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34
The cleansing, whitewashing, and repairing of houses, is an
important item of our labours; not merely because these processes
improve the appearance of houses, and give them an air
of comfort; not merely because they remove the accumulated
filth of years; but because they remove also, or neutralise those
faint poisonous animal emanations, which, in the crowded
dwellings of the poor, cling to the surface of the ill-ventilated
rooms; and because, moreover, they tend to destroy those
dangerous influences which infectious fevers engender, and
which remain frequently for a considerable period, after the
fevers, which have produced them, have themselves disappeared.
But of all the improvements which have been accomplished,
those dependent on the filling up of cesspools, and the carrying
out of proper drainage works are the most important. Of all the
abominations which disgrace and pollute the dwellings of the
poor, the imperfect, rarely-emptied, and overflowing cesspools,
are by far the worst. Placed generally in confined situations,
frequently adjoining, and sometimes actually within the houses,
their fluid contents soak into the surrounding soil, contaminating
the water of springs; saturate the adjacent walls, diffusing
through them a fœtid moisture which rises sometimes to the
ceiling; and even overflow their margins, producing stagnant
putrid pools beneath the very floors. And thus they pollute
not merely the soil, but the water which that soil furnishes for
drink; thus they not merely poison the atmosphere without,
but pour their emanations constantly, silently, deadly, into the
interior of the houses themselves. I am not here drawing from
imagination; not a fact, not a line is caricatured; every horror
which I have indicated has its original even now within this