The high death rate. An answer to the question "What is to be done?" : being the substance of a paper read before the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association, March 19th, 1869 / by J. Conyers Morrell.

  • Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: The high death rate. An answer to the question "What is to be done?" : being the substance of a paper read before the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association, March 19th, 1869 / by J. Conyers Morrell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The following extracts each add their testimony to the value of the products saved :— Value of cinders, as shewn by following— The Dust Bin.—There is not one particle in the heap the scavenger removes from our houses that is not again put in circulation and profitably employed. No sooner is the dust conveyed to the yard of the contractor than it is attacked by what are called the hill-women,” who, sieve in hand, do mechanically what the savant does chemically in his laboratory—separate the mass, by a rude analysis, into its elements. The most valuable of these items are the waste pieces of coal, and what is termed the “breeze,” or coal-dust and half-burnt ashes. The amount of waste that goes on in London households in this item of coal can hardly be conceived, unless the spectator sees the quantity that is daily rescued in these yards. It may be measured by the fact that, after selling the larger pieces to the poor, the refuse “breeze ” is sufi&cient to bake the bricks that are rebuilding London. Most of the dust contractors are builders as well, and the breeze is used by them for the purpose of embedding the newly-made bricks into compact square stacks, which are seen every where in the suburbs of London. The breeze having been fired, the mass burns with a slow combustion, aided by the ch'culation of air, which is kept up by the method of stacking; and in the course of two or three weeks the London clay is converted into good building material. Thus our houses may be said to arise again from the refuse they have cast out; and not only are the bricks baked by their aid, but they are built in part with mortar made from the road scrapings, which is pounded granite, and combines very well with the lime and ashes of which the mortar is composed. Nay, even the compo with which some of the smaller houses are faced is largely adulterated with this particular refuse._ Quarterly Review. Value of manure produced proved by— Utility of Coal Ash in AanicuLTUiiE.—A correspondent of the Paris Journal of Agriculture, seeing the amount of ashes thrown away annually, and considering that Sir Humphrey Davy and other chemists have found by analysis that ashes contain many substances which contribute to vegetable life, such as sulphate of potash and lime, various compounds of acids and minerals, carbonate of lime, alumini and sihci, has made some interesting experiments. In the autumn he filled three fiower-pots with coal ashes, without any admixture with any other substance : in the one pot he sowed wheat, in the other oats, and in the third strawberry seeds. The pots were then placed in a garden bed, and left to themselves. In the month of March