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36
SOME SANITARY SHORTCOMINGS.
A very unsatisfactory feature in nearly all the houses of the district is the arrangement
of the domestic water supply, one cistern alone usually placed over the water closet,
servh both for the flushing of the closet and the supply of water for drinking and
cooking purposes.
Whatever may be the character of the water supplied by the Kent and Southwark
Companies, and it is admittedly capable of improvement, it is evident that effluvia
from the closet passing up the flushing pipe, as well as permeating the ceiling in many
houses, must have a very deleterious influence. If a constant and adequate supply could
always be depended upon, so that the household supply could be drawn direct from the
service pipes, one cistern, for closet purposes only, might suffice; but with the present
arrangements of the Water Company this is not practicable, and a second cistern for
household purposes, disconnected from the closet cistern, is imperatively necessary. In
some instances the closet is placed beneath a bed room, with a trap door for access to
the polluted cistern cut in the bed room floor. The water is thus further polluted by
the various emanations given off by the occupants of the bed room, who in their turn
are exposed to the poisonous gases generated by the fermention of this impure
water. A more disgusting and unhealthy arrangement could hardly have been
designed.
The house drainage also too often shows equally dangerous defects, sinning against
all sanitary axioms, such as—
Internal drains, without ventilation, slopstones connected directly to the closet
drains, with no other pretence of safety than a bell trap at the sink, which is rarely of
any service even when in its place, and is generally laid aside to facilitate the speedier
pouring away of the dirty water. Iron yard grids usually corroded. The drains
indifferentlv laid, with small attention to a regular fall, in loose earth, instead of being
laid in puddled clay or concrete, sharp bends and right angled junctions instead of gentle
curves. These faults are found everywhere, and the very yard surface is usually of
pervious loose earth, instead of being flagged or concreted in an impervious manner.
The dust bins are of bad construction, and not unfrequently drinking water baths are
erected upon them.
It is much to be regretted that in laying building plots a back passage has not
been provided behind every street, as usual elsewhere, so that coals, and especially the
refuse of the dust bins, need not be carried through the house, with consequent dirt,
discomfort, and annoyance; and what is of more importance, the drains should have
been laid along the passage, avoiding the necessity of passing under the houses to the
main sewer in the street, as is now done everywhere in Manchester. Failing this, the
lesh remedy is a new form of cast iron pipe for sewage, recommended by Mr. Rawlinson.
Rotherhithe, however, is no worse for house sanitary arrangements than more
favoured parts of London.