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sometimes saturated with water from defective drainage, while the
domestic supply of water to the whole locality is still most imperfect. I
have made repeated visits and enquiries in the Square, and the invariable
complaint still is that there is never any water on Sundays, and frequently
none on week days after 4 or 6 o'clock p.m. During the months
of July and August, nine deaths have occurred in this Square; one from
phthisis, one (a child) from diarrhoea, and the remaining seven from
scarlet fever (four of them at No.14). The lower rooms of this house,
as well as of No. 13, arc totally unfit for human habitation; but I have
been repeatedly foiled in the endeavour to obtain a magistrate's order
for the closure of rooms similarly occupied. The section of the Nuisances
Removal Act which relates to this matter stands thus quite inoperative,
so far as this Parish is concerned. The water supply, however, must
now seriously be enforced; it is not to be borne that a colony of poor
persons shall have no means of domestic or personal ablution, to say
nothing of clean drinking water, from Saturday afternoon until Monday
morning.
EDWARD BALLARD, M.D.,
Medical Officer of Health.
Yestry Offices,
September 1st, 1863.