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15
wholesome houses in which contagious diseases have been
present has been prosecuted as heretofore, and with marked
benefit. All these proceedings have been carried out without
any necessity for the intervention of the law.
The great work of the year has been the construction of
the main-sewer, from which this first great sanitary requirement
of all populous localities the greatest benefits are to be
anticipated. It nevertheless has an intrinsic defect inseparable
from the conditions to which it is subservient,
which ought not to pass unnoticed. I refer to the process
of ventilation, which, as is generally known, is effected
simply by openings at intervals communicating with the
outer air. This ventilation of the sewers at the expense of
aerial purity in our streets is admittedly a sanitary defect
of very considerable magnitude, and from its extent throughout
the whole Metropolitan drainage, requiring to bo comprehensively
dealt with. Various measures have been tried
with different degrees of success in the alleviation of the
evil, amongst which the most satisfactory appears to have
been the employment of coarsely powdered charcoal placed
on perforated trays at the outlets of the ventilators. Your
Surveyor. Mr. Dobson, has suggested, and with much apparent
reason, the employment of fan-pumps at the main
outfalls, after the manner in which mines are often ventilated.
It is a proposition which certainly deserves entertainment,
and worth the practical experiment of ascertaining
over what an area of drainage such an apparatus would be
capable, by its exhaustive power, of overcoming the slight
resistance of gaseous transfusion.
In the absence of any measure which is complete, and at
the same time practical and simple, and, indeed, under any
circumstances, the provision of an abundant and continuous
flow of water is the best available means for the absorption
of gases and the arrest of decomposition.
The great nuisance to the town described in my last and
previous reports, as arising from the encampment of gipsies
by the side of the Alma Road, has not yet been dealt with.
As a focus of contagion it urgently requires to be suppressed,
and for all other reasons than sanitary ought not
to be permitted to exist in any civilized community.
The Water Supply is not yet such as it ought to be. It