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.

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    church-yard emanations are pestilential agents. Numerous instances are recorded of pestilential diseases and death having resulted from the poisonous exhalations of grave¬ yards. For further evidence on this subject, the reader is referred to the works of Mr. Walker on grave-yards, and to the correspondence between Mr. Smith, of Minchinhamp- ton, and Dr. S. Smith, which was recently published in the public journals. When interments in towns are discon¬ tinued, care must be taken to prevent cemeteries becoming as great nuisances as common grave-yards. The number which may be interred in one grave should be restricted ; the time for renewal and decay, and other circumstances, he specified, and care taken that habitations be not erected within a specified distance, and some provision made that cemetery companies do not become oppressive monopolies. SMOKE AND GASES. [45.] Are not the quantities of smoke generated in cities and towns injurious to the health of the inhabitants ? [46.] Ought not the Legislature to make every pos¬ sible exertion to abate this nuisance ? It is generally acknowledged that the large quantity of smoke which is emitted from factories, consisting as it does of unburnt particles, is irritating to the air passages of the lungs, and tends to increase the mortality from pulmonary affections. There can be no doubt that smoke, if not in¬ jurious to health, is exceedingly uncomfortable, and per¬ sons who are obliged to reside in the neighbourhood of those manufactories which emit large quantities of smoke, are unable to open their windows for the proper ventilation of their houses. Smoke, by some manufacturers, is consi¬ dered unavoidable, and they say, that if the smoke is stopped, labour will be stopped. Kitchen chimneys, they remark, are as bad as furnaces, and if the Legislature should cause the smoke of the one to be suppressed, they should