Report of the Medical Officer of Health on defects in the present midden system and on improvements required : ordered by the Health Committee to be printed for the use of members of Council.

Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Medical Officer of Health on defects in the present midden system and on improvements required : ordered by the Health Committee to be printed for the use of members of Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    judged of by personal inspection, or from the reports of the men employed by Mr. Rose. One Inspector, describing to the Medical Officer the accident by which two men who incautiously opened a midden in Cashier Place, Mann Street, were asphyxiated by the mephitic gases, added that narrow escapes from a similar fate are of frequent, almost nightly, occurrence. Hitherto no] effort has been made to remove this state of matters, except by the occasional erection of pan water closets, which are quite unserviceable for the purpose. Hence, therefore, the great benefit obtained by the success of the experiment in No. 3 Court, Hotham Street, is the proof that in the trough water closets we have an inexpensive machinery admirably adapted for the use of courts. The Medical Officer of Health is prepared to certify against the greater number of the privy middens in courts and alleys, and to ask from the Justices their conversion into trough water closets. He will only except those middens in open thoroughly- ventilated courts which are properly constructed, dry, and removed from the immediate vicinity of inhabited apartments. But, before adopting a reform so sweeping, he submits that it is desirable your Committee meet the question in a liberal and comprehensive spirit, as individual and disconnected action may unfortimately result in partial failure. It will be for the Committee to determine whether, for a purpose so all-important to the health and morals of the labouring poor, the Committee might not with propriety assist the parties by affording them at the public expense the services of a staff of scavengers for superintending the working of the trough system, as is now done with reference to the urinals. An alteration is also required in the arrangement of the day carts; the order to remove rubbish should not be dependent on the appli- cation of the residents, but on the report of the scavengers of the district. A trough water closet is an oblong receptacle made of stone or iron, capable of accommodating two or more conveniences. In a recess shut off and protected by a locked door is the simple machinery for opening both the valves of entrance and exit for the water. Upon raising these valves—an operation as easy as in a common pan water closet—the whole contents are swept away and the trough left filled with water. One removal of contents in 24