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147
core" at night. Brick-burning as practised in country districts,
where no dust-bin refuse is used, produces plenty of smoke and
smell, but no stink as we understand the word. But I have no
reason to doubt that the stink, as we experience it every summer,
is due to brick-burning simply, both the bricks themselves, and the
fuel used in burning them, being more or less charged with
organic matter of animal and vegetable origin, the slow frizzling
of which gives rise to the nuisance. Having regard to the
intense feeling to which the obnoxious smells gave occasion, it
would have argued insensate folly on the part of the brick-makers
to flout the public by quite unnecessary proceedings. And the
most careful enquiry—by myself, by my colleague the Medical
Officer of Health for Hammersmith, by the Sanitary Inspectors of
both parishes, and by Mr. Rogers, your Vestry's Superintendent
of out-door work—failed to discover any evidence of the burning of
soft core at any of the brickfields in Wood Lane.
[Addendum.—The Bedford Park Brickfield Case above referred
to (page 146) came to a hearing in the High Court of
Justice (Chancery Division), before Mr. Justice Kay, who, on the
26th June, put the defendant under an injunction not to burn bricks
upon the brickfield, or any part of it, in such a manner as to
cause a nuisance to the inhabitants of Bedford Park, and the
other neighbourhoods of the brickfield, costs, of course, following
the result. In giving judgment (without calling for a reply from
counsel for the plaintiffs), the judge described the process of
brickmaking and brick-burning as carried on in what are known
as "clamps," as distinguished from "kilns," and explained (no
expert evidence having been given on either side) how nuisance
arises, from the use of dust-bin ashes in the bricks, and of
"breeze," used for fuel, offensive smells being due to the burning
of the organic animal and vegetable matter contained in the
"dust." The resulting "vapour," he said, must be more deleterious
to health than the smoke of coal, but a nuisance did not
necessarily mean that which was injurious to health. There were
plenty of nuisances in law which were not in the least injurious