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31
SANITARY WORK.
Table 6 (Appendix) contains a summary of the principal items
of sanitary work accomplished during the Vestry year ended 25th
March, 1875. The number of complaints received and entered in
the complaint book was 1,482; viz., 820 in the North, and 662
in the South Sanitary District. Seven thousand two hundred
and eighty-six houses were inspected—viz., 3,229 in the
North, and 4,057 in the South district, besides mews, of
which there are about 140 in the parish. The number
of sanitary notices served for the amendment of houses, premises,
&c., was 1,438, viz., 756 in the North and 682 in the South :
1,477 houses and premises were cleansed, &c. : 68 were disinfected
after infectious diseases. The drains of 442 houses
were cleansed and repaired; and trapped and ventilated in 341
other cases: 463 privies and water-closets were repaired and
supplied with water; and 6 new water-closets were provided:
31 new dust-bins were erected, and 41 old ones covered,
repaired, &c: 8 water-cisterns were constructed, and 75
cleansed, covered and repaired—a very inadequate number it
would seem, so far as regards cleansing, only that in a great number
of cases this operation—so commonly neglected—was directed
and carried out without formal notice: 115 accumulations of
dung, stagnant water, animal and other refuse were removed, and
in 58 cases animals improperly kept, or kept in unfit localities
(swine especially), were removed.
The number of inspections in each district, and in each period
of four weeks, covered by my monthly reports, may be seen in
Table 6A. Legal proceedings were had recourse to in 100 cases,
viz., 82 in the North, and 18 in the South district, and generally
with a successful result. A few of the cases deserve special
notice.
And first I will mention the subject of boiling food for pigs. A
greater nuisance than this is, it would be difficult to imagine in a
parish like Kensington. The effluvia given off from the boiling of
a quantity of animal and vegetable refuse, collected from the washtubs,
and often in a semi-putrid state before cooking, is sickening
and offensive to the last degree. It constitutes by far the greater
part of the nuisance arising from the keeping of swine in an improper
locality; and the efforts persistently made during the last
four years to improve the condition of the Potteries have been
sadly marred by the continuance of the process of food collection
and preparation, which still goes on to some extent, although
nearly all the swine have been removed. As no means were ever
adopted to prevent the escape into the air of the noxious effluvia
resulting from the cooking, we resolved to attack the nuisance
under the 27th section of the Nuisances Removal Act, which
enacts, in effect, that " If any building, or place for boiling offal
or used for any trade, business, &c., causing effluvia,
be at any time certified to the local authority by any Medical
Officer to be a nuisance or injurious to the health of the