Letters on the unhealthy condition of the lower class of dwellings : especially in large towns; founded on the First report of the Health of Towns Commission, with notices of other documents on the subject, and an appendix, containing plans and tables from the report.

  • Charles Girdlestone
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on the unhealthy condition of the lower class of dwellings : especially in large towns; founded on the First report of the Health of Towns Commission, with notices of other documents on the subject, and an appendix, containing plans and tables from the report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    people in .ill particulars of civil and domestic life; a law, of which the letter is indeed no longer binding on any portion of mankind, but the principles of which are dictates of divine wisdom, truth, and goodness, still conducive, whereinsoever they are still applicable, to the welfare of all men everywhere. And moreover the more offensive and disgusting is the actual state of things now to be described, so much the more urgent is the duty of trying to amend it; so much the more imperative is the un- welcome task of that public exposure, without which it is little likely ever to be amended. To proceed then with a few specimens of the painful evidence on this point, annexed to the first Report. The state of things in a populous part of the metropolis is thus described : Great numbers of the houses are without privies. Punderson's Gardens, in which a few of these out buildings are common to several houses, is a long narrow street, in the centre of which is an open sunk gutter, in which filth of every kind is allowed to accumulate and putrefy. A mud bank on each side com- monly keeps the contents of this gutter in their situation; but sometimes, and especially in wet weather, the gutter overflows; when its contents arc poured into the neighbouring houses, and the street is rendered nearly impassable. The [common] privies are close upon the footpath of the street, being separated from it only by a paling of wood. The street is wholly without drain- age of any kind. (I. 30, 31.) During the last thirteen weeks of the St. Giles' contract we were paid 5s. a-week for keeping the inhabitants in Lascelles Court, Holborn, decent; preventing them making use of a small place which had seemed to have been originally an old watch box; and a place of filth it was. We used to send a barrow in at four o'clock in the morn- ing and take it away. So that they had no convenience at all? No. (II. 371.) Enough of London, our centre of civilisation. Next of Liverpool: The whole cellar population of the parish, upwards of 20,000, are absolutely without any place of deposit for their refuse matter. Of the front houses inhabited by the working classes a large proportion are in a similar predicament. # * * I am enabled to state that in 26 streets of the description referred to, # * * containing about 1,200 front houses, not less than 804, or two thirds, were with- out either yard, privy, or ashpit. A description of the con- sequences ensuing from this state of things is thus concluded : Were there means of carrying off even the fluid portion of this superfluity of filth, the mischief would be lessened, as the noxious ingredients would less readily mingle with the air; but no such facility exists; for I do not know of a single court in Liverpool which communicates with the street or sewer by a covered drain. The fluid contents therefore of the overcharged ashpits too frequently find their way through the mouldering c 3
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