552 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 



IV. As the sewer air was delivered into the respiratory stratum 

 during the flight, it was more inimical to human health 

 than if delivered during the sunlight. 



V. In narrow lanes or streets, where the ventilating grids were 

 not more than six to ten feet f rona the doors of the residents, 

 nothing short of laying on sewer air to their houses went 

 on all night. 



VI. Our narrow streets in particular should be ventilated^ by 

 some method which would render the grids inlets, or the 

 grids should be closed and a diflerent method of ventilation 

 adopted. 



The confirmation of these views came about very speedily. 

 Complaints were heard on all sides of the intolerable character of 

 the smells that issued from the street grids. The President of the 

 Board of Health (Dr. Whittell) acknowledges in strong language 

 '* that the inhabitants of parts of North Adelaide especially, were 

 obliged to keep their doors and windows closed " to resist the 

 effluvia. Mr. Mestayer, who about the middle of 1883, became 

 head of the Hydraulic Department, himself confesses that — 

 " When I came out in 1883, the bulk of the great sewers had been 

 laid, and about a fourth of the houses in toMn had been connected 

 in the summer of 1883 to 1884. Complaints were coming in 

 constantly of unpleasant smells arising from the street ventilators ; 

 and in North Adelaide in some of the sti-eets the smells were so 

 bad that people were unable to have their windows open at all 

 during the evening. It was principally during the evening 

 and the night that these smells were noticed. / had been 

 over the streets in the day-time, where complaints were strong, 

 and coidd never find anything wrong ; hut in the evening and 

 night the smells tvere very had indeed from these ventilators'* 

 The ventilation was manifestly a failure. In fact it was not 

 ventilation at all, that is a circulation of air, hiit an intermittent 

 exudation of foul air, its foulness arising chiefly from stagnation. 

 The author had pointed out in 1883, that certain parts of North 

 Adelaide would suffer most severely, because no means had been 

 adopted to prevent those sewers with rapid gradients, from acting 

 as upcasts to the main sewer itself. 



The Hydraulic Engineer took two steps to amend this condition 

 of things. One was to open or leave open in a small number of 

 instances the sewer side of the " boundary trap," and place a 

 ventilating tube upon it, and further to fix six-inch ventilating 

 shafts at various points in the city and Park Lands, in direct 

 connection with the sewers. The second step was to close nearly 

 all the whole of the street grids. The first was inevitable, the 



* Evidence before the Victorian Royal Sanitary Commission, 1888. 



