Dec. i6, 1886] 



NA TURE 



161 



and in checking tendencic; to improvement. The depression 

 of the tenement depres~ed the habits and condition of the 

 inhabitants. 



In speaking of the insanitary condition of houses, we must not 

 forget the effect of the window tax. This tax had been estab- 

 lished for 150 years. Air and sunshine are the first i-equireraents 

 of heaUliy dwellings, and the window tax induced every builder 

 to shut out the sun and exclude the air, so that poor men were 

 unable to afford the luxury of adequate windows for their dwell- 

 ing-rooms, or of any windows for their closets. Darkness and 

 dirt go hand in hand, and in the class of houses above the 

 cottages, darkness and want of ventilation were much fostered 

 by the window tax. This tax was not abolished till 1851. 



-\t the commencement of the Queen's reign, drainage over the 

 whole country was provided for by various Commissions of 

 Sewers. Their duty was limited to causing " to be made, 

 corrected, or repaired, amended, put down or reformed, as the 

 case shall require, walls, ditches, banks, gutters, sewers, gates, 

 cullises, bridges, streams, and other defences by the coasts of 

 the sea and marsh ground." 



The Highway Acts provided for road cleansing and road 

 structure ; and there was a law for cleansing of ditches, which 

 forbade throwing offal and foul refuse into the ditches which 

 might lead to the pollution of streams. 



The most important, perhaps, because the most cheap and 

 accessible, authority for enforcing the execution of the law for 

 the protection of the subject ag.iinst nuisances, and for punish- 

 ing particular violations of it, was vested in the Courts Leet. 

 The juries, commonly called " annoyance juries," impanelled to 

 serve on courts leet in towns, perambulated their districts to 

 judge of nuisances upon the view ; but the Commissioners 

 reported that, with all this legal strength, there was scarcely one 

 town in England found in a low sanitary condition, or scarcely 

 one village marked as the abode of fever, that did not present 

 an example of standing violations of the law, and of the inflic- 

 tion of public and common as well as of private injuries, the 

 tenements over-crowded, streets replete with injurious nuisances, 

 the air rendered noisome by these and by the smoke from factory 

 chimneys, and the streams of pure water polluted. 



.•\s regards smoke, most of the then modern private Acts 

 contained penalties on gas companies, prohibiting their washings 

 to contaminate streams, or using for steam-engines furnaces 

 which did not consume their own smoke. The general statute, 

 I and 2 Geo. IV., c. 41, empowered the Court to award costs 

 to the prosecutor of those who used such furnaces ; but the duty 

 of informing was not placed on public ofhcers, and private 

 individuals were unwilling to become informers. 



The provision of pure water, and the disposal of the water 

 after it had been fouled, had scarcely been thought about. No 

 doubt, in London, .and in some large towns, water was provided 

 by public companies or by the corporation ; but in almost every 

 country town the water supply was defective. 



The report on the sanitary condition of the labouring classes 

 states that it was difficult to conceive the great extent to which 

 the labouring classes are subjected to privations, not only of 

 water for the purpose of ablution, hou-e-cleansing, and sewerage, 

 but of wholesome water for drinking and culinary purposes. 

 Whilst, however, the water supply was insufficient even in 

 London, on the other hand the necessity for providing means 

 for getting rid of the fouled water was generally ignored. 



It is stated, in the report of 1842, that the courts inhabited by 

 the poorer classes in towns are generally not flagged ; they are 

 paved with a sort of pebbles ; they are always wet and dirty. 

 The people, having no convenience in their houses for getting 

 rid of waste water, throw it down at the doors ; that scarcely 

 one house for the working classes will be found in which there is 

 such a thing as a sink for getting rid of the water. It mentions, 

 in a typical case, that, where in one locality a large sewer had 

 recently been made, the landlords are not compelled, and do 

 not go to the expense of making any communication from the 

 courts to the sewer ; the courts are as wet and dirty, and in as 

 bad a condition as they were before the sewer was constructed ; 

 and it is added that this miserable accommodation in the wretched 

 courts p.ays a better percentage than any other description of 

 property ; it pays as much as 20 per cent, in many instances. 



