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we want what no law will give: care and cleanliness on the part
of the people. The Table shows that the Local Authority has
been appealed to this year in about 200 instances, where houses
were subjected to some form of sewer nuisance. In the poorer
houses, tliese arose, for the most part, from negleot, obstructed
drains, want of water, wilful damage to the water apparatus, &c.
But it would be a gr at mistake to suppose that it is in the
houses of the poor only, that sewer nuisances are found. In
each of the following first-rate streets, the Inspector has been
called in to detect and remove such nuisances during the year.
Albemarle-street, 2 houses; Arlington-street, 2; Audley. square,
1; South Audley-street, 2; New Bond-street, 3; Brook-street, 3;
Bruton-street, 1; Charles-street, Grosvenor-square, 1; Chapelstreet,
1; Clarges-street, 1; Conduit street, 1 ; Davies-street, 1 ;
Dover-street, 3; Duke-street, 3; Green-street, 3; Grosvenorstreet,
1; Half-moon-street, 1; Maddox-street, 1; Mount-street,
2; Park-street, 4; Piccadilly, 1; South-street, 2; Stratton-street,
1; Chapel-street, Belgrave-square, 1; Eccleston-place, 3; Eccleston-squire,
1; Chester-street, 1; Lower Belgrave-place, 2;
Cambridge street, 1; St. George's-place, 1. The nuisances in
some of these houses were slight, though still sufficient to induce
the occupiers to get the benefit of the Inspector's skill; but in
others they were of the worst possible kind. When we read in
the Inspector's Book a record of such work as this,—"Cesspool
abolished, old rotten brick drains broken up, saturated earth
carted away, the excavation sweetened with quicklime, and filled
in with dry brick rubbish, new pipe drains laid down, and all the
inlets trapped," we may be certain that such a house, before the
work, stood over a putrid swamp. Yet houses in this state are
every month, one by one, explored and purified, in the best parts
of the parish. We know what the results are sure to be at some
time or other. For instance, there is a house in New Bond-street.
The medical attendant of the family applied to the Medical
Officer of Health, saying that the family had had small-pox,
measles, sore throat, boils, and other eruptions since they had
come to the house, though quite healthy before. Through a stupid
arrangement of some pipes, they were all inhaling putrid sewer
air, especially at night, and this they felt to be the cause of their
illness. When, then, we look at the list, for 1863, of 13 cesspools
abolished (some from beneath noblemen's houses), at 47
cases of old brick drains replaced by pipes, and the rest of the
200 cases, we feel certain that the (say 2,000) inhabitants of
those houses are relieved from a possible source of most dangerous
illness. The only wonder at present is, that they have
suffered so little.
There is another possible vehicle of sewer poison, the drinking
water. We repeat analyses, time after time, of the water delivered
by the public companies, with the variation of from halfa-grain
to two or three grains of "organic matter" per gallon.
What this organic matter is, we know not; all we know is, that
when the residue of the water after evaporation is exposed to a
red heat, it blackens, then becomes winter; and after it has
cooled, shows a certain loss of weight which is considered