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THE STRAND DISTH1CT, LONDON.
161
with replies from 58 Local Authorities to questions relating
thereto, presented to the Health Committee, and ordered to be
printed and circulated among the members of your Board:—
A suggestion was made to the Board by one of its members (Mr. Elgy) and
was referred for consideration to the Health Committee, to the effect that it is
desirable that Sanitary Authorities should have power to erect ventilating shafts
on private property when such were necessary, on payment of a small annual sum
by way of rent in a manner similar to that of the Post Office; with regard to telegraph
posts on houses. It was argued that as interceptor traps are now being largely used
to separate house drains from the sewers to prevent the influx of air from the sewers
into dwellings, there must be a greater escape of such air through the openings at
the street level, such as grids, perforated manhole covers, untrapped gulleys, &c.; if
such air is shut out from houses on account of its being injurious to health, it must
also be detrimental to persons using streets in which street level openings exist; or
should there be no such openings then the air of the sewers may become dangerous
to the men employed therein. As the law stands a Local Authority may erect
ventilating columns in the streets, but cannot place shafts for this purpose against
private houses, walls, &c., without permission of the owner and occupiers. In most
districts this permission cannot be obtained.
The Health Committee had the matter under consideration at their meeting in
.July, and instructed me to obtain the opinions of other local authorities as to
obtaining increased powers to erect ventilating shafts and to report further on the
subject. Directions were at the same time given to the Surveyor and myself, to place
a sewer ventilating lamp, as an experiment, at some point in the district concerning
which complaints have been made of offensive smells.
In order to obtain the desired information I issued a letter to the various
Metropolitan Authorities, and to a number of others outside London, in which I
asked for replies to the following questions:—
(1) Have you had complaints with reference to sewer ventilators?
(2) Have you been able to trace any deleterious influence upon health to the
emanations from sewer ventilators?
a. At the street level ?
b. From ventilating shafts ?
(3) Do you consider it desirable that Sanitary Authorities should have power
to erect ventilating shafts on private property ?
(4) Have you experience of any "Sewer Gas Destructors"? Have they
proved satisfactory ?
Fifty-eight replies have been received on the forms sent out, and thanks are
due to those Authorities for their kindly assistance. The replies are appended
hereto.
I have to thank Dr. John Priestley for a report on "Sewer Ventilating Grids as
a Danger to Health," made by him to the Sanitary Committee of Leicester, and
Dr. T. Orme Duufield for his monthly report (No. viii. 1896) on the "Health and
Sanitary Condition of Kensington," in which he deals with "Offensive Street
Smells." In addition, I have procured a copy of an elaborate report on "The
Ventilation of Sewers," presented to the Douglas Town Commissioners by Mr. Thomas
H. Nesbitt, their clerk, and published as a supplement to the "Contract Journal," of
March 27th, 1895. It deals with replies obtained from 202 Municipal and Local
Board engineers and surveyors.
Analysing first the fifty-eight replies received to the letter from the Strand Board,
I find that in most instances where there are openings into the sewers, offensive
smells are more or less complained of. The answers are qualified in some instances;
thus in Clapham the complaints are localised to some few places; in Newington