View report page

5
SIXTEENTH REPORT.
Gentlemen,
At the request of several members of this Vestry, I turned my
attention to the Railway Arches situated in the Parish of Rotherhithe,
and to the trades nd manufactures carried on in them. The
number of arches of the Greenwich Railway in Rotherhithe is
one hundred and twenty-five. At the date of my last visit (15th
April) seventy-two were empty, ten occupied as stables, carpenter's
shops, private dwellings, or by persons in business not
requiring the surveillance of your Officers. Two were tenanted
by patent varnish makers, two, to which I could not gain
admission, were supposed by the Inspector to be used by oil
boilers, from a sort of chimney or shaft being connected with
one of them, but of this fact I am not certain. Three arches
are let to enamellers and makers of American cloth, thirteen to
Messrs. Pullinger and Rattenbury, oil cloth and table cover
makers, and twenty to patent manure makers, who have converted
some of them into factories, and others into store-rooms,
for the filthy ingredients of which their manure is composed.
All the above numbers are given approximatively. Every
arch, with the exception of three or four which are locked up,
and whose tenants were absent, was entered and carefully
examined by me and notes taken on the spot, relatively to the
nature of the trade carried on in it.
The arches in the occupation of the oil cloth makers,
enamellers, and varnish makers, smelt strongly of turpentine
and such like substances used by them. The nuisance in these
trades is occasioned by the boiling of linseed oil; even this,
however, may be done innocuously where a proper apparatus is
erected for the burning of the vapour as it rises from the boiling
liquid. Such apparatus exists on the premises of Messrs.
Pullinger and Rattenbury, and was mentioned in my last
Report. Mr. Sanders declares that he has been often present
while the oil was being boiled on the premises, and that no
nauseous smell was perceptible. I entertain, however, strong
suspicions that oil boiling is effected clandestinely in the open
air in the vicinity of the Railway Arches, from the discovery in
a field near St. Helena-lane of a fireplace sunk in the earth, and
of a pot which had evidentlybeen recently used for the purpose
above-named. The vigilance of the Inspector was invited to
this fact.
The manufactory of patent manure is always a nuisance.
The nuisance is, however, much mitigated by the employment of
calcined bone. Under the Railway Arches calcined bune is not