Report to the General Board of Health on a preliminary inquiry into the sewerage, drainage, and supply of water, and the sanitary condition of the inhabitants of the parish of Alverstoke, in the county of Southampton / by William Ranger, Superintending Inspector.

  • William Ranger
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report to the General Board of Health on a preliminary inquiry into the sewerage, drainage, and supply of water, and the sanitary condition of the inhabitants of the parish of Alverstoke, in the county of Southampton / by William Ranger, Superintending Inspector. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    adiuess evinced on the part of the Commissioners to do 11 they could to mitigate the evil. Mr. Hoskins, the chairman of the Committee of Niu- sances (Aj^pendix, page 58), after drawing attention to the present state of the moats, said,— That the greatest impediment to cleanliness was caused by the state of the drainage. The town authorities had made every exertion, and had also tried to flush and cleanse the channels, but as the whole of the drainage Avas on the surface, they found it impossible to do so. In summer, particularly, the accumulations of refuse stagnating in the channels, were so offensive that people were driven away from the town in consequence. Wherever the surface channels discharged their contents into the outlet drains, the gratings were choked up with collections of refuse. The foreshore, also, was rendered most offensive from the same cause, and its condition led strangers who visited the town to exclaim, when they first saw it, ' What a dirty place this is !' The Com- missioners had no power to remedy the last-named evil, as their jurisdiction extended to high water-mark only. In the absence of proper arrangements for tlie main sewerage, those for the house drainage are necessarily very- imp erfect and defective. But few of the dwellings have any regular house-drains communicating with the main sewers. In the houses of the better class the more offen- sive refuse is discharged into cesspools, and the waste water of the house is carried off by the surface channels already described. I shall have occasion to revert to the cesspools in a subsequent part of my Keport, so that I do not now propose to describe them ; but I may be permitted to remark, that the existence of these places is so general, tliat every house in the town is provided with one, unless it is of the poorest kind, and unprovided with any species of privy accommodation whatever. I mention this fact to prove how imperative it is that efficient sewerage shotdd be formed throughout the town, in order that the offensive matter which now collects and decomposes in the imme- diate vicinity of every house, may be removed from it fre- quently, effectually, and economically. The preceding remarks apply to the houses of the better class alone. The condition of the houses occupied b}^ the poor, living in alleys and courts, is infinitely worse. Many of these localities are unpaved, and as the arrangements for the removal of every kind of house refuse are of the most imperfect kind, it necessarily happens that the sur- face of the courts and narrow lanes is covered with waste water or offensive matter which has accumulated from the absence of proper privy accomniodation, a]id efficient street cleansing.