§ EARL FORTESCUEasked Her Majesty's Government (1), Whether there is any objection to lay the report of R. Rawlinson, Esq., together with the report of E. Griffiths, Esq., C.B., a very able sanitary engineer, which it enclosed, on the sanitary state of Somerset House, upon the Table of the House; (2) What improvements generally have been made subsequently to that report; (3) Whether any of the clerks of the Board of Inland Revenue have been placed in rooms in the basement which the Admiralty did not so occupy in their time; (4) Whether the opinion of the medical officer of the Board has been taken upon the suitability of those rooms for such occupation; (5) Whether, if those rooms are so occupied, any of the clerks in them bad suffered in health?
LORD THURLOW, in reply to the first Question of the noble Earl, said, that the Report referred to by him was not one which could be laid upon the Table of the House. As to the second Question, everything which was recommended in that Report had been carried out, and there was every reason to believe with satisfaction to the inmates and the benefit of their health. There were some rooms now occupied by Inland Revenue clerks which had been used by the Admiralty as store rooms. There was no reason to believe that there was any objection to their occupation, and they were just as healthy as those above them. There was no exception to the opinion of the medical officer on the rooms. Previous to the alterations, there had been cases of illness; but since the changes had been made, as recommended in Mr. Rawlinson's Report, no case of illness or anything of the kind had come to the knowledge of the authorities.