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187
Barnet District Council in 1904, namely, that in enacting Section 19 of
the Public Health Acts Amendment Act of 1890 an omission was made
which rendered that section inconsistent with the provisions of the
Public Health Act, 1875. Since then the Courts have been endeavouring
to reconcile the irreconcilable, and, owing to the varying arrangement
of the drainage of the different groups of houses, the general
principles which the Court of Appeal appears to have adopted for its
guidance are not such as can be applied with any certainty to new
cases offering new features.
By Section 4, Public Health Act, 1875, the word "drain" is defined
as "any drain of and used for the drainage of one building only or
premises within the same curtilage"; the word "sewer" includes
"sewers and drains of every description, except drains to which the
word drain interpreted as aforesaid applies."
It is clear from these definitions, and was so decided in the case of
Tavis v. Uttley (1894), that the common pipe or conduit conveying the
drainage of two or more houses is a sewer repairable by the local
authority and not by the owner or owners upon whose premises the
pipe may happen to be.
The lines A, B, in the sketches below are two typical examples of
sewers constantly found in the drainage arrangements of ordinary
dwelling houses.
m2