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17
exist; and although you have given your orders for the effectual
drainage of all houses reported to you by your officers, I cannot
say that such works have been carried out on sound and perfect
principles. These imperfections are chiefly to be attributed to the
scanty supply of water to the closets. I am sorry to find, in very
many instances, that the water-closets of the poor have been stinted
in this most important necessary—so essential to health, to decency,
and cleanliness—by the cisterns being made far too small, and
totally inadequate for the uses to which they have been applied.
This remark will more particularly apply to the courts and
alleys, where only one water-closet and one small cistern has been
provided for the use of perhaps 10 or 12 families. I trust that, by
your assistance, a remedy will be found for this evil, and that the
law will not be in future frustrated by such incomplete arrangements.
There is one fact of particular importance as regards house
drainage that I wish to bring to your notice—viz., that, in nearly
if not all cases where house drainage has been properly carried out,
the habits and cleanliness of the people in such localities have much
improved, and they express great gratification for the comforts they
have thereby received.
CESSPOOLS.
As regards cesspools, I would observe, that almost every house
not drained into the common sewer has either an open privy or
common cesspool, from which not only the atmosphere becomes
impregnated with the most hurtful effluvia—a prolific source of
disease—but, in all instances where the supply of water to the
neighbourhood is obtained from wells and pumps in close proximity
to these receptacles, the pernicious effects are too palpable to require
any caution on my part against their use and construction.
CONDITION OF HOUSES.
Under this head I am anxious to draw your attention to the
general Sanitary condition of those houses occupied by the poorer
classes.
Over-crowding.—One of the most striking circumstances
met with in visiting the residences of the poor in many parts of