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annoy the manufacturers or injure the labouring classes; but,
at the same time, it is the duty of the officers to listen to all
reasonable complaints of the inhabitants.
Now, the comfort of the inhabitants, and the toleration of patent
manure factories may be perfectly reconciled, by conducting
the process of manufacture in closed vessels, instead of open
troughs. The possibility of so doing was hinted at by me in
one of my previous reports. The idea was, at the time, treated
with derision by some gentlemen engaged in the trade, as being
quite impracticable. That it is, however, practical and practised,
may be witnessed by any one who chooses to visit the
factory of Messrs. Brown and Co. at Globe-stairs.
A stout cyclindrical vessel, in shape resembling a tar-barrel
has been constructed under the superintendence of the manager.
On one side of it is a flap or door which can be hermetically
closed and bolted; this cylinder is destined to revolve, and one
of the spindles on which it turns is hollow, and communicates
with a tube. The tube disharges itself into the shaft, to the top
of which is eighty feet above the level of the earth. The vessel
holds five hundred weight, is easily charged, and discharged
by opening the flap, and when charged is made to revolve by
steam-power, eighteen or twenty times. By these revolutions
the stuif is thoroughly mixed and the manure perfected. The
gases given off during the operation escape through the spindle
and tube into the shaft, and disperse themselves high up in the
atmosphere. The compound is better mixed than when done in
the usual way, time, labour and money are also saved.
In consequence of a letter addressed to me in the beginning
of the month, complaining of the stenches emanating from the
premises of Messrs. Ashton and Proctor, near Lavender Dock,
I visited them. The men were making manure in open vessels,
and the smell in the street was so offensive, that remarks thereon
were uttered by almost every passenger. A few days after
my visit the nuisance was discontinued.
To conclude, 1 am of opinion that patent manure may be
made in properly closed vessels without nuisance, and that all
manufacturers of that article, whose premises are offensive to
the neighbouring inhabitants, should be compelled to erect
proper machinery for conducting the operation of mixing in
such a manner that the fetid gases exhaled therefrom be carried
into a high shaft, and if they are still found to be a
nuisance, that they be burned by passing through a coke fire
before escaping into the air.
A statement was made at the last meeting of this Board, that
foul smells, injurious to the health of the neighbours, were given
out from the premises 47 and 48, Lower Queen-street, and that