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fixed on a main house drain, it shall be compulsory on the
owner of the premises to carry up a ventilating pipe, not less
than 24 square inches in sectional area, from the sewer side of
the interceptor, up the front, side, or back of the house, to the
satisfaction of the local Sanitary Authority."
The Surveyor further recommended "That the local Sanitary
Authority shall be empowered by statute to carry up any
building sewer ventilating pipes."
Here it may be mentioned that attempts to provide a
chemical remedy for the nuisance of offensive smells in streets,
due to the escape of foul emanations from surface sewer ventilating
gratings—viz., by oxidising and deodorising the gases,
were made long ago, and are still being made. Some thirty
years back, in this parish, an apparatus was devised in the
Surveyor's department with this object It consisted of hanks
of tow, suspended on a frame, and dipping into a tray containing
a disinfectant solution, the tow thus being kept moist by
capillary attraction. The sewer air. passing through the towscreen
placed in the shaft, became deodorised. This attempt,
in practice, however, hardly exceeded the limits of a laboratory
experiment. At the present time a patented chemical process
—an effort to imitate nature's operations—is being carried out
in underground ventilating shafts, in certain towns, the object
being to obtain auxiliary oxidation of the fetid gases, so as to
render them inert and inoffensive; with what result remains to
be seen. But the solution of the difficulty will, no doubt, in
course of time, be found in free oxidation by the admission to
the sewers of copious streams of atmospheric air, Twenty
years ago the late Mr. Parker, then Surveyor to the Poplar
Board of Works, patented a process having this object.
In more than one of my reports, approving reference was made
to the principle involved in his system. The annual report
for 1887 (page 239) may be cited. Reference was being made