Archived report · 4 min read · Set in Haldane Place ·
The Keys Not Yet Returned
The civic lost-keys register records returned keys whose owners have not come forward, and the pegs above the works corridor are occupied.
- filed: "before the stock check"
- reference: "HP/LK/19"
1. This report is prepared for the Housing Committee in advance of the quarterly stock check at Haldane Place, and concerns the lost-keys register maintained under the standing order of 1971. The register is a bound volume kept at the housing desk. A key reported lost is entered on the day of report, with tenant name, flat number, lock reference, and a white tag. The matching tag is hung on the peg board in the works corridor, on the hook numbered to the lock, and the hook remains empty until the key is come back.
2. Since the ninth of November, eight keys shown outstanding on the register have been entered in the register as returned. The entries are typed, dated, initialled, and refer to the return of the physical key to the housing desk. In each case the corresponding white tag has been reversed on its hook and marked off in pencil.
3. In no case has the tenant come forward. No key has been received at the desk. The receiving clerk has signed nothing. Housing officers calling at the eight flats have been met at six of the eight, and in every one of those six the tenant, interviewed in the usual way and separately, has stated that he or she has lost nothing, has reported nothing, and has come to the desk about nothing. The remaining two flats were not answered, and the cards left were not answered either.
4. Notwithstanding the above, the peg board in the works corridor now shows the eight hooks occupied. The keys hanging on the eight hooks answer, tag for tag, to the eight lock references carried outstanding on the register, and the brass is in the condition of keys long in domestic use. The working inventory of the peg board, taken on the fourteenth, shows eight keys more than the tag box warrants, and the tag box warrants nothing, its stock sheet having been signed over for the quarter.
5. The register entries have been checked against the typewriter record. The type is our own. The ribbon impression on the eight returned entries is heavier than the unreturned entries on the facing pages, as though the ten keys of the machine had been struck with more weight, though the pressure setting on the machine has not been touched since the last service in March.
6. No entry on the register has been amended, struck through, or added to otherwise than as described in paragraph 2. The eight tenants are current with their rents. One of the eight, T. Fenwick of Flat 46, has twice telephoned the desk in the past week to ask, in the words taken down by the duty clerk, whether his key had been signed for yet. The duty clerk, not then aware of the register entry, said that it had not. Mr. Fenwick thanked her and said, in the same suspense note, that it would be all right then.
7. The stock check itself is scheduled for the twenty-ninth and requires the register, the tag box, and the peg board to agree at the making of the count. They currently agree two ways and there is no third. Options placed before the Committee are these: that the eight register entries be held as returned in error, pending the physical production of the keys at the desk; or that the keys now hanging be treated as the returned keys, and the register confirmed accordingly; or, third, that the two routes be left to meet at the stock check, on the footing that whichever of the eight tenants first presents himself at the desk with his key in his hand will settle the matter by tasting it in his own lock, and that the others may be presumed to follow.
8. The Committee's attention is drawn to one further register line, typed since this report went to draft and before the stock check could be arranged. It is shown as outstanding and it is worded in the usual form with three exceptions: no tenant name has been entered against it, the flat number is given as the stairwell, and the date column of the entry carries the twenty-ninth. The hook assigned to it on the peg board is, at the time of filing, empty.
9. Filing of this report precedes the stock check by nine days, as required. A supplementary report will not be prepared unless the Committee requires one.