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153
Nuisance from house refuse does not arise from the proper
contents of the receptacle—ashes—but from the addition of
matters of organic origin. With the object of preventing, as far
as practicable, nuisance from this cause, a printed notice is
periodically issued by your Vestry to every householder,
calling attention to the danger, on sanitary grounds, of vegetable
and other objectionable refuse being placed in the dustbin,
and requesting that directions may be given for all such
refuse to be burned. Such a notice was issued on the first
day of the current year. At present, a portion of the dust-bin
refuse, from the northern part of the parish, is conveyed out of
London by the Grand Junction Canal, the refuse from the
southern parts of the parish being taken by the contractor
down the Thames ; but not to your Vestry's depot at Purfleet,
where the land, which lies below high-water mark, is let to the
contractor for the deposit of other refuse matter of a presumably
less objectionable sort. The time must ultimately come
when the refuse will have to be cremated in or near the parish; the
otherwise waste-heat thus produced could be employed for the
production of "current" for the illumination of the streets
by electricity—a practice which has already been adopted with
success in other districts. Your Vestry now possess a site in
Wood Lane, where, presumably, a Destructor and an electric
light installation may be advantageously located.
STABLE REFUSE.
In former reports I had to note the frequency of complaints
of effluvium nuisance arising in the storage, and, much
more, in the removal of stable refuse from pits underground.
Thanks to the operation of the County Council's bye-law,
which has been carried out effectually in this parish, complaints
are now few in number ; and as the cause for complaint,
the sunken dung-pit, is now almost a thing of the past, we may
reasonably hope to have less cause for annoyance on this score in
the future. This subject was fully dealt with in my annual
report for 1894 (pp. 184-189), to which I would refer anyone