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7
I am to call the attention of the Vestry to the 49th section of
the Sanitary Act, 1866, and to state that the Secretary of State
hopes that by prompt attention to the removable sources of nuisances
and disease specified by the Deputation, and described in this
Memorial, the Vestry will render it unnecessary for the Secretary of
State further to exercise the powers vested in him by the 49th
section of the Sanitary Act, 1866. He will be glad to receive from
the Vestry a report on the nuisances specified in the Memorial, and
a statement of the steps taken under their direction, with respect to
these nuisances.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) T. TAYLOR.
The Vestry Clerk,
Clerkenwell.
[enclosure.]
To the Right Honorable Spencer H. Walpole, Her Majesty's
Secretary of State for the Home Department.
We the Deputation which waited on you this day, beg most respectfully
to bring under your notice the Sanitary condition of Bitt's
Alley, Frying Pan Alley, Rose Alley, Lamb Square, Broad Yard, and
Union Place, situated in Turnmill Street, near the Farringdon Road
Station of the Metropolitan Railway, in the District of Cow Cross,
in the Parish of Clerkenwell :
Some of the places above mentioned are blind alleys, so that
when fever comes, a frequent visitant, it is difficult to arrest its
progress for want of that free current of air obtained only in
thoroughfares.
There is but one privy for forty families, the average number
residing in each alley, and the soil may sometimes be seen running
down into the main thoroughfares, a state of things revolting to a
more refined condition of society.
In Broad Yard, a privy is within six yards of a room where
both parents have recently died from Cholera, leaving five orphans
unprovided for, and in close proximity to this privy six other persons
have been attacked with Cholera, five of whom have also died.
There is only one really efficient dust-bin for the whole of the
alleys, and very recently the contractor refused to take away some
dust until the Vestry paid him more money, and a neighbour had it
removed, defraying the charge from his own purse.
The water supply is not as it should be; it is turned on for halfan-hour
daily, and is conveyed to the houses through small pipes,