400 APPENDIX. [No. XXXVI.B. 



It is reported that twenty cattle died last winter on the sewage-grounds 

 of Croydon, and that four horses died this summer, so that it is both 

 heartless and cruel for Boards of Health to sell sewage grass as a healthy 

 produce. 



In this case, again, the cattle are fed at one place, sold to a butcher at 

 a second, and distributed for food to a third, and the person who eats them 

 does not know that he is eating sewage-fed cattle, nor can any person tell 

 where the sewage cattle are sent. 



When illness arises from the use of bad meat, how is the poor person 

 to trace it, when the local so-called Boards of Health will not assist, but 

 resist the application for information in a contemptuous way ? 



I once asked a clerk, who was troubled with tapeworm, why he bought 

 second-rate meat, which might have been grown on a sewage farm. He 

 replied that he had a large family, and could not afford to pay more. 

 " Then," I rejoined, " why do you not thoroughly cook it, to destroy any 

 germs of disease P" " If I do so," was the ready answer, " the meat would 

 so waste that there would not be enough to go round." The tapeworm in 

 the man and the wasting of the meat showed the diseased state of the food 

 consumed ; but the councillors of one town do not eat the diseased meat 

 it ultimately finds its way to other towns, and the poor man obtains no 

 protection. In this case it is hardly to be expected that either a Bishop or 

 a Chancellor will suffer from disease or tapeworm as a sacrifice for the good 

 of the people, because they obtain good meat, and it is left to the middle - 

 class clerk to suffer from the cupidity of the sewage irrigators. 



Labourers and navvies cannot perform their labour without good 

 meat, and they contrive, when in full work, to get the best beef, and leave 

 it to those above them, with limited incomes, to eat that which is inferior. 



If social science is here to step in to protect the people, it must act at 

 the source of the mischief, where the cattle become diseased, and stop the 

 supply thence to the cities. 



The sewage-grounds, after long-continued irrigation, become converted 

 into pestilential swamps, which snipes and wild ducks visit in winter, and 

 which exhale the most disgusting effluvium. The stench varies with the 

 weather. In a bright, windy day, it is comparatively little apparent, but 

 in a close evening it is most disgusting. 



Why such a state of things, contrary to social scientific principles, 

 should not always give rise to cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, no 

 medical man can tell. But when these diseases have a tendency to appear, 

 then the action of the sewage poison intensifies the maladies. And upon 

 these grounds social science ought to interfere and compel the sewage 

 irrigators to conduct their operations without causing these poisonous 

 exhalations. 



Whether it is possible on a large scale, by under-draining or other- 

 wise, to thoroughly purify the water, remains to be proved ; but when we 

 see a large sewage-ground, as that of Croydon, left undrained, the proba- 

 bility of any improvement seems hopeless. 



It may be possible, by a thin distribution of sewage say not more 

 than two feet in depth per annum, in favourable porous soils to dispose 

 of sewage, that it may all be taken into the earth. There is no doubt 

 that such an absorption might be effected in some uplands in the vicinity 

 of Croydon; but as there are 4,000,000 gallons per day to be disposed 



