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to make mention of the Council's Maternity and Child Welfare
Scheme (with the model Maternity Home at Knight's Hill), the
Tuberculosis Dispensaries administration, the work of the Council's
Housing Inspectors and their carrying out of the Housing Acts
generally, the Municipal Milk Depôt, and the Lambeth Bacteriological
Laboratory, to satisfy everybody as to the justice of my claim.
I have always kept before me a high public health ideal,
and this ideal, I think, I have been able to attain. However, it
is the present Borough Council, and the late Vestry, of Lambeth,
naturally, that must take the credit. Without their respective
approvals and agreements, as the Sanitary Authorities, of my
various suggestions, my expert advice, as Medical Officer of Health,
would have been so much wasted energy; whereas on the contrary,
it has been productive of much permanent and lasting good for
the benefit of the District. As the Latin motto of the Lambeth
Borough Coat of Arms so pithily puts it—Spectemur agendo.
I wish you all, Mr. Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors, an
affectionate as well as an official farewell, as I pride myself that our
relationship of Officer to Sanitary Authority and Sanitary Authority
to Officer has been more than a purely official one.
It is, nevertheless, very sad to have to part, when the end really
comes.
I am, Mr. Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors,
Your obedient Servant,
Joseph Priestley,
Medical Officer of Health.
13th October, 1927.
(b) Action taken by the Council as shown by the subjoined Abstracts
from the Minutes:—
"We feel sure that the Council, collectively and individually,
would not like the severance of the long relationship between its
Members and the Medical Officer of Health to take place without
placing on record its high appreciation of the great services which
Dr. Priestley has rendered to the Borough during his tenure of the
Medical Officership for the past 32 years, and we accordingly
unanimously recommend—
That the following Resolution be passed by the Council:—
That this Council of the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth,
in open Council assembled, desires to place on record its high
appreciation of the services rendered by Dr. Joseph Priestley,