The dirty water from the privies and the drains gets into the subsoil. Nothing done to the wells could prevent the sewage in flood-time getting into the wells. If the wells were closed they could only get good water from Mr. Blatch's brewery well, an artesian well, or go without water. The Chairman: The order we shall make is that neither you nor your families shall drink the water from these two wells, and the consequence of that will be that your houses will be rendered uninhabitable. - The defendant: We could beg some water for drinking. We ought to have the water in the wells for other use.-Mr. Pinniger, clerk of the sanitary authority, said such an order as the magistrates proposed to make would not be of use. The wells must be closed.Mr. Blagrave, J.P., asked how the people were to get water.-Mr. Pinniger: They will go to the ditch and get worse, and therefore the second state of the case will be worse than the first. I wish you would make an order to temporarily close the wells until a good sample is produced. The Chairman: The cleaning out of the well would do more harm than good, because the deeper you made it the wider the area from which the sewage would drain into it.The magistrates asked if an order that the water should not be used for drinking-purposes would be of use.-Dr. Woodforde thought not, as he knew a case where such an order was made, and the defendants agreed not to use the water for drinking purposes, but did so. The clerk said the Bench were in a difficulty with regard to shutting the wells against the other parties using them who had not been summoned.-After some consultation the magistrates adjourned the case for a month, ordering the defendants in the meantime not to use the water for drinking purposes.

POLLUTION OF STREAMS BY SEWAGE.

THE Lord-Chancellor has had before him the case of Wood v. the Harrogate Improvement Commissioners, an appeal from Vice-Chancellor Bacon. The plaintiff is the lessee of bleaching works on a stream called the Oak Beck, near Harrogate. The defendants are the local authorities, who have control over the sewage of the district. The natural drainage of the district was by three small streams, which united into one called the Coppice Beck, which falls into Oak Beck, some distance above Know-bridge. Prior to 1862 there was no general system of sewers for the district. The Commissioners then constructed drains and sewers, the discharge from which found its way into Coppice Beck, and thence into Oak Beck, the water of which became considerably polluted. In May 1866 Mr. Wood instituted a suit to restrain the Commissioners from discharging sewage into Oak Beck so as to injure his bleaching operations, and for damages. That suit was compromised on the terms of the Commissioners paying 580/. for damages and costs, and agreeing that they would not, after the 31st of March, 1869, cause or permit the drains of the district under their control to discharge into the Coppice Beck or into the Oak Beck any sewage, sewage matters, or foul water whatsoever. The Commissioners procured a piece of land on the bank of Oak Beck above the point where Coppice Beck falls into it and used it as a sewage farm; but some sewage, chiefly from the Bath Hospital and a slaughter-house, was still allowed to fall into Coppice Beck; and, as the Vice-Chancellor held on the evidence in this suit, from the sewage farm itself a certain amount of sewage not defecated was allowed to fall into the Oak Beck. This suit was instituted to restrain the Commissioners from continuing to pollute the stream. The bill was founded on the agreement. The ViceChancellor granted an injunction. The defendants appealed.

The Lord-Chancellor said he was willing to give the defendants credit for a sincere desire to give effect to their agreement. But still it was within the experience of everyone that public bodies were anxious for obvious reasons to discharge their obligations at the least possible expense. But it was the function of the Court to determine whether (it might be from motives of laudable economy) the defen

dants had, in fact, fallen short of their duty. His Lordship thought that the evidence showed they had done so. His Lordship said that the result of it was that the sewage of Harrogate was passed over a shelving surface of fortyeight acres into the stream which the defendants had agreed not to pollute. It was vain to contend that either the letter or the spirit of the agreement had been carried out. It was further argued that the Court in awarding an injunction should have regard to the fact that the plaintiff had only a limited interest in the land which he occupied under a lease for a term of years. It was not, however, the practice of the Court to confine an injunction in its terms to the period of the plaintiff's interest. If the plaintiff should apply to the Court to enforce the injunction after his interest had come to an end, the Court would know how to deal with such an application. The appeal must be dismissed.

Mr. Fry asked for an extension for six months of the time for complying with the injunction.

The Lord-Chancellor said that the time would be extended to the 1st of April. If the defendants should then ask for a further extension, they must satisfy the Court that they had been using the time already given them properly.

DILAPIDATED BUILDINGS.

SIR,-Can you inform me whether the magistrates or improvement commissioners have power to compel owners of house property to keep the same in tenantable repair, or at least to see that no danger is incurred to the public in consequence of the almost criminal parsimony of landlords? Some houses in the district in which I live are really dangerous to pass in stormy weather, and unless they are quickly repaired I should not be surprised to hear of a lamentable accident in consequence. H. C. LEA.

[Northampton being a place of more than 10,000 inhabitants, the Artisans and Labourers' Dwellings Act, 1868,' may be applied. This Act contains various provisions relative to dilapidated premises. In extreme cases the sanitary authority may order dilapidated premises to be pulled down.]

DUTIES OF CLERK TO A LOCAL BOARD.

