The Local Government (Scotland) Act in relation to public health : a handy guide for county and district councillors, medical officers, sanitary inspectors, and members of parochial boards / by John Skelton.

Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Local Government (Scotland) Act in relation to public health : a handy guide for county and district councillors, medical officers, sanitary inspectors, and members of parochial boards / by John Skelton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    principle or precedent had the smaller burghs been included for sanitary purposes in the new scheme of local government; and that such a union might have been attended with mutual advantage. The framers of the Act, however,—for good reasons, no doubt,— took a different view. A sharp line has been drawn between town and country. The council have no sanitary jurisdiction within the burghs. The members from the burghs who sit upon the council are expressly excluded from participating in the sanitary business of the county.^ It will not be necessary, therefore, in a review of the Act in its sanitary relations, to attempt any explanation of the elaborate and rather complicated machinery by which a limited represen- tation of certain classes of burghs upon the county council is secured. 3. It may be added that the powers of the paro- chial board, as the body charged with the adminis- 1 In other words, the administration of the Public Health Act has been transferred to the council in that distiict of the county only which lies outside the police or municipal boundaries of any burgh. Whenever, however, the parliamentary boundaries extend beyond the police or municipal boundaries of a burgh, the extra-municipal district comes within the scope of the sanitary provisions of the Act. The position of burghs of barony or regality is not quite clear. The only burghs expressly excluded are royal, parliamentary, and police ; on the other hand, the words the local authorities of parishes so far as within the county appear to refer to parochial boards only. [The Secretary for Scotland has been advised that the police commissioners of Langholm, which is a burgh of barony with police commissioners under the Acts of William IV., continue to be the local authority under the Public Health Act, the jurisdiction being transferred in the cases of parishes only—i.e., of parochial boards.]