Handbook of housekeeping for small incomes / by Florence Stacpoole.

  • Stacpoole, Florence
Date:
[1897?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of housekeeping for small incomes / by Florence Stacpoole. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    on his guard—i.e., to see that it is not what is called “ made ground.” Mr. Shirley Murphy, the Medical Officer of Health to St. Pancras, an eminent authority on the sub- ject in hand, tells us that of all the unhealthy soils upon which a house can be built, what is called “ made earth ” is one of the worst. “ Made ground” is manufactured by filling in hollows, such as quarry holes, brick-fields, and the like, with rubbish out of countless dust-bins shot in to fill them level. “In such ground,” says Mr. Murphy, “carbonic acid can always be discovered, and bad gases are produced by the decomposition of this foul material. The air in the ground is by no means fixed and immovable. It is influenced by the action of the sun, by the density of the atmosphere, and by deeper currents of air dependent on movement of water.” He then explains that the air of a house built on such a foundation, after occupation, grows warmer than the outside air, the earth underneath shares in the warmth, air damp and foul then rises into the house (it is a law of gaseous expansion that warm air always rises, and air is a mixture of gases); in rising such air carries with it all the conditions necessary to produce ill-health. It is, unfortunately, sometimes the case that the careful house-hunter, who has discovered a house built, as he thinks, on gravel, or some other suitable soil, is really deceived by a builder’s trick, and is cheated into taking a house with a healthy soil surrounding it, but which is itself standing on “ made earth.” “It is well known,” says Mr. P. G. Smith, F.R.I.B.A., “ that where proper regulations do not exist, builders and others occasionally dig out from the site of a new house good materials, such as sand, gravel, brick earth, or other substances that have a marketable value, and cause the excavations so made to be filled in with any rubbish that is available, often not of the sweetest kind. I his is obvi- ously liable to be highly prejudicial to the wholesomeness of the house that is to be built over such materials. It is naturally in the building of cheap houses, run up by unscrupulous builders, that such trickery is chiefly practised, and it is very difficult for any one who is not an expert in the matter to discover its perpetration until illness, caused by the bad air, breaks out in the house.
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