Is the clerk to a local board justified in advising his board to undertake the connection of private drains (in all cases where such connection is possible) with the main sewer, and to defray the cost of the same out of the moneys borrowed for the purpose of completing a system of main drainage; that is, if property-owners carry their drains to the limit of their property nearest to the main sewer, is the board doing right and acting legally by continuing the private drains to, and connecting them with, the main-sewer, and thus relieving the property-owner from the cost?

The local board district is small and in the hands of a few owners, and about one-fourth of the rate is raised from land and house-property which cannot be drained into the PRO BONO PUBLICO.

sewer.

[There is no authority for a clerk to advise as above, and if the board follows the advice it will get into trouble. The various enactments all clearly contemplate the burden of connecting properties with sewers to be one which is to fall exclusively on owners. (See, for instance, the Public Health Act, 1848, sect. 49; and the Sanitary Act, 1866, sect. 10.) The board may, at its option, recover any expenses which it incurs from owners by summary process, or may declare them to be private improvement expenses,' chargeable on the premises. If it defrays such expenses out of moneys borrowed for permanent works, the illegality will no doubt be set right by the auditor surcharging the members of the board who may happen to have signed any cheques which may have been drawn. In the absence of any more ready means of stopping the irregularity an aggrieved ratepayer should appeal to the auditor.—ED.]

Correspondence.

THE WATER-CLOSET SYSTEM AND THE
SPREAD OF DISEASE.

(To the Editor of the SANITARY RECORD.) SIR,-In my letter published in yours of the 2nd inst., I referred to the certainty that water-closet communication with sewers and cesspits was a means of spreading disease. To prevent misunderstanding let me add that I do not mean that it is impossible to make that communication in such a way that no danger will arise from it per se. There is scarcely a water-closet, however, that is provided with such improved communication, water-traps being of little use. The provision, however, of such improved communication, although costly, and although it may prevent the danger coming into the house through that particular channel, does not put an end to the danger, which must find its way into the air somewhere and pervade the atmosphere of our towns. Of course it is better it should escape outside our houses than inside, but it is better still that the original cause should never get a chance of originating the danger.

In other words, prevention is better than cure; and, therefore, as Dr. Holland admits that harm is done by sewer-gases (viz., by germs or virus of disease originating from infected excrement), it is surely common sense that flushing excrement into sewers or cesspools is insanitary in the extreme, and ought on no account to be permitted-and that it should be compulsory in some way or other either to remove excrement within twenty-four hours after production, or to defecate it immediately.

The International Sanitary Congress, held at Vienna last year, unanimously affirmed that there is no known agent which is certainly capable of destroying a contagion. Therefore one must look upon mere disinfectants with suspicion.

It may be presumed that the remark of the Congress had reference to disinfectants only, and not to such agencies as the application of intense heat (as in Captain Liernur's system) which kills all organisms, or to the deodorisation of unfermented excrement by absorption in earth, as in the earth-closet system.

The earth-closet system, properly attended to, is simply taking the field to the closet instead of taking the contents of the closet to the field, and is thoroughly preventive of disease. I am aware that it is impracticable for large towns, on account of its many inconveniences; but the principle involved of at once removing excrement from all possibility of doing harm, is the only right one, whatever the defenders of water-flushing may say.

Such defenders often say that no proof can be given of the charges against excremental pollution, and indeed there is more than one of the very Government engineer inspectors who is of opinion that no diseases are traceable to this particular source, and that all systems whose objects are to isolate excrement for preventive purposes are simply 'tomfooleries,' 'expensive toys,' etc. There are some of those inspectors whose openly proclaimed opinion is that all that the doctors say is 'bosh,' and that no municipal or statistical evidence is to be believed, if it crosses their own particular crochets. And yet it is some of these anti-sanitarians in whose hands is the working of our sanitary laws. Is it any wonder that they have brought this country into an almost hopeless sewage muddle?

Such people would pooh-pooh the important evidence referred to in my last letter, showing the prevalence of typhoid and diphtheria in the water-closet part of Edinburgh, and its total absence in that part where these conveniences did not exist, but where the excrement was removed daily. And they will, I have no doubt, treat in the same way the very important evidence I wish to conclude this letter with.

It is the evidence of the Right Honourable J. Pope

Hennessy, formerly Governor at Labuan (Borneo), Sierra Leone, and at the Bahamas, and is contained in a letter written to me lately.

In these three colonies, he says, the dry-earth system has been found to reduce considerably the amount of sickness and mortality.

'Before 1868, the amount of sickness-dysentery and fever-in the convict prison of Labuan was very great. In 1868, in accordance with instructions received from Lord Carnarvon and the Duke of Buckingham, I ordered the old system of water-closets and cesspits to be abolished and the dry-earth closets to be substituted for it.

'The average annual sickness and mortality of the prisoners began soon to decline.

In 1870 a great mortality broke out among the troops of Labuan, which necessitated a Government inquiry, and it was then established in evidence that whilst 30 per cent. per annum of the troops died of disease, only 2 per cent. of the prisoners died. It was proved that while the dryearth system had been sedulously used in the prison, it had been unfortunately neglected in the barracks.

