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90
7 & 8, NORWICH ROAD, and 62 & 63, REGENT'S ROW.—
Complaint having been received that the basement of the
house No. 8, Norwich Road, was flooded with sewage, an inspection
was made, and it was found that sewage had accumulated
to a height of 12-in. on the floor of the scullery, or wash-house.
Notices to rectify the drains, yards, water closets, and provide
dustbins, &c., were served, and work was commenced, but
carried on in a very dilatory way, the work done moreover was
of the most unsatisfactory character. The Committee having
visited the premises and inspected the defective work of drainlaying—ordered
the premises to be entered under the powers
given by the Metropolis Local Management Acts. This was
done and the works executed by the Vestry's Contractor in the
most satisfactory manner.
I may mention that the measure of the dangerous conditions
existing in these houses was not fully ascertained until the
builder commenced operations, when it was discovered that the
combinations of house drains, and the main drain into which
they discharge, were all of the most defective and dangerous
character. Many of the pipes were only broken fragments
choked with sewage and soddening the ground in which they
were laid. Where junction pipes should have been provided for
connecting branch drains, there were instead only roughly broken
holes in the receiving pipes on which the branch pipes were laid,
some of the sewage thus passed into the receiving pipes, but
much of it went into the ground. It was also discovered at No.
8, Norwich Road, that the closet was not trapped, that the pan
was fixed merely in the eye of a junction pipe. As this closet
and some of the closets of the other houses are built within the
walls of the sculleries, and as the doors opened into the sculleries
it was obvious, in the absence of proper traps, that sewer gas
could flow uninterruptedly into the houses. The closets were
moroover very defectively lighted, defectively supplied with
water, and consequently filthy. Acting in accordance with the
Committee's instruction I directed the doorway of the closet in
the scullery of No. 8, Norwich Road, to be bricked up and a