Report of the Health of London Association on the sanitary condition of the metropolis; : being a digest of the information contained in the replies returned to three thousand lists of queries, which were circulated amongst clergymen, medical men, solicitors, surveyors, architects, engineers, parochial officers, and the public.

  • Health of Towns Association (London, England)
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Health of London Association on the sanitary condition of the metropolis; : being a digest of the information contained in the replies returned to three thousand lists of queries, which were circulated amongst clergymen, medical men, solicitors, surveyors, architects, engineers, parochial officers, and the public. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/70 (page 15)
    of cattle, pig-sties, the burning and boiling of animal or vegetable matter, &c. ? The replies to this question are in the ratio of nearly two affirmatives to one negative; but it is evident that the relative proportion depends on the answers re¬ turned from persons living in the various districts in London, and that it cannot be said from this result that one-third of London is free from nuisances. The most prominent, because, perhaps, the most obvious, nuisances complained of are pig-sties, which seem to abound everywhere, and in the most unexpected places. The effluvia from these are generally described as most dis¬ gusting; in the suburbs the filth is carefully stored, and laid out in layers over the plots of ground attached to the neighbouring houses; one instance of which, at the end of Seabright-street, Hackney-road, has repeatedly attracted attention as being a concentration of foul smells scarcely to be equalled, as well as an apparently scientific design, prac¬ tically carried out, to poison, by fever, the inhabitants of the neighbouring undrained, damp houses. Ash-pits and dung-heaps, many of them public receptacles for filth of all kinds, are frequently situated in the narrow streets and lanes inhabited by the poorer classes, and are attached to many single dwellings. The slaughtering of cattle takes place to a great extent in London, and the putrefying refuse is allowed either imperfectly to drain away, or to remain, and infect and contaminate the air; sometimes the blood is allowed to run down the middle of the main streets. There is scarcely a reply wdiich does not insist on the slaughter¬ ing of cattle in London being strictly prohibited. The effluvium arising therefrom in and about Fitzroy Market, is stated to be horribly offensive. The Smithfield nuisance is too great and too notorious to require much reference. It is asserted to be the greatest nuisance ever inflicted on a civilised community, and to be a prolific source of moral and physical evil, perhaps unparalleled in the history of any people—where life and limb are constantly endangered, and the ear offended by the profane language of drovers scarcely less brutal than the objects of their unmeasured rage. The slaughter-houses in Aldgate High-street are most disgusting nuisances. In hot weather the stench arising from the accumulation of the ordure of the cattle, the