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79
I also append a Minute of the Court itself (5th Commission?), dated
Feb. 25th, 1852:—
"Ordered:—That previously to the Surveyor's permitting
parties who apply for leave to construct sewers, lay drains, etc.,
such applications be submitted to the Commissioners for
approval."
The Commissioners mentioned in this Minute may mean the
General Committee.
Bazalgette, in a paper on the main drainage of London, dated
1865, stated that from 1847, "within a period of about six years,
thirty thousand cesspools were abolished."
It is clear if the Surveyors and Engineers of the Metropolitan
Commissions of Sewers dealt with the petitions prior to Feb. 25th,
1852, it is not right for local authorities that 25 and 26 Vict., cap.
102, section 112, should hold good:—"The word 'drain' shall be
"deemed to apply to and include the subject matters specified in
"the two hundred and fiftieth section of the firstly-recited Act, and
"also any drain for draining a group or block of houses by a com''bined
operation laid or constructed before the 1st day of January,
"1856, pursuant to the order or direction, or with the sanction or
" approval of the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers."
Among the petitions searched for by your officials was one relating
to the combined drains of Nos. 1, 2 and 3 Woolmore Street, which
runs under 24, Robinhood Lane. No record has been found, and
possibly this was a drain laid in without the knowledge of the officials
in those days. The present state of the law is such that it is useless
for the Board to take these cases into the police-court, and as the
defective condition of the drain is very bad, and the remedying of
the nuisance urgent, I would strongly recommend the Board to give