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lights, air-bricks, and louvre boards. A second evil is, their
fearful overcrowding, by which an "atmosphere of organic
particles," a deadly "zymotic atmosphere" is produced. By
the Census returns, the number of our inhabitants was 6 to
each house; but such a distribution conveys no idea how
closely life is packed in particular streets. Take, for instance,
the return made by your Inspector of the 48 houses in Barnsley
Street and Carlton Place, the one having 5, the other
5 and 6 rooms, in each; where the ratio is 14 inmates per
house, and the breathing area, without deduction for furniture,
little more than 200 cubic feet a-piece! Contrast this
with the prison allowance of 1000 feet, and reflect for a moment
how powerfully such an atmosphere must degenerate
life. But the migratory character of the population masks
the result, for the deaths among 496 residents were only 8,
or 1 in every 62. On the social and moral bearings I will
not dwell: their symbols are poverty, misery and degradation.
Another avoidable evil is, storing house refuse in cellars,
whence gaseous poison, "at night when doors and shutters
are closed, accumulates within the house, and is a constant
source of illness and expense in houses of every class."
Passing on to the subject of drainage, I would strenuously
urge that, in every possible case, on the abolition of the
cesspool and substitution of closet-apparatus, you enforce
an independent supply of water, to prevent contamination
in the house cistern or butt. I would, too, advise that
wherever secondary or pipe sewers are used, strict attention
be paid to the trapping of drains, because—in the absence of
street ventilation—the gases intensified by concentration rush
into the interior of every dwelling.* In this respect, and
because their sides are impermeable, and do not drain off the
water from the surrounding subsoil, pipe sewers are inferior
to those constructed of brick. Again, with Cholera looming
ahead, it is my duty to recommend that, wherever pump water
* To such causes Dr. Arnott attributed the Croydon epidemic.