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19
SANITARY CONDITION OF THE PARISH.
Report of the Chief Sanitary Inspector.
Gentlemen,
In submitting the annual Report of work carried out by
your Inspectors, allow me to state a few facts. Although there have
not been so many open cesspools abolished as last year, yet that is not
caused by lack of vigilance in your Inspectors, but to the fact of nearly
their total abolition in their open state.
I cannot let this pass without saying a word respecting cesspools. I
have good reasons for saying that there are a very large number of
cesspools still existing, and no doubt at some time or other orders have
been served upon the owners to abolish them, but instead thereof, they
have been covered over with boards or stone, or bason and trap fixed
on the covering and there left. Cases of this kind have lately come
under your Inspectors' attention.
Cesspools in this form are most dangerous to the inhabitants of the
houses where they exist, also to the surrounding properties, in proof of
this I will mention two cases of the most recent occurrence. In a house
in Union Street, Nile Street, last spring, there were two cases of Typhus
Fever, upon inspection the house was found in a fair state of repair, for
that class of property. An order was served to cleanse and whitewash
the house throughout, disinfect bedding and clothing contained in the
room where the fever existed, also limewhite walls of yard and trap the
drain. The whole was done. Nothing further transpired until the
early part of this year, when Typhus again visited this house. Four
persons were taken with it. In one case a fatal termination ensued.
Upon examining the premises my suspicion was aroused. Search
was made and an old cesspool was discovered in front of closet-door, that
had been covered up for years. In Westmoreland place, almost a
similar case occurred. Two persons were striken with fever, and upon
examination of the house a large cesspool was discovered, partially
covered up.
Sooner or later these old cesspools will be the cause of a serious outbreak
of typhoid fever, and may perhaps prove a serious epidemic.