View report page

24
frequently-repeated complaint. The sewer into which the
fluid was introduced was occasionally so offensive throughout
its course, that disease was supposed to be often occasioned
by it. The Poplar Board of Works caused the engineer to
be summoned before the Police Magistrate, who did not
inflict a fine, but directed improvements and alterations to
be made, similar to those which the engineer had so
frequently before promised to execute, and also awarded to
the complainants costs amounting to ten guineas. But as the
stench still remained,—perhaps not generally so intense, but
occasionally as bad as ever,—the Poplar Board of Works
invited the consultation and co-operation of the Mile End
Vestry, and the Limehouse Board of Works, to put an end
decisively to the long-continued nuisance. The letter of
the Poplar Board of Works was put into my hands, and 1
made the following Report to the Committee.
REPORT No. 37, DATED MARCH 30, 1858.
The subject of the nuisance said to be produced by the introduction of
matter unusually and especially offensive, to the Lime-kiln Dock sewer, has
been frequently noticed, and several times reported on. It is again brought
under the notice of the Vestry of this Hamlet, by a letter received from the
Clerk to the Board of Works for the Poplar district, inviting the Vestry to
co-operate in investigating and suppressing the nuisance.
I must remind the Committee that the boundary line of this Hamlet near
its South-eastern angle, traverses the premises of the Great Central Gas
Company.
Adjoining the premises of the Great Central Gas Company is the Tower
Hamlets' Cemetery.
The level of the Tower Hamlets' Cemetery is so low that it is obliged to be
drained at the depth of 18 or 20 feet; and as that is 11 feet below the level
of the Sewer which skirts the premises, pumping is necessarily resorted to
to keep the ground of the Cemetery sufficiently free from water to permit the
interment of the dead. After the pumpiug had been continued at the
Cemetery for a few months, the fluid thrown up by the pumps, instead of