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7
Bose and Crown Court comes first. The houses, mostly with two, but some with
three rooms, lie on three sides of a quadrilateral paved court; the fourth side (the
shortest) formed by a high wall, against which are three panned privies, which, not being
supplied with water, are constantly being choked up, and the corners of which are used as
common urinals. The sixteen houses consist altogether of 37 rooms; No. 16 consists
of a single room. The court is entered by a low arched passage between Nos. 9 and 10,
Rufford's Buildings. At one side of the entrance of the court is No. 16, and at the
other side No. 1, beside and partly beneath which is a much used and never over
clean slaughter house. There are other panned privies in the court, but less used and
cleaner than those mentioned. The dust and refuse is deposited (or ought to be) in an
open receptacle at the entrance of the court. The only water supply hitherto has
been by a butt holding about 110 gallons. Supposing this filled every day, which is
not the case, there would be less than a gallon per head of the inhabitants for all
purposes. The rooms are all small and low, and the only houses which have any
effective provision for ventilation through them are Nos. 4, 5, 9 and 10. The population
of these 37 little rooms in May last year was 124, of whom 19 were children
under 5 years of age. A similar number occupied the court in 1856. Now in the last
four years there have died in the court 19 persons—that is between 15 and 16 per cent,
of the population. Of these, 13 were infants under 5 years of age. Six years, then,
would suffice to clear the court of young children. It is these little ones, then, that are
thus shown to suffer most decidedly from the dirt, closeness, bad effluvia and neglect
which reign in this place. We shall find the same result in other courts. Of the
deaths of young children, one occurred at No. 2, on the one side of the slaughter house,
and two at No. 16, opposite the slaughter house; three in No. 6, which is one of the
worst ventilated houses in the court, with a privy, formerly a cesspool, against its back
wall; two at No. 7, one at No. 8, two at No. 11, which has two of the filthy- privies
close to its door and windows, and one at No. 13, adjoining a privy. Three out of
four deaths from diarrhoea occurred in the houses which were most exposed to privy
effluvia, and the fourth in the house beneath part of which the slaughterhouse
extends. At No. 16, the single roomed, dark, unventilated habitation opposite the
slaughterhouse, there were altogether three deaths, one of them from consumption. We
shall again see this connection between diarrhoea and privy emanations on the one
hand, and consumption and darkness and bad ventilation on the other, brought out
when speaking of other cour ts. It is right to state here that since the commencement
of the present year this property has chaDged hands, and several improvements have
been effected.
Smith's Buildings is in the form of the letter T. To understand the lesson taught
by the mortality here, a distinction must be drawn between the houses at the entrance
of the court (the upright part of the T), and those represented by the cross part of
the T. There are altogether 25 houses in this court, and of these the houses numbered
from 10 to 19 lie in the cross portion. These houses alone have a thoroughly
satisfactory ventilation through them. The tenants of the houses from 6 to 22 appear
to be cleaner and more decent than those occupying the other houses. Every house
has its own panned privy, not supplied with water. The rooms are every where small
and low. The water supply has of late been tolerably good, a constant supply by
means of Jenning's apparatus having been furnished. But for some reason this supply