London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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St Pancras 1904

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras, London, Borough of]

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107
§ 5—REGULATIONS.
Regulations for guidance in the construction of public urinals are under
consideration.
§ 6.—LEGAL DECISIONS.
(Before Wills and Kennedy, J.J., 19th January, 1904).
Oliver v. Camberwell Borough Council.
Metropolis—Public health—Nuisance—Intimation notice threatening proceedings—"Sewer"
described therein as a "drain"—Recipient executing
repairs to sewer—Right to recover cost of work from Sanitary Authority
—Whether work done voluntarily or under compulsion—Builder fraudulently
laying a sewer instead of authorised drain—Effect of—Public
Health (London) Act, 1891 (54 & 55 Vict., cap. 76), ss 3, 4.
An owner, who is served with an intimation of a nuisance under sec. 3 of
the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, requiring him to repair a "drain,"
and who thereupon complies, must be held to have done the work voluntarily,
and not under compulsion, although the notice contains a threat that the
authority will commence proceedings against him by the service of a statutory
notice, if the repairs are not done within a week.
Therefore, if the so-called "drain" proves to be a "sewer," he cannot
recover from the authority the cost of the repairs.
Query, what may be the respective rights and duties of an owner and an
authority where a builder, authorised to lay a " drain " from a house, has, in
fraud of the authority, joined it to the drain from another house, so as to
constitute it a "sewer."
J.P.R., 16.4, 1904.
(Before Channell, J., without a Jury, March 18th, 19th, 1904.)
Heaver and Others v. Mayor, etc., of Fulham.
Local Government—Metropolis Management Act, 1855 (18 & 19 Vict., c. 120),
ss. 76, 83, 101, 250—Drain or Sewer—Drainage of two houses by combined
operation—Transfer of title otherwise than by purchase—Estoppel.
A metropolitan vestry had approved a plan for the drainage of a number of
houses which did not show the particular drainage of each house, but authorised
the drainage of the houses in pairs by a series of combined operations. In a
pair of such houses, the drainage was carried off by two pipes, laid one under
each house; these pipes joined into one pipe before they reached the sewer.
The pipe under house A took the whole of the drainage of A, together with
that from a sink in the back part of house B; the pipe under B took the rest
of the drainage of B. The connection between the sink in B and the pipe
under A had been made at the time when the houses and the drains were constructed.
The trustees of a settlement were owners of both houses; they
derived their title, without any purchase for value, from the original owner,
by whom the houses and drains were constructed. The Court inferred as a
fact that the connection of the sink in house B with the pipe under A was
made by the authority of the surveyor to the vestry.