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issued; eleven houses ventilated ; twenty-nine cesspools emptied
and drained ; eighty-six privies cleansed and repaired ; one hundred
and forty-seven houses limewashed, and disinfectants plentifully
applied to urinals, gullies, and wherever else required. Seventeen
slaughter-houses, ten cow-houses, and twenty-nino bakehouses have
also been regularly inspected. These statistics represent a large
amount of labour, especially on the part of your Inspector, and it
may be fairly presumed that disease has thus been in some measure
prevented, and death robbed of his spoils.
The most urgent wants of the District, however, are not those
which are in the power of this Board to supply. What the laboring
poor require is more room, and more water. There are families in
the District paying 2s. 6d. weekly as rent for single ill-ventilated
back rooms, whose area docs not exceed 9 feet by 8. In such cases
it is useless to dilate upon the benefits and comfort of cleanliness.
Where a family has to wash, cook, work, sleep, and perform all domestic
duties in so small a compass, cleanliness involves a larger
amount of labor than they who are more comfortably situated
generally suppose. They who have to toil all day to procure the
day's food, have but little heart to add labor which, to bo effectual,
requires to be so often repeated. What the laboring poor in a
neighbourhood like this require, is at least two rooms, at a rent proportionate
to their wages. The man with 2s. 6d. or 8s. a day cannot
afford half that amount for house accommodation alone. Only those
whose occupation gives them experience can fully understand the
difficulty the poorer classes, with large families, undergo in procuring
a shelter of any kind. Where the demand is pressing, children are
objected to, and thus, those who require the best accommodation
are from the necessity of their position, compelled to accept the
worst. This over-crowding is one of the most formidable difficulties
your Board has to contend with, and it is not easy to discover a
remedy. The poor themselves consider they are oppressed by the
rich, who, to make money by railways, relentlessly deprive them of
the comforts of their homes, and thus, compel them to reside at a
distance from their work, or submit to an exorbitant price for
inferior and unhealthy accommodation.
It is also found in many parts of the District, that the water
supply is insufficient; in some localities one tap is made to serve
several houses. The water is turned on for a short period of the
day, and the surrounding inhabitants have, within a very limited
time, to store up what they require in pots, pans, tubs, pails, or any
other utensils they may possess. In addition to the inconvenience
of this system, it is stated, that the supply is exceedingly irregular.
It will be readily believed that such a state of things is deleterious
to health, and if, in addition to over-crowded rooms, the poor are
stinted in the supply of that which is most essential to cleanliness, it