1867.] Manchester : Us Sanitary and Social State. 205 



even when that is removed, much that is offensive remains behind. 

 The droppings from the wheelbarrows are visible in the entries, 

 and the place in the street where the nightsoil has lain is discover- 

 able by more than one sense until the next shower of rain falls, or 

 until some tidy housekeeper, not yet habituated to Manchester 

 usages, sends her servant, with sundry bucketfuls of water, to wash 

 away the filthy deposit. The servants of the Corporation never do 

 this, nor do they in the slightest degree cleanse the pits after 

 emptying them. 



The stuff thus removed having lost, while lying in the pits, a 

 great part of its volatile and soluble elements, has comparatively 

 little manurial value. Some time since its depreciation had become 

 so great that the farmers would scarcely accept it as a gift. A 

 notable expedient was hit upon. It was to collect the offal and 

 refuse from the various slaughterhouses, to convey it to the night- 

 soil depots, and then mix it with the soil. The depots are all within 

 the city, and, as was said in a former article, the Corporation have 

 purchased the neighbouring houses. They need not fear complaints 

 from their own tenants. In one of those houses four cases of fever 

 recently occurred. It should be added that in no instance is any 

 attempt made, by the use of a deodorizing chemical preparation, to 

 lessen the horrid stench produced in the process of emptying the 

 middens, or that of manufacturing the manure. Perhaps it is 

 feared that if the manure were inodorous the farmers would not 

 buy it. 



Another mode in which the atmosphere of Manchester is made 

 impure is due to the uncleanly habits of some of the people. In 

 some of the worst districts it is too common to find the conveniences 

 themselves, and the ground near them, defiled by deposits of feculent 

 matter. Nor ought the people to be very much blamed for this. 

 By the midden system they have been untaught the rules of clean- 

 liness and modesty which nature teaches. Permitted, as they 

 have been, to grow up in the midst of all that is abominable, 

 they have learnt to tolerate it* A further excuse for the un- 

 cleanly practices of these poor people is that they are often forced 

 into them by the want of the means of being cleanly. In a court 

 containing fifty or seventy inhabitants, it is usual to find only 

 two conveniences, and sometimes one, or even both of those, has 

 been found in so ruinous a condition as to be unfit for use. In one 

 of a series of reports made last May by the medical officers of 

 the Chorlton Union, on the sanitary state of their respective dis- 

 tricts, this statement appears : — 



" In an area of 3,000 square yards in No. 3 District, Hulme, 

 stand 106 habitations; of these 33 are cellar-dwellings, of which 

 nine consist of only one room. The rest have two. In the 106 

 dwellings there are 154 families, consisting of 546 individuals. For 



