Report to the General Board of Health on a preliminary inquiry into the sewerage, drainage, and supply of water, and the sanitary condition of the inhabitants of the town of Aylesbury / by William Ranger, Superintending Inspector.

  • Ranger, William, 1800-1863.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report to the General Board of Health on a preliminary inquiry into the sewerage, drainage, and supply of water, and the sanitary condition of the inhabitants of the town of Aylesbury / by William Ranger, Superintending Inspector. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/30 (page 11)
    but it does not extend to the various passages, courts, alleys, or ashpits, of which there are a great number in the township. The manure from stable and other cattle yards is purchased and removed by the farmers at an average price of 4s. per ton, to a distance avei'aging about 2 miles from the town. The cost for removing soil bynightmen from privy pits averages about 10s, per ton. The fact is indicative of the state of agri- culture in this district. The farmers will not take this most fertilizing manure, even upon being paid for so doing. But the reluctance arises from its use in a solid state, whilst the cost for emptying tubs, in cases where the contents are not thrown into street gully-holes, which is frequently the custom, amounts to about Is. per tub, it being done by hand labour. The sewerage manure is emptied partly into the brook and partly into an open ditch on the side of a brick-field, close to the town, but part of the soil, which passes into the open ditches, is pent back by the proprietors of adjacent lands, so as to convert the ditch itself into a settling bed, from whence, at intervals of time, they remove the solid portion of the soil on to the banks at the side of the ditch, and from thence to their gardens and lands. The evil consequences arising from the arrangements detailed above, are,—The tendency to render different parts of the town the seat of cholera, typhus, epidemic or endemic disease, and also, as shown by Mr. Pickers, surgeon, who is in the practice of at- tending the poor, to prevent this class from adopting habits of cleanliness, being in an infinite number of cases unprovided with cesspools, drains, or privies. He further adds, the effluvium is most offensive, especially in the night, in different parts of the town, from this cause as well as from the filthy ditches which abound. The evil attendant on the present plan of removing manure, from the different yards, consists mainly in the length of the interval which is in all cases allowed to intervene. The farmer, consulting his own convenience merely, and not regarding the in- jurious effects of large accumulations of stable and other manure on the health of the inhabitants, allows it to accumulate for many weeks, or even months, which is in some cases a positive benefit to him; for when the decomposition has sufficiently advanced, he is enabled to remove it at once to the land on which it is to be employed, in place of taking it to adjacent ground, and at a future time transfer it to the land; by this process, too often adopted, the farmer saves one removal of the manure, but it is at the cost of the heahh of the inhabitants of the town from whence he removes it. The manure is too strong in its natural state; but instead of weakening the effect by dilution and by frequency of application, the farmer weakens it by decomposition. But in the process of decomposition two-thirds of the most valuable products escape, namely, the noxious gases, &c. This process, by delay, he allows