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116
" Between 6 o'clock a.m. and 12 o'clock at noon in any day during the months of November,
December, January, and February.
" This by-law shall not apply to any person removing or carrying manure, consisting only
of horse dung with a sufficient proportion of straw to render it inoffensive, and shall
not apply to any person removing or carrying in a suitable carriage or vessel as
aforesaid manure consisting of horse dung and litter other than straw.
" 2. Every person who shall offend against the foregoing by-law shall be liable for every such
offence to a penalty of five pounds, and, in the case of a continuing offence, to a further
penalty of forty shillings for each day after written notice of the offence from the
sanitary authority.
" Provided nevertheless, that the justices or court before whom any complaint may be made or
any proceedings may be taken in respect of such offence may, if they think fit, adjudge the
payment as a penalty of any sum less than the full amount of the penalty imposed by this
by law."
This by-law, in effect, requires peat refuse to be removed under the same conditions as other
offensive matter. It is satisfactory that the views approved by the late Vestry, in regard to the
storage and removal of this material should thus so far have prevailed ; but it is to be regretted that
the County Council did not see their way to adopt the view set out in these reports with regard to
the removal of fish offal, and other like refuse, in the shop receptacles, rather than in tank-vans.
The Public Health Committee of the County Council, in their report on the new by-law,
stated that the Local Government Board did not ' see their way to allow the removal of offensive
matter either during the night, or during hours of the day when the streets are crowded, especially
during the heat of the summer.' They added that 'the extension of hours . . . would be of
substantial benefit, although it would not remove all the difficulties' to which their attention had
been called, and which ' could only be overcome by allowing removal during the night' a course to
which the Board ' object, as it is then impossible to see that the refuse is not slopped or spilled, and
that the vehicles conveying it are properly covered.'
In a circular letter to the Borough Councils (May 9th, 1901), the County Council stated that
a protest had been made to the Local Government Board against the amended by-laws, by firms
engaged in the collection of bones and fat from the shops of butchers and marine store dealers, on
the ground that the hours proposed were too limited to enable them properly to carry on their business.
For my part, I see no objection to removal at any time, if only proper precautions be taken;
but preferably refuse should be removed in the evening after business hours. I have never seen any
reason to modify the views expressed in my annual report for 1887 (pp. 176-189 inclusive), and with
less detail, in the annual report for 1900 (page 58); the main point being that, as regards refuse, it
should be removed in the storage vessels, instead of, as now, in tank vans, into which the refuse is
tipped, nuisance often being caused by spilling and slopping. These views which had been approved
by the late Vestry, were communicated to the County Council in 1899, as they had been to the late
Metropolitan Board of Works in 1887.
THE COUNTER'S CREEK AND MIDDLE LEVEL SEWERS.
Several complaints were reported to the Public Health Committee in 1901, with reference to
offensive smells emanating from the Counter's Creek sewer, in different parts of its course from
North Kensington to Lot's-road, Chelsea. This sewer which, south of Kensington Road, is
upwards of eight feet in diameter, is vested in the London County Council, with which body the
late Vestry and the Council have had many communications arising out of complaints of smells,
and also of the flooding of basements of houses at times of great and rapid rainfall.
With respect to sewer smells, a memorial was addressed to the Council by inhabitants residing
at South-row and adjoining streets in the Kensal Town district, taken over in November, 1900, from
Chelsea. The Sewer in South-row, a branch of the Middle-level sewer, receives the drainage of the
Queen's Park estate (the portion of the Kensal Town district which was transferred from Chelsea to
Paddington), a circumstance to which the memorialists attributed the "increase of fever" which
they erroneously alleged to exist in the locality. By direction of the Public Health Committee,
a communication was addressed to the County Council embodying the complaint of the memorialists,
together with my report thereon; and with a request that steps might be taken to remedy the evil
by shaft ventilation of the sewer in South-row, closure of the ventilators at road level, and trapping
of the street gullies The County Council have since erected a ventilating shaft in the course ox
the sewer, and in the course ot the Counter's Creek sewer eleven such shafts, and closed certain
ventilators, with satisfactory results, no complaints having been received from inhabitants during
the past year.