With regard to fajcal matter, the general practice had been 

 for each house to have its cesspit, which was emptied at intervals 

 by night men ; but in the poor districts the soil was allowed by 

 the occupiers to accumulate for years to avoid the expense of 

 emptying. Within the preceding twenty years water-closets had 



been introduced into the better class of houses. The refuse from 

 these was generally .allowed to flow into the cesspits ; but, to 

 avoid the expense of frequent emptying, an overflow was made, 

 where practicable, into sewers or adjacent ditches ; in other 

 cases the refuse was turned directly into the sewers, and created 

 a dangerous deposit. 



The danger had begun to be noticed long before ; for in 1834 

 one medical witness stated to a Committee of the House of 

 Commons that of all cases of severe typhus that he had seen, 

 eight-tenths were either in houses of which the drains from the 

 sewers were untrapped, or which, being trapped, were situated 

 opposite gully holes ; and the report of the Poor-Law Commis- 

 sioners remarks that this recent mode of cleansing adopted in 

 wealthy and newly-built districts by the use of water-closets, 

 which discharge all refuse at once from the house through the 

 drain into the sewers, whilst it saves delay, prevents accumula- 

 tion, and also saves the expense of hand labour ; yet has the 

 objection that if much extended it may pollute the water of the 

 river into which the sewers are discharged. They, however, 

 recommend that this danger should be incurred, as a lesser evil 

 than the retention of the refuse in houses ; adding that — 



" It is possible to remove the refuse in such a mode as to 

 avoid the pollution of the river, and at the same time avoid the 

 culpable waste of this most important manure." 



The conditions under which the drains had been constructed 

 were entirely different from those which became necessary with 

 the increase of population. The sewers had been constructed 

 for land drainage, and only with reference to the wants of the 

 immediate locality, so as just to drain it to the nearest outlet, 

 without any reference to any general plan of sewerage. The 

 sewers were generally flat at the bottom, of stone or brick ; the 

 joints were not specially water-tight, so that much 'of the liquid 

 passed into the surrounding soil, and the floor of the sewers was 

 covered with deposit, which had to be removed at much expense 

 by hand, and in many cases the size and form of the sewers were 

 adapted to enable the workmen to enter for cleansing purposes. 

 When new lines of houses were built, new sewers were required 

 for which outlets into the old sewers did not afford sufficient fall, 

 and they then became choked with deposit. The cleansing of 

 streets was not performed with uniformity or rapidity ; and the 

 condition of many of the back streets and courts was deplorable. 

 They were not properly paved, and had no conveniences. 



The Poor-Law Commissioners recommended, in the report 

 already mentioned, that the expensive and slow process of the 

 removal of the surface refuse of the streets by cartage might be 

 dispensed with, and the whole at once carried away by the 

 mode which is proved, in the case of the refuse of houses, to be 

 the most rapid, cheap, and convenient, namely, by sweeping it 

 at once into the sewers, and discharging it by water. This 

 recommendation was largely adopted. 



In order to convey some idea to your minds of the difficulties 

 which would necessarily be caused by turning the- street sweep- 

 ings, which consisted largely of mud from macadamised roads 

 directly into the sewers, I may mention that at the present time 

 in London every effort is made to stop the road material from 

 passing into the sewers by sweeping the streets, and by placing 

 catchpits at the gullies and cleansing them frequently, and that 

 in the metropolis the quantity of dirt from roads and gullies, 

 and of deposits from sewers, removed annually, amounts to 

 nearly 1,000,000 tons, and the annual quantity in those days 

 cannot have fallen far short of 350,000 tons. The combined 

 effect of turning the street sweepings and the water-closet refuse 

 into sewers, with uneven falls and flat bottoms, naturally added 

 to the deposit, and intensified the evils in such a manner as 

 finally to force on improvements in the construction of the 

 sewers. 



The difficulties as to drainage and the removal of refuse were 

 principally entailed by the absence of any legal machinery to 

 enable the inhabitants of a locality to combine for sanitary 

 purposes, and to share the expenditure necessary for improve- 

 ments. 



Another important insanitary condition was caused by the 

 fact that the v.igrant population of the kingdom resorted to 

 common lodging-houses, which were under no sort of supervision, 

 and which were /or; for the propagation of epidemic disease, as 

 well as of moral depravity. 



The general conclusions at which the Poor-Law Commissioners 

 arrived in their report on the condition of the working classes 

 were that disease originating in, or propagated by tneans of, 

 decomposing refuse and other filth, and damp, close, and over. 



