View report page

8
covered sewers for the relief of their noses. Nor was it any part of
Mr. Ranger's or the General Board's policy to soften the blow; as might
so easily have been done either by comparing Tottenham with many other
"suburban towns" which, when tested by an inquiry, had proved even more
sanitarily rotten or by contrasting its annual death rate of 17.5per 1,000
of the inhabitants with the rates of, say, the City of London or all England,
namely, nearly 30 and 22 respectively.
On the other hand, when it came to a question of prescribing "remedies",
as he called them, Mr. Ranger made it very much his business to play down
the difficulties and the financial implications. Tottenham, he understood,
lay over "an inexhaustible supply of water well adapted for every
domestic purpose" in the sand stratum between the clay and the chalk;
in view of the natural pressure of this supply, once deep wells had been
sunk "only a very moderate expenditure of engine power will be required
for delivering a constant supply of water to every house at all times, as
by night as by day, for domestic use and baths without the trouble of filtering
or cost of reservoirs." Drainage and sewerage of the whole parish
could be arranged on a two-fold plan; in which surface water would be run
into the Moselle and other streams on the one hand while the ample water
supply would enable the sewage to be flushed along in twelve inch tubular
main sewers to the river meadows and the marshes where, by a system of
irrigation, the liquid manure would greatly improve and enhance the value
of the land. As for house drainage, a figure of £2. 5s. 0d. per house
or less than three farthings a week per house if spread over as an improvement
rate-would provide sink, syphon-tap and pipes including, a rainwater
drop-pipe, head and trap to every two houses Paving for the fronts and
backs of tenements might be had at a farthing a week by using "the new
asphalt, " which cost so much less than Yorkshire stone. In fact, when
aggregated in an improvement rate the cost of all these benefits should
not exceed fourpence a week per house.
These modest and dream-like estimates of Mr, Ranger's no doubt served
his immediate purpose by disarming any opposition to reform on the grounds
of ruinous rates, but subsequently they seriously embarrassed the Local
Board by providing a legitimate loophole for discontent among the ratepayers
when the true costs came to be assessed.
In regard to the constitutional details of the proposed Tottenham
Local Board of Health, Mr. Ranger recommended, and the Order in Council
later confirmed, that the Board should consist of nine members - of whom
three were to retire each year - being "residential inhabitants seized
or possessed of real or personal estate or not less than £1,000 or rated
to the relief of the poor upon an annual value of not less than £30."
With the sizeof the Board set low in this way, with the qualifications for
membership set high - as high as the Act permitted - and having regard to
the weighted and graded system of electoral votes prescribed by the Act,
whereby an owner occupier might amass up to twelve votes in his own name,
Tottenham society could have the comfort of feeling that responsibility