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flagged and the other not. The flagged court and the houses were dry and
clean; the unflagged court and houses were both filthy. In one of these
courts the water happened to be on at the time. The people had filled a
few small tubs, and the water was running to waste. I measured the quantity.
and found it to be about four gallons a minute.
" With few exceptions, all the courts I inspected along the line of
streets already mentioned are in an unhealthy condition. They have either
no flagged surface, or it has been broken up. The water supply is very
defective. There is no house drainage. There are open privies and cesspools
which the people said they could never keep clean. There are numerous
nuisances on the surface of the courts, such as refuse, house soil, foul water
in holes, trenches, and channels. The structure of many of these courts is
so complicated, and so opposed to the possibility of ventilation, that it is
surprising to witness the amount of perverse ingenuity which has been spent
in their erection. Such places as Three-tun-alley, Goulston-court, and Irishcourt,
at the top of Goulston-street, Boar's-head-yard, and the courts out of
Petticoat-lane, and many others, are hardly suitable for human dwellings
in their existing state.
" At the present time scarlet fever of a typhoid character prevails to
some extent over the northern portion of Whitechapel Union, and is traced
by the'medical officers to distinct localising causes in not a few instances.
" Mr. Hart mentioned an instance in which he had had five cases and
one death from this disease in a house over a stable in a court.
" Mr. Champneys stated that scarlet fever prevails where the cleansing
is defective, and he mentioned that the disease had been prevalent in Princesstreet,
near the gulley grates of the sewers.
" Mr. Nash, who attends in the opposite side of Princes-street, mentioned
the same fact to me, and attributed it to the same cause. He also
connected the prevalence of scarlet fever with nuisances, and gave as an
illustration that he had several cases in a house behind which pigs are kept.
" It is not only the poorest class of property which presents defective
sanitary conditions. There are a number of streets of a better class at the
east end of this same division of Whitechapel called Finch-street, Little
Halifax-street, John's-strect, Luntley-place, Dowson's-place, &c., which are
wide and well ventilated, but there is no drainage and no paving. The surface
of the street consists of earth, and was covered with ruts in which
water was laying. The lowest rooms are entirely below the level of the
street. The houses are furnished with cesspools." The cesspools are now all
abolished, the courts are better paved, and the water supply is very good.
" Another illustration of the same kind exists in the south part of
Whitechapel. A number of very good well-built houses, with wide wellarranged
streets, called Tenter-street, of which there are four of the same
name, Newnham-street, &c., are unpaved, and some cannot be cleansed
because there is no paving, and the surface is covered with ruts and hollows."
These streets are now well paved and drained.