View report page

10
in asmuch as a preference is shown for the floor and the doorway, while slops intended
for the tank are often thrown in so carelessly at the entrance of the privy as to be
spattered over the walls. I can never approach these privies without being horribly
sickened, and members of the Sanitary Committee who have visited the place with me
can testify to similar effects upon themselves. Above the privies is placed the water
tank for the supply of the court, in which I have been credibly informed the boys of
the court have been seen batbing in the summer time, so that, besides absorbing the
foul gases from beneath, the water acquires occasionally another equally indescribable
pollution. The drain from the privies runs beneath No. 6, and the surface of the
court is never clean for many hours after being swept up by the Contractor. The
population of the court is about 130. This is not so high as it used to be, on account
of our frequent interference to abate over-crowding; in 1856 it was 150. Out of the
entire population we found 32 to be infants under 5 years of age. The deaths during
the four years amounted to 31, or nearly a quarter of the population. Nineteen of
those which died were infants under 5 years of age. And now I must call your
attention to the distribution of these deaths. The only houses which have had no
death in them for four years are Nos. 1, 2 and 3. These houses receive the only
pure air that enters the court from the passage into the High-street, the prevalent
winds sweeping their face and then whirling round the court carry the effluvia from
the privies to the houses 6, 7, 8, 9, current of air and the situation of the privies,vie find the distribution of the mortality,
and especially of that from zymotic causes, and in the most marked degree, from
certain particular forms of zymotic disease. There were single deaths (not of infants)
in Nos. 4, 13 and 14 which we may pass over for the moment, to concentrate attention
upon No. 5 on the South side, and upon Nos. 6 to 11 on the North side. In all these
houses there were one or more deaths from zymotic disease of some kind, but in no
others, with the exception of No. 12, to be separately considered. In No. 5 there were four
deaths; two of them of infants, one dying from measles and the other from hooping
cough. This iB the house against the side of which the filthy privy is placed. No. 0
(the smallest roomed and most crowded house in the court), is situated directly facing
the privy, at a distance of a few paces from it. In this house three deaths occurred,
ail from some form of zymotic disease, viz., one from childbed fever, one from diphtheria,
and one from diarrhoea. At No. 7, next door to it, three deaths also occurred,
one from a pulmonary affection, one from consumption and one from cholera. The
only two deaths, then, in the court referred to bowel complaints, occurred in the two
houses most exposed to the privy effluvia. At No. 8, two zymotic deaths occurred
(one of an infant), viz., one from diphtheria and the other from measles. At No. 9,
two infants died, one from scarlet fever. At No. 10 three persons died, two being
infants, and one of the deaths was from small pox. At No. 11 two deaths occurred,
one from consumption and one of an infant from scarlet fever. And now for Nos. 12
and 15, the two darkest houses in the court—and darkness implies, be it recollected,
invariably two other things, very bad ventilation and an abundance of dirt. In
No. 15, small and over-crowded, there occurred 5 deaths, four of them of infants, but
here the special conditions present produced not zymotic but tubercular disease.
Two of the deaths were referred to consumption, the highest manifestation of this
class of maladies, and another was from some other form of tubercular affection. A
fourth death was referred to disease of the chest of an acute kind. In No. 12 four