View report page

28
Commenced against the Company, and two months time was given
them to abate the nuisance. After an inspection of the premises
by myself, your clerk, and Inspector Langman, it was resolved by
the engineer of the Company to carry the new sewer right through
the works, so as to completely intercept the drainage, especially
from that part of the premises from which the offending material
appeared to be derived. In making the excavation for this
further length of sewer, the cause of the nuisance was discovered
and removed. No complaint has been made since, and I am
sanguine that no further cause of complaint will arise. The
nuisance proved to be due to the escape, into an old brick drain, of
gas tar with which the ground all round the drain for a considerable
distance was saturated in consequence of the tar (a "waste
product") having been allowed in the early days of the old
Company, as I was informed, to run away on the depressed
surface of the premises. In a cutting some 16 feet deep, long
after the new drains were completed, I myself saw tbis treaclylooking
stuff oozing out of the ground. It is hardly necessary to
say that gas tar and the other products of gas manufacture are
too valuable to be wasted now-a-days. The Company must, I
think, be acquitted of any intentional offence in this matter.
There is reasonable ground to believe that they were as ignorant
as ourselves of the origin of the nuisance, which doubtless would
have been in existence still but for the proceedings taken by
your Vestry, which led to the construction of the new drain, and
the consequent discovery of the origin of the mischief. The
annoyance to the inhabitants was intermittent, probably because
in dry weather there would be only a trifling escape of the
offensive stuff into the drains, whereas it would pass freely in a
state of solution after rain. The new drain, I may add, has
been left open at various points to facilitate inspection.
DISINFECTION OF CLOTHING, &c.
In consequence of the comparatively small amount of fever,
small pox, &c., not many articles have been sent for disinfection.
The work is still done at a private establishment at Notting Hill,
no steps having been taken with a view to provide a public disinfecting
chamber. Plenty of useful work might be found for a
chamber, even in the absence of epidemics, if it were only for the
purpose of purifying the beds of the poor, which are often found
in a dirty and unwholesome state, injurious to health, from long
usage and neglect.
MORTUARY.
The parish is still without a Mortuary. It is difficult to form
an opinion to what extent a mortuary would be used if provided;
but as we know that several hundred poor persons are buried