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premises in Rotherhithe-street, from the manufacture of patent
manure. The manufacture was carried on during the night.
These premises are too small and too confined for the processes
connected with patent manure making to be carried out without
annoyance to the neighbourhood, a notice was served, and the
nuisance has ceased for the present.
I have frequently visited the Burial Ground of All Saints, and
have always found the graves of the depth recommended by the
Trustees.
Thirty-four death's were registered last month, showing a mortality
considerably under the average. The Parish is at this moment
healthy, and remarkably free from epidemic disease.
Yours respectfully,
April, 1859. W. MURDOCH.
FORTIETH REPORT.
Gentlemen,
At that part of Rotherhithe where the Brighton and Greenwich
lines of Railway diverge from each other, eight or nine arches of the
former (Brighton) have been let to a patent-manure maker. Passengers
arriving from Greenwich or London at the Commercial
Dock Station are continually complaining of the foul effluvia
evolved from those arches. During the past month they have been
frequently visited by the Inspector of Nuisances and myself. All
sorts of filthy substances are accumulated under them, bones, horns,
hoofs, pigeon's dung, fish and hair with the animal matter adhering
to it, just as it is scraped off the hides by the tanners, and the heaps
of these substances smell very disagreeably, and when in the process
of manufacture of manure, sulphuric acid is poured upon them and
powdered coprolite, an indescribably suffocative stench arises. Under
the Railway Arches this is done in an open wooden vessel.
I have frequently expressed my opinion to this Board as to the
manufacture of manure, viz.: that it can only be tolerated on large
open premises, in closed vessels, with a proper apparatus to burn
the exhaled gases and a high shaft to carry off the products of the
combustion. None of these conditions exist under the Railway
Arches. A notice was served, which was followed by a summons.
Under the arches Nos. 512, 513, and 514 of the Greenwich
Railway, there is an accumulation of sugar scum, and greaves or
refuse from the soap-boilers, which smells offensively. The arch No.
469 is peculiarly situated, half of it being in Deptford and half in