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9
Warehouses.
On the complaint of Mr. Perks I went to his house, in Rotherhithe
Street, on the 21st February. A most nauseous and disgusting
stench of putrefying vegetable matter pervaded the whole
dwelling, and was particularly offensive in the drawing-room,
situated on the first floor. The next building to the house being
used as a warehouse for oil-cake and other matters, I was led to
examine it, and there found a large quantity of damaged rape-seed
in a state of fermentation and much heated. A notice was duly
served on Mr. Fisher, the occupier of the warehouse, and the rapeseed
was in consequence removed. On the 23rd February I again
proceeded to the house of Mr. Perks, and found the smell much
diminished, but not altogether gone. I shall again give my attention
to this matter.
Dwellings of the Poor.
On the 22nd of February, I proceeded to view a two-roomed
tenement in Seven-Step Alley, (No. 1) reported to be in a filthy state.
I entered the ground floor only, I counted ten individuals in the
room when I went in, (one being absent) three adults and seven children.
One woman was lying on the ground on a wretched bed, with
two half naked children beside her, one of which appeared to be sick.
I have seldom, in the practice of my calling, witnessed such a scene
of filth, squalid wretchedness, and degradation.
I must again repeat my conviction, that no cause in a large city
tends more to generate disease, than open cesspools, uncovered
ditches, foul privies, and such like nuisances. To bear out this
assertion, I will cite another example, drawn from the parish of
Rotherhithe, in addition to those cited in my last report.
During the epidemic of cholera in 1849, ten persons died of the
disease in the group of ten houses called Dodd's Place, (Clarence
Street), with a population of about fifty souls. There existed then an
open ditch before the houses, which had originally been a fish pond,
but had become a stagnant morass, from the pipe communicating
with the river having become obstructed. After the epidemic, the
ditch was filled up, and when the cholera re-appeared in 1854, only
three persons were attacked in Dodd's Place, and no one died, and
the spot has been since 1849 remarkably free from all disease.
This fact is interesting, because Dodd's Place had not then, nor has
it now, either drainage or water supply, and the mortality seems to
have been entirely connected with the open ditch, the other circumstances
remainins; unaltered.
Mortality of the Month.
The number of deaths during the month of February, has rather exceeded
the average (thirty-three and a third). Thirty-eight deaths
B