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for several months, notwithstanding that considerable efforts were
made to remedy it. Many of the superficial springs in Rotherhithe,
are strongly impregnated with salts of iron.
During the past month, no less than sixty-eight deaths were registered,
the largest monthly mortality recorded for several years.
The increase is entirely due to an epidemic of measles, complicated
with inflammatory affections of the lungs, and air passages, and which
has carried off no less than eighteen children. I noticed in a previous
report, that Rotherhithe had been for six months, almost entirely
free from epidemic disease, and that the measles were imported
into Hanover-street, by an Irishwoman on her return from hopping
in Kent. From Hanover-street, the malady has spread itself all
over the parish, and carried grief into the bosom of many families.
There have been also two deaths from fever; one from hooping cough,
and one from scarlatina.
Yours respectfully,
Februry, 1858. W. MURDOCH.
TWENTY-SIXTH REPORT.
Gentlemen,
Repeated complaints have been made to me of the stenches arising
from the Surrey Consumers' Gas Works in Rotherhithe-street, to
which I must give the answer, given by me on a former occasion
under similar circumstances, namely, that no method has yet been
discovered of carrying on the fabrication of coal-gas without smell,
that almost every operation in gas making, such as drawing the
retorts, emptying the purifiers, slaking the coke, &c., &c., is accompanied
by hydro-sulphurous exhalations; that these exhalations
circulate in the atmosphere round the factory, and are transported
some distance by the winds, and that the hydro-sulphurous gas acts
upon all metallic substances, covering them with a black coating,
and is fatal to vegetable life, hence the disease and death of nearly
all plants in the immediate neighbourhood of gas works. Gas
factories ought never to be allowed near houses, but as they are
there, and established by Act of Parliament, all that a sanitary
officer can do, is to exercise vigilance, and prevent as much as
possible, smells arising from neglect or not immediately connected
with the legitimate process of gas making.
Gas companies, like other manufacturers, naturally seek to turn
to account all their products, hence the making of the sulphate and
the muriate of ammonia, described in my previous reports. Sulphate
of ammonia is still made at the Surrey Consumers' Gas Works, and
I have reason to believe, that some of the stenches complaincd of,