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106
ADMINISTRATIVE WORK.
number of drains requiring to be either reconstructed or made watertight, an increased number of
old drains were tested and found sound. The number of such drains was 100 last year, 66 in 1912,
and 64 in 1911.
An appeal was taken to the Appeals Committee of the County Council against a decision of
the Public Health Committee with reference to the proposed construction of a water-closet in a
bath-room approached from a bedroom. There appears to be a growing fashion for such an
arrangement and a short note of the case will, therefore, be of some interest.
It was proposed to fix in an existing bathroom approached directly from a bedroom, a washdown
pedestal closet with water waste preventer. By-law 1 under Section 39 (1) of the Public
Health (London) Act, 1891, directs that a water-closet apartment shall be separated from a
room intended for human habitation by a solid wall or partition, and further, that such closet
apartment shall not be approached directly from any room intended for human habitation. The
architect in charge of the work put forward a proposal for the construction of double doors between
the bedroom and closet apartment (the bathroom), such doors to be separated by a space of
approximately two feet in which there were to be two gratings, one at the ceiling level and the
other at floor level. The Public Health Committee disapproved the proposals, being of opinion
that they constituted a contravention of the by-law. The architect appealed, but the Appeals
Committee upheld the view of the Public Health Committee.
The placing of a water-closet in such close proximity to a bedroom as was suggested in the
above case—even with a ventilated lobby between the two rooms—appears to be a dangerous
practice, as there are no means of securing that the doors of the lobby shall be kept closed.
In the case mentioned above it would have been necessary for both doors to be open at the
same time to permit of access from one room to the other. The fashion appears to be tainted
with an element of laziness.
Deposit of Drainage Plans.—Although the number of drains reconstructed each year
has lately decreased, there is no commensurate diminution in the number of plans deposited
for work in connection with drains and sanitary fittings. Last year 344 plans were received, as
compared with 352 in 1912 and 348 in 1911. The numbers here quoted refer to the plans
received for work to be carried out under the supervision of the Department. The correspondence
arising from the deposit of plans comprised 734 letters and forms last year, as compared
with 705 in 1912 and 708 in 1911. No summonses were issued last year for breaches of the
by-laws relating to the deposit of plans, but seven were taken out for work done without giving
notice to the Council.
Sewer Connections.—A complete survey was made last year of the connections to the sewer
from the houses in Oxford and Cambridge Terraces, and a very large proportion of them were
found to be defective, some very badly so. The results of the survey were embodied in a
Special Report submitted to the Public Health Committee in January of last year.
In the older parts of the Borough there must be a large number of defective sewer
connections, partly because at the time of the erection of the houses the laying-in of drains
was very imperfectly understood and in most cases done without any skilled supervision, and
partly because the changes in the character of the vehicular traffic impose burdens on the roads,
to be transmitted to the drains, for which they were not designed. Complaints of rats getting
into houses from the sewers appear to be becoming more frequent, but numerical proof of that
suspicion is not at the moment available. It may be stated with a fair measure of confidence,
however, that in the near future the question of house connections—those parts of house drains
which are under the public roadways—will require to receive close attention.
Last year seven new connections were put in by house owners without the issue of Orders
under Section 85 of the Metropolis Management Act, 1855, by the Council. Fifty-five such
Orders were issued during the year.