138 J. ASHBURTON THOMPSON. 
of sanitary neglect and under a scourge of typhoid fever, were on 
the point of getting from Parliament the relief they urgently 
required. The conditions under which embarrassment arises from 
the source named seem to me due to the building of houses and ; 
the planning of back yards without any reference to questions of 
drainage. Building laws should, I think, be amongst the first 
sanitary laws to be enacted if only for this very reason—that for 
want of them houses accumulate in situations or are built in ways 
which prevent their surface waters from draining off naturally by 
the surface ; and then, when the settlement has greatly increased, ~ 
and when an ill-built and ill-planned city exists, its faults of this 
kind have to be made good at enormous expense and with great 
difficulty. That part of the rain-water which falls upon back 
yards and back roofs must be admitted to sewers, then, whenever” 
no other way of getting rid of it 1s avatlable; and I will even add 
that I am firmly of opinion that any scheme for complete separa- 
tion which would involve the laying of a drain as well as a sewer 
from each premises is unnecessarily expensive and in fact imprac- 
ticable. But in the smaller towns—comparatively new, and as 
to clustering of houses comparatively scattered ; towns, moreover, 
which already are not draining either yards or roofs, be they back 
or front, nor any curtilage, nor their subsoil; towns which, as a 
matter of fact, are merely adding to their naturally clean subsoil 
waters the indescribably filthy and dangerous wastes of daily life: 
in such cases, I say that those filthy wastes should be taken care 
of, and that the surface waters should still be left to take care of 
themselves, if by observing that distinction a system of sewerage 
is brought within the town’s means, which is entirely and ludi- 
crously beyond them as long as it is neglected. Let the Sewerage 
Act for such towns—a Building Act is too much to speak of with 
expectation—be framed to forbid the building of houses so that 
back roofs and yards cannot drain to the surface, and let it con- 
tain a permissive clause to deal with the houses that have already 
been so improperly built whenever it shall be convenient to attend 
to them. 
