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6
Dust-bins provided 36
Privies limewashed, cleansed, and repaired 139
Water-butts and cisterns provided or repaired 86
Water-waste preventers erected 5
Area-gratings, cellar-flaps, &c., repaired 6
Cellars used as dwellings discontinued for such use 4
Instances where corpses were kept in inhabited rooms for prolonged
periods so as to be a nuisance 2
Animals so kept as to be a nuisance removed 10
Dung and other offensive matter removed 38
Slaughter-houses specially visited 38
Cow-houses ditto 24
Nuisances caused by the accumulation of dung and other offensive
matter, and from stopped privies, are very numerous. These are not recorded
in the books of the Inspectors unless official notices are served.
In addition to this return the Inspectors report that they have forwarded
to the Metropolitan Board of "Works several notices of dangerous structures
and have also given intimation to the police of all the rooms which they
have found, on a house-to-house visitation, or on private information, to be
occupied by more than one family. The Act requires that all rooms so let
must be registered under the Common Lodging House Act.
Mortuary House.
The necessity of providing a mortuary has again been strikingly shown
in a case of prolonged retention of a dead body, at No. 45, Lambeth Street,
Whitcchapel. In a room in this house the dead body of a man was kept for
a period of eleven days before the body was buried. The widow informed
tbe Inspector that she could not obtain a coffin for the body of her deceased
husband, and when remonstrated with by the Inspector for keeping a body
so long in a room used as a living and sleeping room, occupied by herself and
another woman, she said that she could not help it, for she belonged to a
burial club, and she could not get the money that she was entitled to receive,
in consequence of her being three weeks behind in her payments. If
the law compelled all persons to bury their dead within a period of three or
four days from the time of death, the erection of mortuary houses would not
be of so much importance as it is now, when the period of keeping a corpse
in an inhabited room is unlimited.
Water Supply.
The system of constant water supply to the poorer District's of the
Metropolis, ought to be insisted on by the several local Boards; for it is the
only plan which will give the poor a sufficient quantity of wholesome water
for domestic use. All, or nearly all, the existing water receptacles in th