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ber of the Board carefully to examine Table No. 2, in the appendix of this report,
which points out the unhealthy localities in the district, so that all such places may
receive the earliest and best attention of the Board.
It must not be considered that, because comparatively few deaths from zymotic
diseases are registered in some of these unhealthy places, that I am in error in thus
pointedly alluding to them; for such is the poverty and wretchedness of many of the
inhabitants of these localities, that when suffering from disease, they are removed to
the workhouses, and if death ensue, swell the mortality in these establishments.
Table No. 22, shows the localities where the house-to-house visitation has been
carried out, and the sanitary improvements effected, from which it appears that almost
all the unhealthy spots in the district have received the minute attention of your
Inspectors of Nuisances; 150 places containing 2734 houses have been systematically
visited, and a great improvement has been effected in most of them, by causing the
landlords to construct efficient drainage to those houses where sewers existed within
100 feet of the premises, and where there were no sewers within the prescribed distance,
by giving directions to the landlords to have the houses cleansed and limewhited,
the privies to be emptied, and a better supply of water for domestic use to be
provided; but such is the bad condition of many of the houses and localities inhabited
by the poor, that they ought to be condemned as unfit for human habitation.
We, perhaps, who have been living in the vicinity of these unhealthy spots for
several years, and have had them, from time to time, brought under our notice, either
by official reports, or by actual visitation, are not so sensible of the stiffing atmosphere
which exists in the narrow culs-de-sac surrounded by houses inhabited by a dense
population, as a stranger would be, who for the first time visited them. It is in these
places that typhus fever, and analogous diseases are never absent, and not only are
such diseases always found here, but scrofula, which manifests itself by its destructive
agency in children, by hydrocephalus or water on the brain, by diseases of the
mesenteric glands, by consumption, by ophthalmia, and spinal affections, producing
blindness and deformity; and by other diseases, which if life be prolonged to the adult
state, enfeeble the frame and cause early death ; and the mischief does not stop here,
for if children be born of unhealthy parents, they inherit the same debilitated constitutions,
and perish prematurely. The state in which the poor in this vast city are
lodged, calls for the most earnest attention on the part of the community generally,
and those in authority particularly, to endeavour to ameliorate the sanitary condition
of their habitations ; and in order to do this, the courts and alleys must be paved,
the sewerage and drainage rendered perfect, the water supply considerably improved,
the overcrowding prevented, and the culs-de-sac converted into thoroughfares.
It is true, that of late years a good deal has been done to improve the sanitary
condition of the metropolis. Parks have been formed, burial grounds closed, new
streets opened, the common lodging-houses inspected, and placed under the surveillance
of the police, trades' nuisances abated, more wholesome water provided, better pavement
laid down, improved cleansing of thoroughfares and bye places carried
into effect, and the sewerage considerably extended, &c.; yet, unless improved