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10
In the course of our inspections, several underground rooms have
been found inhabited, of these some were only 6-ft. high and wholly
unsuitable to be occupied either as a living room or a sleeping room.
It is not surprising that such cases have escaped the notice of your
two Sanitary Inspectors, notwithstanding their great zeal and
industry, seeing that these two officers have the sanitary charge of
above 7500 houses, and have many other important duties to perform
under your direction besides those of inspection.
Among the most crowded neighbourhoods several nuisances
prejudicial to health have been found to arise from the presence of
noxious or offensive trades either in the houses themselves or their
immediate proximity. We will give a few typical examples:—At
Newman's Buildings Cox' Square, the basement is occupied as a
pickle factory, where fish and vegetables apparently in various
stages of decomposition are salted. In this house, the inmates are
always ill. At 41 Booth St., there is a constant & sickening
stench caused by the furnace of an adjoining brewery, erected close
to the watercloset of the house, the heat probably acting on the
contents of the drains in immediate proximity. At Perry Avenue,
Booth St., a great nuisance arises from a manufactory of cream
cheese, the skimmed milk used for the purpose probably being in a
state of semi-decomposition. At 15 Duke St. the air is rendered
suffocating by the presence in the yard of a large number of portable
potato steamers or ovens heated by charcoal or coke stoves. At 33
Pelham St. there is an open charcoal or coke stove in the yard
at rear without any chimney, the effect being the same as in the case
last described. At 44 Pelham St. there is a permanent smell
from a great manure heap in the stable at rear. There are also
frequent exhalations from the ventilating grates of the sewers in the
neighbourhood of large factories which discharge their refuse
(frequently in a hot condition) into the public sewers. It is suggested
that where these noxious exhalations from sewer ventilators exist,
theventilatinggrates might be stopped up, and upright shafts or pipes
next the houses substituted, similar to those recently adopted by the
City Commissioners of Sewers.
A large number of the houses in your District have been found
so dilapidated as to be absolutely past remedy from a sanitary point
of view. These are either so old, or have been neglected by the
owners for so many years, that they may be considered rotten and
poisonous throughout. The floors, walls and ceilings reek with the
impurities of perhaps half a century of neglect. There are also cases
in which, apart from the rottenness of the structures themselves, the
nature & position of the sanitary arrangements render the houses
unfit for human habitation. We allude to such houses as have their