Littell's Living Age/Volume 136/Issue 1756/Milk Supply

From The Pall Mall Gazette.

MILK SUPPLY.

A brief notice appeared in the newspapers a few days ago of the formal opening of a cluster of model dwellings attached to the premises of the Aylesbury Dairy Company at Bayswater. But the erection of these dwellings in St. Petersburgh Place is only the last touch of an organization which may fairly stand as a model for similar enterprises.

Milk is, of course, one of the most important items in the food supply of any great population. It is the sole food of a large number of hand-fed infants, the main element in the dietary of all young children, and for the population generally, whether in health or in sickness, it is of the most serious moment that the milk supply should be not only of good quality and safe from deterioration, but also free from contact with those particles of contagion by which modern sanitary science has shown it to be peculiarly liable to contamination. Until a very recent date the milk trade had received little of the advantages which capital and scientific skill can bestow. It was for the most part in the hands of small tradesmen, and prior to the year of the cattle-plague, when London was studded with small cowsheds, the arrangements of the small dairies of London retained something of old-world simplicity, and were accepted with little questioning as belonging to a traditional type. When, however, cows were swept away by the rinderpest and cowsheds abolished, London had to supply itself from the surrounding counties. About the same time the inquiring analysts began to discover, not only that the cow with the iron tail had more than its fair share of the business, but that, in spite of all that laws could ordain or magistrates could enforce, there were no means of securing with certainty, by the agency of the police court, a really pure milk supply, as the law could never compel milkmen to sell milk above the minimum standard of a supposed invalid cow whose milk does not contain more than ten per cent, of solids, although the experience of all who have investigated the subject shows that honest average milk has a standard of "eleven and one-half per cent. of solids." At about the same time Dr. Ballard, by the investigation of an epidemic of typhoid at Islington, showed that the use of contaminated water in some way or other mixed with milk, which he did not venture to pronounce adulterated, was capable of spreading disease; and subsequent experience in Marylebone, at Eagley, at Penrith, and a dozen other places, told the same tale.

Taught by these facts, and profiting by an experience of some few years gained by Mr. G. Mander Allender (a Berkshire farmer who had successfully commenced a system of supplying pure milk from his own and contiguous farms direct to Londoners through a depot established at Bayswater), the Aylesbury Dairy Company have gradually developed a system of milk supply which, under the direction of scientific experts, has been ingeniously surrounded by a great number of precautions and safeguards.

The first precautions, we note, are taken at the farms. All of these are surveyed and inspected as to their drainage and water supply, the method of cleansing the milk-pails, of cooling the milk, etc. Very stringent conditions are laid down under the advice of the general sanitary superintendent, and maintained by the control of a visiting inspector and sanitary engineer. The collecting sheds of the company at Swindon and the building in which milk is set for cream occupy half an acre of ground, and are of special construction; duly asphalted, thoroughly ventilated, and built so as to be without access of sewer gas. Connected with this is a large cheese-factory, where the skimmed milk and surplus milk is converted into different qualities of cheese. This cheese-factory is on a large scale, and on new models, partly American; and in an adjoining field are erected large model piggeries, where five hundred to six hundred pigs are constantly fattening on the surplus whey. Thus economy and efficiency and perfection of quality are secured.

The milk from fifty farms is brought to London twice a day in cans specially devised to minimize jolting, which have received the medal of the Society of Arts. In London, again, instead of being brought into some little shop dignified with the title of dairy, but communicating with dwelling rooms, or into underground cellars with open drains, the milk is received into a spacious and carefully arranged dairy, tiled, paved, cooled, and shut off from all access of sewer gases, and free from communication with any dwelling house. Every churn of milk is sampled and tested for cream and specific gravity, and the results recorded in a register. The outgoing churns containing milk are all "plumbed" with a leaden seal, such as that used at the custom-house, and the numbered churns are once more sampled, the quality of the sample being again registered in the office. Finally, perambulating inspectors daily take samples of the milk, as it is being delivered at one or another customer's house, and these samples are once more compared with the registered results recorded against the numbered and registered and sealed churns when they were despatched. The accessory operations of the company's business, such as butter-making, are conducted with similar exactness, the latter being churned daily by machinery over ice and with the use of French pressure-mills, which completely free it from extraneous buttermilk and water, of which the excess spoils the quality of a large proportion of even pure English butter. The apparatus for filling the churns and cleansing them with superheated steam, and all the details of the duties of the men, have been thought out with care. The erection of dwellings in which the whole of the milk-carriers and their families are housed and kept under sanitary supervision is one of the most important and the last-added element of safety; and these buildings, too, which were last week inspected by Mr. Lyon Playfair, Mr. George Goodwin, Surgeon-General Mackinnon, C. B., and others well versed in such matters, are pronounced to be also well worthy of imitation as models of good sanitary dwellings for working men. Thus to house and to isolate the milk-carriers who enter twice daily so many houses is an obviously useful sanitary precaution.