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35
with stone or cement concrete, to keep the ground under,
and adjoining the houses as dry as possible; the pavement
of 148 other houses was repaired, and 258 dust-bins
were erected.
HOUSE DEAINAGE.—Year by year adds to the large experience
already acquired, shewing that the drains in a very large
number of the dwellings of the parish have been for many
years in a dangerous condition; many of the drains
removed during the year were old decayed leaking brick
structures, saturating the ground under and around the
houses with decomposing organic matters—aiding the outbreak
and advance of disease. Other drains were so badly
laid, without proper fall, that their channel had become
narrowed and filled up with solidifying sewage deposit,
and sewer gases were forced up into the dwellings.
In one instance the drains of the seventeen houses of
Hutley Place, throughout their course, were blocked
with sewage matters; the drain, the Inspector reports,
appeared to have been laid in the most thoughtless
and improvident manner; straight pipes were placed where
curved ones should have been used; brick receivers were
found which tended largely to check the flow of sewage,
and no attempt seemed to have been made to seal the
joints of the pipes, indeed some of the pipes had open
spaces between them, and the leakage from them had
softened the foundations to such an extent that the
front and back walls of the houses Nos. 3 and 4, and the
outhouses of Nos. 12 and 13 had settled down and
bulged so dangerously that the Metropolitan Board
ordered them to be taken down and rebuilt.
The Sanitary Inspector's time has, to a great extent,
been occupied in examining' into the conditions of drains,
and in seeing that the new drains ordered were properly con-