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32
General experience shows that such unexpected occurrences are
common. That there is clanger, although the evil may be long
deferred, was manifested in some dwellings of a street extending
from Hoxton Street to Kingsland Road. The houses themselves
seemed, in many respects, to be desirable residences, but it was reported
to me that typhoid fever had occurred in house No. 67, in November,
1875, and again in March, 1876, and a third case of fever in May,
1876.
On visiting this house, the tenants complained that for many
months past they had been much annoyed by very offensive smells
ascending, they thought, from the back wall and by the side of the
fire-place adjoining the back wall. The closet in the yard was situated
immediately in contact with the wall of the house and about two or
three feet from the fire-place referred to. Beneath the closet pan was
an open brick shaft from which a brick drain extended under the floor
of the back parlor, in front of the fire-place into the street. The
portion of this brick drain near the fire-place was very dilapidated and
leaking. The rain-water pipe ended in this shaft; and the other end
of the pipe was on a level with the top of the bedroom window; and
the statements of the tenant left no doubt that very offensive sewage
gases ascended this pipe and passed into the bedroom. But there were
other dangerous conditions; the brick drain, which had scarcely any
fall, discharged itself into a large receiver situated under the pavement
of the street. There were several of these receivers along the street,
each receiving the sewage from the houses. These receivers overflowed
into the large brick drain which entered the parish sewer in Hoxton
Street. Many of these house-drains were found to be almost completely
filled up by sewage accumulations more or less solidified. And the
drain coming from the house No. 69, in which seven cases of fever
had occurred, was, at its outlet into the receiver, almost completely
occluded by the solid accumulation. In these premises, therefore, were
conditions most favorable for very active chemical decomposition, heat,
moisture, animal substances, and defective ventilation; and such
decomposition, must have afforded the germs of disease ample opportunities
for unlimited multiplication. And the air in the earth under
houses, warmed by the fire, must have ascended into the rooms,