View report page

170
purpose is indubitable, and on this account I have pressed the
matter, from time to time, upon the attention of the sanitary
committee. I venture to think that more would be done in
this direction, by sanitary authorities generally, if due weight
were attached to the hygienic importance of cleanliness and
dryness in the surroundings of dwelling-houses, a matter to
which attention was specially directed in the annual report
for 1897 (page 146), the authority of the late Medical Officer of
the Local Government Board being cited in support of the
views therein expressed.
In connection with this subject reference may be made
to the rubbish, often the accumulation of long periods of
time, so frequently seen in the yards of the houses let in
tenements to the poorer classes: such as broken bedsteads,
rotten straw palliasses, broken crockery, and other things of
no value, once the "property," it may be, of dead or departed
lodgers. It is nobody's business to remove the things, which
simply serve as harbourage for collections of filth. The yards
where they occur can not be properly cleansed, and might be
regarded as premises in such a state as to be a nuisance or dangerous
to health. The special committee of 1896 animadverted
on the nuisance as observed in the special area, and it would be
well if an instruction were issued authorising the removal of
such useless articles, by the dustmen, as house refuse. The
importance of the matter gets lost sight of in ordinary
times, but let there be a cholera-scare, and everybody forthwith
recognises the propriety and necessity of that general
clearance of filth and litters, which should be effected regularly
at all times.