Alec Burt is a local man, he was born in Stamford and attended the St John's Infants School, and then Bluecoats School in All Saint's Place and then finally Stamford School. On leaving school, Alec became an articled pupil to the Health Authority, studying one day a week at Nottingham Technical College. He started work for the department in March 1947 and eventually qualified in 1951 when he was appointed as an additional inspector to Stamford borough and also to the Ketton rural district council, which was a small rural area outside of Stamford. He says that after he qualified he covered a multitude of jobs including:

Alec Burt: "Housing, public health, infectious diseases, meat and food, office and shops and railway premises and general water supplies, refuse disposal and collection and other public health matters. Meat and foods, was one of these and it did play an important part in the duties as far as Stamford was concerned. All the butchers in those days- and there were some 30 plus butchers in Stamford, they had their meat slaughtered at a communal abattoir, which was in North Street. They would go to the cattle market on monday and buy their meat-bullocks, sheep and pigs, they were taken by transport to the North Street abattoir and slaughtered there, and it involved the inspection of these animals after slaughter."

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