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the unpleasant effluvia from the Thames was at its height, this
District was never so free from sickness and death. In the months
of April and May the deaths amounted to 185 and 183 respectively;
whereas in June, July, and August, 124, 158, and 149, were the
numbers assigned to each month. It would therefore appear that
such increase of sickness and mortality that did prevail in a certain few river-side localities, was just as likely to have arisen from
other causes as from the unpleasant state of the Thames. But even
admitting the expediency of preventing the further pollution of the
river, it is nevertheless at present an evil of almost inappreciable
extent in comparison to the ill health occasioned by the detention
of large accumulations of nightsoil in the most densely populated
neighbourhoods. There can be doubt therefore that such a resolution, suggested by some well-meaning persons and passed by some
of the local Boards, was a step in the wrong direction,—it was a
mistaken and retrogade movement; a large number of cesspools
were thereby prevented from being annihilated, and the pestiferous
gases arising therefrom were still allowed to spread in a concentrated form through the dwellings of the inhabitants, instead of the
contents of those cesspools being carried into the river, and there,
as I before remarked, to become so largely diluted as to render
them comparatively innocuous.
Whilst on the subject of cesspools and drainage, I would wish to
advert to the opinions that I have heard expressed, not only by
some Members of the Board, but by many other influential persons
of these towns: "That they would still prefer the old boghole and
cesspool to the system of drainage into the sewer." "They considered that the water-closets were not water-closets; that they were
continually being choked up and rendered useless; and that the
sewer gases were as constantly returning through the outlets of the
supposed water-closets." These are points to which I have on many
former occasions directed the attention of the Board, and which, it
cannot be denied, are existing to a considerable extent amongst the
houses of the poorer classes throughout the District.
The principal causes of the ineffectual working of these closets, is
the insufficient quantity of water and the small size of the supplypipe from the cistern to the closct. Instead of having a rush of