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34
hood; nothing indicating that the outbreak had been produced by
polluted water, or milk, and no contagion could be traced. The causes
of the fever seemed confined to the premises of this house. The
tenants complained that they had been much annoyed by "offensive
smells," coming seemingly from under the yard door, more especially
when they were coming down stairs in the morning. In the day
time the nuisance was much less noticeable. The yard of this house
was well paved, the closet pan clean and seemingly well constructed.
Being satisfied from the statements given that there was something
injurious in the condition of the drain, the Owner was required to
take up the paving and expose the drain. In doing this, a large
cesspool filled with sewage was discovered, covered over by the flagstones.
It would seem that in the night, the colder air currents flowing through
the ground had driven the sewage gases onwards under the flagstones
until they reached the interior of the house.
Not only was the health of the inhabitants of the parish endangered
by the presence of a large number of old, decayed, leaking brick drains,
but it was endangered also by many new drains which had been carelessly
laid, regardless even of elementary mechanical principles. Their
joints leaked, and in some places the pipes had been simply laid end
to end, neither cement nor clay applied to keep in the seweage gases
and liquids; and the pipes of some new drains had been connected at
right angles to other drains, consequently the sewage streams meeting
each other at right angles blocked one another, and favored deposition,
which sooner or later choked up the drain and drove the gases back
into the dwellings.
Although in Shoreditch there has not been, at least during the
past ten years, any severe and wide spread outbreak of typhoid fever,
yet many cases occur yearly in the parish: and other epidemic diseases,
namely, small pox and scarlet fever especially, the spread of which it
is admitted is aided by the presence of decomposing animal matters,
have, on more than one occasion in the last decade, prevailed disproportionately
in Shoreditch; and in dwellings where the drains are
defective, it is common to find not only that there has been typhoid
but also other infectious diseases.