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10
rubbish and road mud to form building sites, the evolutions
from which poison the air, and increase the malignancy of
zymotic disease. Other sources of illness are the gases arising
from night-soil depots, and manufactories of manure, from
dust and refuse yards, cow sheds, and dung heaps, cat-gut
spinners, paunch dressers, slaughter-houses, &c. But in
these,—beyond the employment of "the best practicable
means" for their abatement—the privileges of trade interfere
and render sanitary improvement uncertain and slow. Some
defects you can remedy: others you cannot control. You
have full power to cleanse, light, pave, and water the Parish,
to ventilate sewers, trap all gully holes, fill up open ditches
and substitute drains, to order covered dustbins, and prevent
overcrowding, and, if you think fit, to erect public pumps.
You can compel owners of property to pave any court, passage,
or place which is not a thoroughfare, to provide drains, sinks,
water-closet apparatus, and water supply, whenever there is
a sewer, lower in level, within 100 feet; can abolish the cesspools,
regulate cellar dwellings as to area, drainage and light,
and exercise stringent powers over houses about to be built, or
rebuilt. The landlords of their own accord may do much,
namely: ventilate and limewhite the rooms, furnish drains,
dustbins, and water supply, and, so long as the service remains
intermittent—covered cisterns or butts. They should also put
taps to the pipes to prevent the waste water soaking into the
soil, and where there are closet pans, not allow the supply
pipe to pass from the house butt, or cistern, into the pan.*
It would further conduce to our improvement in health, if
the canals were more frequently cleansed, and the interments
in the Victoria Park Cemetery were limited to the numbers
directed, per acre, in the Burials' Acts. Finally, the establishment
of New or Renovated Model Dwellings, Ragged
Dormitories, Baths and Wash-houses, would, alike, improve
the physique, and morale, of Bethnal Green.
* "Butts placed in contact or communication with privics, must rapidly
become infectcd by their foulness."—Mr. Simon's Reports, p. 112.