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drawing-, so to speak, the sewage gases from the leaking drains.
Further, owing to the accumulation of solid matter in the drains,
produced by want of proper fall and by the filling of the receiver, the
sewage vapours and gases must have been subjected to much varying
pressure as the liquids passed down the drain, and the gases thereby
driven through the defective joints of the pipes into the dwellings.
And the air in the stack pipe, colder and heavier at night, descending
into the drain, must have been an additional means driving the sewage
substances from the leaking drains into the house.
These details are here given because they illustrate dangers to which
many persons have been, and doubtless are still, exposed, and although
their like is familiar to every Sanitary Authority, yet so long as typhoid
fever, an admittedly avoidable disease, and its allies, continue to recur
often like a scourge, and that even in houses clean and attractive
looking, attention has to be directed to the causes. It is no
exaggeration to say, like a scourge, when three, four, five, or more
persons in a house are stricken down with typhoid fever in a few weeks.
The authorities of King's College Hospital reported to your
Medical Officer that five persons suffering from typhoid fever had been
admitted into the hospital from a house in Albion Road, Ilaggerstone.
When this house was first examined there was nothing calling attention
to the drain, excepting that the sink-pipe in the back kitchen was
untrapped; but when this pipe was exposed and traced it was found
that it ended in a cesspool which was situated under the closet, and
partly under the back kitchen floor, This cesspool was filled with
thick, black sewage matters which had partly flowed away and saturated
the ground under the kitchen; consequently the warmer air of the
house, ascending and "drawing," whilst the colder external air pressed
on this sewage accumulation, the decomposing sewage matters must have
been driven into the dwelling, especially in the night. From another
dwelling in Hoxton, about three years ago, five persons were removed
to the fever hospital suffering from typhoid fever. On examining
this house I found it in a fair condition as regards cleanliness and
general arrangements. But the fever was strictly a house outbreak:
I could obtain no particulars of other cases of fever in the