. 



There is at present no law efficiently controlling such trades, 

 but there is before the Legislature a Bill which it is hoped will 

 be speedily passed into law.* The principal object of the Bill is 

 to support the local authorities, which are charged with the im- 

 mediate supervision of the trades (including slaughter-houses), 

 and in order to recoup the local authorities for necessary expen- 

 diture, they are to retain the fees for licenses, &c. The central 

 authority held in reserve behind the local authorities to help them, 

 if need be, in performing their duties and carrying their powers 

 into effect, is the Board of Health. 



This has been a burning question in Sydney for the last twenty 

 years, and has formed the subject of enquiry by two Royal Com- 

 missions, each of which recommended a particular site, removed 

 from population, where the traders should be free, or practically 

 so, to carry on their trade as they liked. To this, there is every 

 objection, and the present Bill aims at regulating the trades so 

 that they shall be carried on without causing a nuisance, and 

 therefore obviates the necessity of their removal to inconvenient 

 and unsuitable localities. If a particular site were set apart it 



# This Bill became law, as the " Noxious Trades and Cattle Slaughter- 

 ing Act/' a few days after the address was delivered. 



