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Gentlemen,
The returns of mortality exhibit a favourable state of the public health, 21 deaths
having been registered for the entire district, against 23 in the corresponding month of
last year.
Hooping cough and scarlatina are becoming somewhat prevalent; one death has
occurred from the first-named disease, and two deaths from the latter: of these, however,
one case was brought from Clapham.
Four deaths have occurred in the North Surrey Industrial School, one phthisis, two
diarrhoea, and one sloughing of the mouth and gums.
The noxious smell from the Sydenham Gas Works having been much complained of,
I have paid several visits for the purpose of ascertaining the cause, and if possible applying
proper remedies.
In the process of preparing carburetted hydrogen, or coal gas, for illuminating purposes,
other offensive gases are formed, which it is necessarry to remove, on account of
their offensive and incombustible nature. For this purpose certain processes are performed,
and at the Sydenham works the gas is passed through purifiers containing strata
of slaked lime and oxide of iron. This lime and oxide requires at intervals to be removed,
for the purpose of placing fresh material, and this changing process occasions a
most disagreeable and noxious effluvium, and as it requires frequently to be done, the
plan I should suggest would be that adopted at some of the metropolitan works, viz.,
the placing the purifiers in a covered building provided with a chimney, which would
convey the disagreeable odour out of reach.
The residue after making gas consists of tar, coke, and ammoniacal liquor. This
latter, which is very offensive, is, at most of the Metropolitan works, conveyed away and
sold to manufacturing chemists, but at the Sydenham works is made upon the premises
into sulphate of ammonia. During part of this process (the mixing the sulphuric acid
with the ammoniacal liquor), a most offensive and poisonous gas is given off (sulphuretted
hydrogen), in consequence of which, at Sydenham, this mixing has lately been
done in a luted case, and the offensive gas passed through the lime purifiers. The whole
of this process should also be done in a building provided with a shaft, and for the sake
of the Company as well as consumers, it would in my opinion be better (as sometimes
adopted) to pass the offensive gas through the furnaces, where it would become decomposed.
I append, as usual, a list of places demanding attention for their sanitary improvement,
and would wish particularly to call attention to the state of the land at the back
of Dartmouth Row, Sydenham, which is covered with sewage. I am afraid, unless this
is attended to before the hot weather sets in, it will be my painful duty to inform you
of the increased mortality of the neighbourhood.
Perry Vale and the neighbourhood also receive no benefit from the new sewer, as
almost all the offensive sewage takes its old course.
Blackheath.—Bath Place, Paragon Mews, Osborne Place, Camden Cottages, Russell
Square.
Lewisham.—Leathersellers' Almshouses, Botany Bay. "Want of water supply Rushey
Green, Homesdale, &c.
Penge.—Drainage from Crystal Palace, general drainage of Penge running into
stream, offensive ditch at backs of houses in main street.
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