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193
[1902

Yard Pavements.—The greatest difficulty has been from time to time
experienced with magistrates in obtaining orders to abate nuisances arising
from the want of paving or the defective paving of the yards of houses. For
some reason, which it is difficult for the medical or even the lay mind to fathom,
they do not seem to grasp the serious danger which wet, dirty, unpaved, and
undrained yards are to health. Damp surroundings make a damp house, and
a damp house, it is well known to everyone, is a cause of various diseases.
A wet, unpaved and undrained yard, particularly in a tenement house, where
it is so often the only play ground for young children, is a real danger.
Its surface, being pervious and soft, becomes sodden with filth and
impregnated with the excreta and urine of children and animals, so that when
in summer it dries and pulverizes, the dust teeming with bacilli, as it does,
infects the air, and not only that but also finds its way into the house
itself and poisons the food. This is no fancy picture intended to frighten but
an absolute incontestible fact which investigation has established not once but
many times.
In winter water lodges on it, the surface is soft and muddy, dirty and wet
feet result, and these in turn lead to dirty houses infected with disease germs
and to colds which in turn result in bronchitis and kindred ailments. All the
back yards of tenement houses should be paved with cement concrete, properly
sloped to trapped gullies. If this were done the children would be afforded
more healthy places to play, the mothers would not be compelled, as they so
often are, to stand in pools of water when putting out their clothes to dry, a
dry pathway would be vouchsafed to the w.c. and the dust bin, the contents
of which, if scattered about, as so frequently occurs, could be swept up instead
of being trodden into the earth as they now are, while also there would be no
occasion to use the ashes to level the inequalities of the black, sodden ground
which certain owners, who do not desire to do paving work, call " gardens."
There can be no doubt that the time has come when the method of dealing
with these places should be changed and that proceedings should in future be
taken under the by-law made under section 16 of the Public Health London