[The dwelling-house in relation to health : a lecture] / by Henry Simpson.
- Henry Simpson
- Date:
- [between 1800 and 1899?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: [The dwelling-house in relation to health : a lecture] / by Henry Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![close together as possible, regardless of the sickness and hi^a mortaUty which are sure, by-and-by, to distinguish such property. Houses in towns are almost always built in streets, and we cannot hope to get detached, or even semi-detached dwellings for the poor, and but seldom for the more moneyed people, unless they go into the suburbs. But if this were all, if there were nothing to prevent the air playing freely on the front and back of the dwelling, so as to allow a current of air to pass through the house by doors and windows, no great amount of mischief would ensue. In towns, however, and even in the country, where I have known instances of it, back to back houses, as they are called, are too often to be found, where there is no communication through from the front to the back: the house is one room in depth only, and a partition wall divides the tenement in two from top to bottom. Through ventilation is impossible, and these dwellings are always unhealthy. In a breezy situation, in the open country, the evil will be felt less than in crowded streets and town alleys, but it is a mode of building which ought never to be allowed. In what I said as to a street being comparatively free from objection if there were nothing to interfere with the free play of the air, it was assumed that there was a fair distance from the houses of the next street parallel to it ] but you will often find in this town, and many others, that this is not the case. There will be the smallest possible yards with dust-bins and privies much too close to the houses, then a long narrow passage just sufficient to afford access to the scavenger, and along which few but the scavenger would think it pleasant to pass, then come other dust- bins, cramped yards, and houses again. Now this very common arrangement cannot be commended. More space should be given, so that the air might be fresh and life-giving, and not loaded with all manner cf impurities. In the older towns, and the older parts of towns comparatively new, you may see where the streets have been originally wide apart, and large open spaces have been left; but now, the provision our fathers made for an abundant supply of air, has gradually been diminished by the encroachments of building, till at length we find narrow alleys leading into a laby- rinth of crowded hovels, which have too often become the homes, or rather the haunts and hiding-places, of vice, poverty, and crime. It seems strange that man should so steadily and perseveringly put all possible difficulties in the way of his obtaining a free supply of what is essential to his life, for the air we breathe is more- immediately necessary than the food we eat. Without the one we way drag out existence many «lays ; if deprived of the other, in H](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21450365_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
