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6
It must be borne in mind that these figures apply to 53 weeks for
1879 against 52 weeks for the previous year.
I cannot say that I am content with this stationary condition of
things. We are only holding our ground, while we ought to be
diminishing our mortality. Certainly it is in each year a little less
than the general Metropolitan rate, but I should like Bethnal Green
to be something more than an average London parish. We have a
gravelly soil, wide, well paved roads, good sewers, a fine public
park, and few offensive trades carried on in our inidst; still the
insalubrious condition of many of our houses (and not always the
smallest ones) remains a patent fact, and undoubtedly keeps up the
death-rate. The drainage arrangements of many houses are as bad as
they can well be, leaky and unventilated. What we are endeavouring
to abolish as much as possible just now are sinks in washhouses communicating
with foul drains, and inside closets badly placed, or not
thoroughly ventilated. These we get altered as soon as we discover
them, but Sanitary Officers are not ubiquitous, and unless cases of bad
drainage and defective sanitary arrangements are reported to us in
time, they are frequently not discovered till the mischief is done, and
a death from fever in the Registrars' weekly returns draws our attention
to the locality. If people would only learn the A B C of Sanitary
science, keep out drain air and open their windows so as to let in fresh
air, we should have fewer deaths and a healthier population.
It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the owners of house
property that it is not sufficient merely to trap a drain; if that drain
have an opening inside the house it should be ventilated by a pipe
continuous with some portion of it carried right above the eaves, and
left wide open. If a proper trap with an air inlet be placed between
the house drain and the sewer so much the better, but sewer air is not so
bad as it is represented, and is always infinitely better than that of small
pipe drains. The sewer is well ventilated, frequently flushed, and fairly
clean, so that wc cannot do better than strive to obtain a similar
condition of things in our small pipe drains, which, from the vile
manner in which they are frequently laid and arranged, are often
little better than tubular cesspools pouring their foetid effluvium into
our dwellings.