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11
Mortuary
Accommodation.
Nuisances.
Chief among the nuisances, is that arising from untrapped
sink waste pipes. The usual arrangement is that a straight
pipe is taken from the sink and made to discharge over an
open-air gully. This length of pipe gets lined with fat, which
decomposing, causes a most poisonous gas. At certain times
this foul gas is blown into the house, and causes very severe
blood poisoning to the inmates. I should strongly recommend
that you should adopt a Bye-law making it compulsory for all
such drains to be trapped close under the sink by an "S" tube.
I have likewise found another grave defect in the position
of the ventilating shaft of the soil pipe. Under the present
regulations this pipe must be carried above the eaves of the
roof, but most builders are quite content to fulfil the letter of
the law only, and on more than three occasions I have traced
the cause of the illness of some of the inmates to the ventilating
shaft which was discharging sewer gas into the open
dormer window of a room. The ventilating shaft should in all
cases be carried up the roof so as to discharge its foul air well
above the window of any bedroom.
Eighteen broken dust-bins have been replaced by new
ones.
There is one public mortuary at Pinner, situated in the
Churchyard.
The Cottage Hospital and Isolation Hospital of Stanmore
have each a mortuary of their own.
The sanitary work of the District grows steadily heavier.
The testing of drains, together with the supervision of repairs,
naturally takes time. In all the drainage of 118 houses was
examined, and it was found necessary to reconstruct the drains
in 34 cases, whilst most of the others were found to be more
or less defective, and were repaired.