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Nuisance Authority or their officer or officers shall direct, he or they shall
be liable, without further notice, to a penalty of twenty shillings per day for every
day during which such manure or other refuse matter shall be permitted to
accumulate, such penalty to be recovered in a summary manner.
Any person not conforming to these regulations will be prosecuted as the law
directs.
By order,
Thos. Eccleston Gibb,
Vestry Clerk.
NUISANCES.
During the year 1,927 notices were issued for sanitary amendments, 123
orders were served and 47 prosecutions (exclusive of 41 under the Food and Drugs
Acts) were instituted. One case deserves special record.
Brick-burning.—St. Pancras Vestry v. Ball.
In October, after repeated occurrence of nuisance from brick-burning, the
defendant Ball was summoned at the Marylebone Police Court.
A clamp 71 ft. long, 30 ft. wide, and 12 ft. high was burning on the plot of
land (a spoil bank belonging to the Midland Railway Company) bounded, on the
north by the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway, on the east by
Burghley Road, on the south by Lady Somerset Road, and on the west by the
Highgate Road, the nearest houses in the Burghley Road being 268 ft. distant.
Evidence was brought to prove the nuisance and injury to health, and also
the difficulty of excluding the fumes from sleeping and sitting-rooms, and the
greater injuiy to those sleeping in confined rooms charged with the fumes than to
those working nearer to them in the open air. The symptoms of ill-health were
soreness of the throat and nausea, in some cases vomiting and loss of appetite,
especially in the morning.
Edward Collins, a retired brickmaker, living at Willesden, gave evidence that
he had been obliged to desist from burning stock-bricks in clamps on account of
the nuisance in the neighbourhood of houses, and was of opinion that such bricks
should not be burned in a residential neighbourhood. Even a Scotch kiln would
cause a nuisance, and this class of bricks could not be burned in a Staffordshire
kiln or a Hoffman's Patent Kiln, which would reduce any nuisances to a minimum
by means of shafts.
Mr. Cook, the magistrate, said that the possibility of it being injurious to
health was sufficient. He was of opinion that the best means to consume the
fumes had not been used, and from the evidence of Mr. Collins that class of brickburning
could not be carried on in such close proximity to houses without causing
a nuisance. An order of prohibition was made.
It is interesting to note that some ten years ago the same defendant was
summoned before the same magistrate at the same court for the same offence
on almost the same spot, when the application was referred to a higher court,
but not proceeded with.