SEWAGE OUTFALLS AND DISCHARGE 325 



to the business. The jud^e allowed the claim that these were 

 private oyster beds, and disallowed the defence of prescriptive 

 right to discharge of sewage, chiefly on the ground that the 

 Sea Fisheries Act, 1868, made it criminal to discharge sewage 

 so as to contaminate private oyster beds, and there could be 

 no prescriptive right to commit a criminal act. Further, no 

 one can acquire by prescription a right to pollute a public 

 fishery. He would not, however, grant an injunction on the 

 grounds stated in the analogous case of Harrington v. Derby, 

 in Dec, 1904, when similarly there was judgment for the 

 plaintiff with damages. At Southend also the owners of the 

 oyster beds were successful on their appeal. 



The law, therefore, as defined by these recent instances, is 

 that a corporation may continue the pollution and be fined at 

 intervals to an indefinite amount when injury is proved. This 

 liability is further foreshadowed by a well-known case lately 

 decided in which a large dairy company had to pay heavy 

 damages, upheld by the Court of Appeal, on account of a death 

 assigned to the presence of typhoid germs in milk supplied by 

 them (see later, p. 326). It seems obvious that the same 

 might apply to a pollution of water, and to a public authority. 

 It is clear that public interest in the prevention of disease, as 

 well as economy and the avoidance of trouble, indicate the 

 sterilization of effluents as a general course. 



At places of holiday resort where large numbers of people 

 consume shellfish that they have gathered on the shore, 

 enteric fever often results. These shellfish are not owned by 

 anyone, and the site cannot be registered. Therefore no sewage 

 should be allowed to be discharged in an unpurified state, 

 otherwise it would be almost impossible to compel authorities 

 to exercise supervision over the whole foreshore. 



On the gathering - grounds for the Glasgow market. 

 Dr. Chalmers^ found that the regular trade gatherers of shell- 

 fish are in the habit of rejecting those lying on the surface and 

 regarded by them as " sick," and of only collecting those which 

 have embedded themselves in the sand, and therefore have been 

 to a great extent protected from the sewage. These regular 

 collectors were quite aware of the danger attached to certain 

 contaminated areas, and mussels were not taken from places 

 near sewer outfalls. Visitors, however, were not so careful, 

 with the result that there had been a number of cases of typhoid 



1 Report of Med. Off. of Health, Glasgow, 1905. 



