The medical and legal aspects of sanitary reform / by Alexander P. Stewart, M.D. and Edward Jenkins, Barrister-at-law.

  • Stewart, Alexander Patrick, 1813-1883.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical and legal aspects of sanitary reform / by Alexander P. Stewart, M.D. and Edward Jenkins, Barrister-at-law. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    privies so laden with ashes and excre- mentitious matter as to be unuseable, prevail, till the streets themselves be- come offensive from deposits of this description ; in short, there is generally pervading these localities a want of the common decencies of life. {Local Beports, 1842, p 352.) Of one noted cul-de-sac he says, the name of this place is the Boot and Shoe Yard, in Kirkgate, a loca- tion, from whence the Commissioners removed, in the days of the cholera, 75 cart loads of manure which had been untouched for years, and where there now exists a surface of human excrement of very considerable extent, to which these impure and unven- tilated dwellings are additionally exposed. p 353. The contractop for the street sweepings, who is the treater with the Commissioners of Public nuisances in Leeds, absolutely rented and rents, or did rent a very few weeks ago, a plot of vacant land in the centre of North East Ward, the largest ward, in point of population, of the whole township of Leeds, and containing the greatest number of poor, as a depot for the sweepings from the streets and markets, both vegetable and general, for the purpose of exsiccating and ac- cumulating till they could be sold as manure and carried away. So noisome were these exhalations, that the inhab- itants complained of their utter ina- bility to ventilate their sleeping-rooms during the day time, and of the in- sufferable stench to which both by day and night they were subjected. A great many of the privies of the cottages are built in small passages, between clumps of houses which are different properties; others, with the ash en- trance open to the public streets; and others at a little distance from and open to the front of the houses; whilst some streets are entirely without. The inhabitants, to use the language of an old woman of whom inquiry was made, says that ' they do as they can, and make use of the streets as the common receptacle.' These remarks apply in particular to three streets of Leeds, which contain a population of between 400 and 500 persons, where there is not a useable privy for the whole number. p. 356. in fact mere culs de sac; more fre- quently they communicate one with another, so as to form a complicated labyrinth of very imperfectly ventilated little streets and courts. Houses in such situations are very commonly indeed built back to back, and even when not so they are often destitute of windows in the rear, and possess no efficient means of thorough ventilation. The streets of Leeds have in fact been laid out and the houses erected ac- cording to the caprice or interest of their owners, without reference to the health, comfort and convenience of the inhabitants, or to the fact that they were destined to form integral parts of a great town. The courts of Leeds are rarely spacious and airy, are some- times entered through covered passages, and are by no means always clean, but more frequently are unpaved and in bad condition. Privies are almost universal, and are, from their posi- tion in relation to dwellings, the most prominent sanitary defect of the town, water closets being unknown among the poorer classes. As is common in other manufacturing towns, a single privy usually serves for several families. The situation of the privies is often most objectionable; in many of the smaller streets they are placed beneath inhabited rooms; in others they are soinetimes placed against the walls of houses, or so near to them that the effluvia are felt within doors, and infect many of the courts and smaller streets. Although certainly not the exclusive cause of diarrhoea, yet upon the whole that disease has been the most rife and most fatal in streets where the privy nuisance prevails in an aggravated form.— Second Report of Medical Officer of Privy Council, 1859, p. 134.