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improvements. They have visited and inspected, and reported fully upon the
sanitary condition of 2,213 dwellings, and have superintended the several amendments
which have been effected in them and the other dwellings where the improvements
were not complete in 1856, although the necessary notices had been served.
Taking the whole parish, 527 new drains have been constructed, 524 improved or
repaired, and 1,439 trapped; 1,104 cesspools (including, in the West Sub-division, a
considerable number of open privies, with receivers) abolished, and 12 cleansed and
dis-infected; 843 open privies have been furnished with pan, trap, and water supply;
and 354 with pan and trap only, while 282 privies, hitherto unsupplied with water,
have been furnished with this essential improvement, on the necessity of it being
pointed out. 721 dust bins have been constructed and 328 covered, in accordance
with the requirements of the Act of Parliament; in 834 instances wet and dirty
yards of dwellings-houses have been improved by paving or appropriate surface
drainage; 132 new receptacles for water (butts or cisterns) have been furnished
where the old ones were decayed or insufficient in capacity; 141 repaired or cleansed,
and a water supply laid on to 11 houses which were previously unprovided with it;
101 houses have been repaired generally; 268 dirty houses cleansed or limewashed ;
and lastly, but not least in importance, 94 dwellings in the Eastern Sub-district have
been ventilated, in some instances by the introduction of a window, in others of an
air brick in a convenient situation. The power to enforce this improvement so essential
in the small dwellings of the poor, has been recognised by the magistrates, who
compelled the owner of some dwellings in Swan Yard, who was summoned under the
Nuisances Removal Act, upon my certificate, to make the alterations in a manner that
would satisfy me as to their efficiency. In all the other instances the service of the
ordinary notice has produced compliance.
22. In several instances the owners of dwelling-houses have been summoned upon
my certificate, for permitting the over crowding of their houses, and in every instance
the magistrate has convicted and fined the offenders. It is here especially that I
have felt the greatest difficulty in tendering my advice to the Sanitary Committee.
Strictly speaking, every house is over crowded where, taking the means of ventilation
into account, the quantity of air in it or in any room of it is so small in comparison
with its inmates, that the contamination it undergoes by exhalation from the lungs and
bodies of the occupants, renders it poisonous. If this definition, however, were applied
with severity to the interpretation and practical application of the Nuisances
Removal Act, there is scarcely a tenement in the parish which your inspectors have
visited which might not be made the subject of a summons. In putting, therefore,
into operation the clause of the Act relating to this cause of unhealthiness, it was
necessary to take very low ground. To preserve the health of the inmates of the
Pentonville Prison, it has been considered necessary to supply each man in his cell
with 800 cubic feet of air, and to renew this completely every 16 or 20 minutes. I
have not examined and measured the apartment of any poor family residing in the
small tenements in this parish, where I suspected its crowded condition to be the
occasion of disease in which the capacity exceeded 662 feet per head, without
any provision for the renewal of the air. In some instances I have met with as little as
220, 198, 190, 189, 170, 167, 142, and even 135, cubic feet only allowed to
each occupant of a room, where every additional person's presence was a material
item in still further diminishing the amount of air within the apartment; where the
atmosphere reeking with the effluvia from filthy clothes, and with the exhalation from
the lungs, skin, and excretions of its occupants, never was, and never could be completely
changed; and where, in some instances, the window being never opened, the
room was locked up when left in the morning until re-entered to be slept in at night.
The late investigation into the sanitary condition of the army has demonstrated, beyond
all chance of successful contradiction, that the frightful mortality of the soldiers,
while in barracks at home, is mainly due to the crowded and ill-ventilated dormitories
in which they pass the night; and what is the quantity of air allowed to each man in
these poisonous rooms ? We are told that it is 450 cubic feet, in many instances' less