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TWENTY-SEVENTH REPORT.
Gentlemen,
At the last meeting of this Board it was remarked, that the
Surrey Consumers' Gas Company had caused certain pipes to be
laid across Rotherhithe-street. I have made these pipes a subject
of special inquiry.
Three pipes have been conducted from the north side of the
premises into the Thames. The first, ten inches in diameter,
and which I have not seen, has been carried to low watermark,
and is pronounced by the officers of the company to take away
the superficial drainage of the works only. The other two, one
being four-and-a-half and the second five inches in diameter,
have no connection whatever with drainage; they open into the
river about three-and-a-half feet below the edge of the wharf,
and are used for loading craft, with coal-tar and the mother
liquor of muriate of ammonia, which was formerly evaporated
on the premises, and is now transported to Bow Common to
undergo that process. This mode of loading a barge by running
the liquids into it, is found less expensive and more convenient
than that previously employed, of bringing them across the road
in wooden vessels.
The stinking effluvia spoken of by several gentlemen as having
arisen from the gas works, during the month of February, have
been traced by me to their proper cause. A thousand or more
tons of coal stored on the premises had spontaneously ignited,
and the fire smouldering from below drove off from the upper
strata into the atmosphere large quantities of impure gas, which
when it first rises from the coal is strongly impregnated with
sulphur and ammonia. In the ordinary process of gas-making
the greater part of these ingredients are deposited in the water
and in the purifiers through which the gas passes before it is
sent out to the consumers.
Two of the Patent Manure makers, the smell of whose premises
had been complained of, have agreed to make any alterations
in the mode of conducting their work, which this Vestry,
through the medium of its officers, may require.
Notices have been served on the owners of the houses mentioned
in the Agenda Paper, and in several the work of improvement
is already in operation.