View report page

19
That this Vestry is desirous of impressing upon your Board, that this sewer from
the low level thereof and most imperfect outlet, is very different from other sewers of
the Metropolis which have a good fall, and where the sewage runs quickly away
upon the ebb of the tide, while this sewer remains for a considerable period increasing
in contents but not discharging (it being in fact nothing less than an enormous cesspool),
from which there is a continuous emission of vapour, composed of an accumulation
of most dangerous gases.
That the Medical Officer of Health, and all the Medical Gentlemen of this
Parish, are constantly complaining of the danger to the health of the Inhabitants,
arising from this sewer, the gases from which are the most deleterious of all gases,
and they have warned the Vestry that these shafts must materially affect the health
of the residents, and also that, should this Parish be visited with any epidemic, the
results in the locality of this sewer will, in all probability, prove most severe and fatal.
This Vestry, under a sense of the very deep responsibility that attaches to it,
earnestly requests the immediate consideration of your Board, to this
most important subject, and urge that prompt measures should be adopted
to remove the very serious evils, and nuisances, now inflicted upon the
Inhabitants, and which this Vestry suggest might be at once partially
mitigated, by providing at a comparatively small cost, a proper penstock
at the junction of the Deptford-road Sewer with the Earl Sewer, and the
stopping up of the large air-openings recently formed.
The Corporate seal affixed by
order of the Vestry, on the L. S.
22nd February, 1859.
(Signed) R. Shafto Hawks,
Clerk.
APPENDIX (No. 2).
TO THE HONOURABLE THE COMMONS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT
BRITAIN AND IRELAND IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED.
The Humble Petition of the Vestry of Rotherhithe, in the County of Surrey.
Sheweth.—That the Parish of Rotherhithe contains by estimation nearly twenty
thousand persons, and that there are about three thousand three hundred houses in the
Parish.
That there is a low level sewer running through Paradise-row and the Deptford
Lower-road, being a portion of the Parish of Rotherhithe which is most densely
populated.