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12
Most of the substances used have either of themselves a disagreeable
smell, or at any rate, give off one when acted upon by the
sulphuric acid; but the fetid effluvium, consisting of phosphuretted
and sulphuretted hydrogen, and other stinking gases, arises worst
at the moment of the last sprinkling, just before the manure is
withdrawn from under the machinery.
Such a manufacture must necessarily give rise to offensive exhalations
and cannot be otherwise than injurious to the health of the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood. I think that it ought not to be
carried on within the precincts of a large city.
On the 17th March I was informed that the houses, 6, 7 and 8,
Kenning's Buildings, had but one privy in common. 1 inspected
the place on the same day. These dwellings have large yards in
which three privies originally existed, one for each house; but the
cesspools having become filled, the landlord thought proper to cause
all the yards to communicate, and has built a wooden privy for the
three houses, tenanted by twenty-three persons. The door of this
privy is always open, and was without fastening of any kind at
the time of my visit to it.
It being part of my duty to report to you on the condition of the
residences of the humbler classes, I beg to state, that in my various
sanitary perambulations throughout this extensive parish, I have
not been able to discover a single case in which an underground
kitchen or cellar has been let out as a sleeping apartment; so
that we are free from one nuisance so common in many of the
overcrowded parishes of this great metropolis. But I should not
be doing justice to you, or to the poor of whose interests you
are the legal guardians and protectors, were I not to say, that in
no part of my numerous duties can I be more beneficially employed
than in trying to improve the state of the dwellings of the
lower orders, many of which seem quite unfit for human habitation
; persuaded, as I am, that the first step towards the intellectual
and moral improvement of the poor is attention to their physical
comfort, and that the material and mental advancement of mankind
always go hand in hand together, and that the attempt to educate
the people will be of little avail so long as they are allowed to inhabit
dwellings undrained, waterless, and unventilated, dens of
darkness and uncleanness. Can we indeed, expect a labourer or
his family to be clean, when they are obliged to beg or steal every
drop of water that they use, either for washing the body or for
household purposes ? Can we expect tidiness in dress or furniture
in habitations open to every shower and to all the winds of
heaven ? Shall we find chastity or even decency in the social relations,
where twenty, thirty, or more persons, men, women, boys
and girls indiscriminately frequent the same privy? When the
pulse is flagging and the vital powers languid from absorption of
the fetid exhalations of a neighbouring cesspool, will not a man
instinctively take to the stimulus of alcoholic liquids ? He derives