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ventilating pipes wherever possible, but unfortunately there is considerable
difficulty in obtaining the consent of owners to these being
carried up their own houses, though they are always anxious to see
them on their neighbour's property, so that during the year only ten of
these have been put up. It is to be greatly regretted, too, that,
although hundreds of houses are built yearly, in no single instance has
the Vestry's recommendation "urging on builders the desirability of
providing and fixing ventilators up the fronts of the houses between
the syphon trap and the sewer" being acted on. If this were done,
and it could be done, when building, at a trifling cost, much future
trouble would be avoided.
Remedying the defective ventilation and reconstructing very
defective sewers must however necessarily be a work of time, but in the
meanwhile much might be done by cleansing, more frequent flushing,
and the use of deodorants to mitigate the nuisance. Mr. Laws, in his
report to the London County Council on sewer air investigation, says
" The carbonic acid in the Fulham Road sewer reached the abnormally
high percentage of 93-1 per 10,000. The sewer contained a large
amount of heavy deposit, and was otherwise in a filthy condition.
It was practically unventilated, as nearly all the ventilators had been
closed for some time past owing to the number of complaints about the
bad smell," so that there is evidently room for improvement in this
direction. The Surveyor, however, has pointed out that, owing to the
surcharging of the western sewer belonging to the County Council,
which occurs after heavy rainfall, the subsidence of the sewage in the
sewers of the district must be very gradual, and that such gradual
subsidence leads to large deposits of solid matter; and, further, that the
flooding of the basements in the neighbourhood of Greyhound Road
and in the Broadway is due to the insufficient size of their main sewer
or to the inadequate pumping power at the Victoria pumping station.
The smells from the main County Council sewers were, if anything,
rather worse than those from the parish sewers, and so numerous were
the complaints of the offensive emanations from the Harwood Road
sewer that the Vestry saw fit to take proceedings against the London
County Council to compel them to abate the nuisance, but the
summons was dismissed on technical grounds. A sample of the air
taken from their sewer was found by Mr. Clayton, the Public Analyst,
to contain the enormous amount of 4.5 per cent, of Carbon Dioxide
and .07 per cent, of Ammonia.