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District Board who will, as soon as the purchase is completed,
form and maintain it.
But, notwithstanding these improvements, and they are
very great and important, a constant water supply has not
been furnished to the district, and the dirty water cistern
still remains. An ordinary jug is kept scrupulously clean,
but the cistern, hidden in some obscure nook in the house, is
seldom attended to.
In most instances the domestic drainage is the same.
The sinks and baths and lavatories still communicate with the
drains, and sewer gases obtrude their poisonous vapours
through these channels into dwelling houses. Unventilated
soil pipes are still constructed within dwelling houses, and not
only are the gases from putrefactive fermentation sucked into
houses by the exhaust of warmth, but as a series of houses
all communicate with the same sewer, contagious germs from
one house may find their entrance into others, and thus
epidemic disease be spread.
The Board of Works have had this important matter
before them, and, in concurrence with their Medical Officer,
published the following suggestions on House Drainage.
The Board of Works for the Lewisham District.
SUGGESTIONS ON HOUSE DRAINAGE, &c.
The Board bags earnestly to draw the attention of all householders to the
imperative necessity of attending to the following suggestions in order to secure,
as far as possible, freedom from epidemic disease.
1. That all house drains should be ventilated by the soil pipes being earned
up to the roof "f the house and discharging foul air clear of windows, chimnies,
or other openings; or if it be found to be inconvenient to carry the soil pipe up
to the roof, that the drains be ventilated by means of a separate pipe from the
highest point of the sewer outside the building, and carried up the walls of the
house to the roof, discharging foul air in a similar manner.
2. That waste water pipes, whether from cisterns, tanks, baths, sinks, or
other places, should not discharge into the soil pipe or water closet traps, but
either at once into the opeu air, or into a waste water pipe falling into an open
receiver, outside the house ; such receiver to be open at the top, or covered with
an iron grating, the pipe from the open receiver to the sewer being properly
trapped.