Foul air in houses : a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, July 4th, 1884 / by Professor Corfield.

  • Corfield (Professor)
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Foul air in houses : a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, July 4th, 1884 / by Professor Corfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    run down into the drains. This is a thing which should never be allowed, although of course those openings are trapped, with the object of preventing foul air going into the house. But the kind of trap which is most generally used for the purpose, is what is known as the bell-trap, from the shape of the cover of it. Here is a specimen of that kind of trap [producing same], and you would see that not only in almost every area in London, but you would see it in the floors of passages in houses, and in sinks. That, I think, is about the worst form of trap that has ever been devised, for a great many reasons. In the first place it holds a lot of filth, and that generates foul air ; the next thing is that it holds very little water, and even that diminishes as it gets full of filth, and as the trap is made only by the bell dipping to the depth of half an inch in the water, when that is evaporated the foul air comes straight into the house : because the trap is gone. Another thing is that when the bell is taken off, as it often is, the trap is of no use. The top has frequently to be taken off, because of these small holes in it getting filled up ; and when the place has to be swilled down, it has to be taken up to let the water escape, and it is not so frequently put on again. Once taken off, it may be left off for days, weeks, or months; and I have known numbers of cases of disease and death to occur from that cause. Then again it often gets broken by some accident, the master or mistress is not told of it, and the place remains untrapped, perhaps for years. That is a form of trap which should not be tolerated inside a house, and the only good of it outside, is that it helps to ventilate drains, which otherwise would not be ventilated at all But neither should a good trap be put in the floor of a house, and connected directly with the drain ; it should discharge into an inlet in a trapped gully outside. It will be most convenient for us next to consider the soil pipes. Soil pipes are the pipes into which water-closets discharge, and they are very frequently placed in improper positions inside a house, and are also made of improper materials. Whatever materials they are made of, they