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Health, in 1880, the result being that a Special Committee was
appointed to consider the subject. The report of the Committee
was printed in my Annual Report for 1880 (page 114). The
conclusions at which the Committee arrived may be summed up
as follows:—
1. Trade Refuse.—The Nuisance Authority should have power to collect,
remove, and dispose of the trade refuse of butchers, fishmongers,
poulterers, greengrocers, etc., at the reasonable cost of the producers.
The collection of such refuse should be made in the early morning,
and the removal effected in specially constructed vehicles: if practicable
the refuse should be utilized; otherwise it should be destroyed
by fire.
2. House Refuse.—In view of the increasing distance to brickfields, house
refuse will have to be dealt with by fire, in specially constructed apparatus
of the "Destructor" type, by which its bulk may be reduced some 75
per cent., the resulting product, moreover, being at once innocuous, and
useful for road-making and other purposes: the refuse should be collected
daily, and ''dustbins" abolished.
3. Stable and Cowshed Refuse.—The Nuisance Authority should have power
to collect the refuse at the reasonable cost of the owner; cowshed refuse
daily, in vehicles designed to prevent slopping and effluvium nuisance;
stable refuse periodically, the refuse, meanwhile, to be stored in suitable
receptacles — paved, drained, and enclosed within iron racks, above
ground.
4. Conclusion.-Legislation is necessary to give effect to the above recommendations,
and to compel railway and canal companies to carry refuse
from towns at a reasonable, while remunerative, rate.
HOUSE REFUSE.
The collection of ashes, and miscellaneous refuse, from upwards
of 21,000 houses, over an area of 2,200 acres, and to the
extent of 84,000 loads in a single year, is no light task and complaints
of neglect by the dustmen were habitual when the work
was done by contract. So frequent, indeed, did the complaints
become, at last, that your Vestry, desirous of satisfying the
legitimate requirements of the parishioners, determined, in 1877,
to abolish the contract system altogether and to undertake the
"dusting" as well as the scavengering and the watering of the
entire parish. The results have justified the change: the work of
dust-removal has ever since been done in an increasingly