'In Sierra Leone, on the other hand, where the officer in command of the troops, Colonel Bravo, had taken efficient measures to provide dry-earth closets for the soldiers, the health of the officers and men in the barracks was maintained, at the very time when fever and dysentery were carrying off 20 per cent. per annum of the European population residing in the town.

Having caused the dry-earth system, in place of pits and water-closets, to be introduced into the prison and other public buildings, including government offices at Nassau (Bahamas), I was informed by the medical officers that the result was most satisfactory, and that the general health of all concerned had improved.

6

Early this year (1874) a bad type of dysentery occurred in certain houses of the better classes at Nassau, and two of the chief physicians of the town attributed it to the fact that the houses in question had a defective system of water-closets; the removal of which and the substitution of the dry-earth closet they at once recommended.

'There can be no doubt but that the old sy tem of water-closet flushing, which is bad enough in temperate climates, becomes in tropical countries, a most active source of disease.'

From such a letter two lessons are to be learnt. First, the paramount importance, as before pointed out, of at once removing, defecating, or imprisoning excrement, so that it is put beyond the power of doing harm; secondly, that anything that relates to the public safety should never be left to private option, either as to its use or as to its being properly attended to. The neglect of the earth closet, it will be seen, made it as injurious to health as the old system which it replaced, and this, of course, is the danger of its introduction into towns, unless strict means of supervision are provided-a supervision which is foreign to domestic habits.

our

DOMESTIC HEATING AND ILLUMI-
NATING.
No. II.

COAL-ECONOMISING GRATES.

THE best county in which to study the many contrivances which have been brought out with a view of saving coal is undoubtedly Lancashire; and anyone who visited the Exhibition of Appliances for the Economic Consumption of Fuel, which was held in Salford in February last, will agree with this

observation.

The population of Lancashire is so dense that everything which could economise coal had to be carefully studied. The schemes evolved are, for the most part, adapted for the use of cottage grates and ranges; but it must be said that they can be used in aristocratic grates as well. They vary in construction but little, and differ as little in price. The few we will describe shall be such as have won great approbation, and such as can be anywhere obtained without difficulty.

What is wanted is a common grate or stove which shall effect as complete a combustion as possible, give off a maximum of heat, and allow just such a draught up the chimney as will carry away the smoke whilst ventilating the room. The fire ought to burn well to the front, and so radiate the heat well into the room. It should be so constructed, also, as to have just a sufficiency of airsupply to the underside of the grate and no more, and this air should be well diffused at the bottom and front portion of the fire. For the rest, a grate of the ordinary pattern should have a good draughtventilator, and should consume all the cinders to ashes. The common patterns of grates unfortunately fail in nearly every one of these items; they waste the coal, allow the heat to pass up the chimney, and permit smoking. They are generally made with a clay tile at the back, which becomes red hot, and causes the fire to burn best at the back, which, for the most part also, is foolishly made almost perpendicular. By this clumsiness a passage is burnt through the fuel to the upper part of the back of the fire, and a draught is formed which carries the heat from the body of the fire up the chimney shaft, whilst at the same time it checks the burning of the fire at the front.

Amongst the simple contrivances for preventing the waste of coals in house fire-grates are the various shaped stove tiles, or fittings of fire-clay, which are meant not only to act the part of fire-clay balls and lumps by cheaply occupying the space of coal, but are intended also to assist combustion. For the most part, they will be seen to assume the shape of sloping backs of one description or another. A general view of the action of this simple kind of coal-economiser will be observed at fig. 1.

Perhaps the simplest coal-saver of this character is that known as Looker's, drawn at fig. 2, which can be got at nearly every ironmonger's. It is made of fire-brick, and is placed on the bottom and against

2.

the back of the grate, but not necessarily wedged in there. The air necessary for combustion is sucked in to the fire from the underside of the grate and passes through the perforations at the top of the tile. It is not supposed that by the adoption of these tiles the smoke will be consumed. Still, when there are four inches of coal or coal and coke spread over the tile, and when once the fire is fairly lighted, the quantity of smoke is sensibly reduced and the radiation of heat is increased. Another of its advantages

is that the heat of the fire-box is not wasted upon the bricks behind. A coal economiser of a somewhat similar kind is the Accrington pattern, drawn at fig. 3, and which is applied as shown. It possesses one or two special advantages.

A more complete appliance of the above description is that sketched at fig. 4, and which represents the coal-saver devised by a Blackburn cotton-spinner. It is intended to remedy the defects of all ordinary fire-grates, and consists of a fire-bottom sloping upward and of two cheeks. The inclined and perforated bottom is intended to cause the fire to slide towards the front, as in the other patterns, but not so as to push it out of the grate, and it is also meant to direct the radiation to the front. Besides the sloping back or bottom, clay cheeks are also placed at the sides, by means of which the fire-space is reduced a third. Sufficient space is, however, retained for a compact body of fire. These cheeks, from their shape, project or bulge out somewhat, and so prevent the heat from passing behind the face of the stove. The heat is rather radiated into the room. When these loose fire-clay castings are put in a grate, and a fire lighted, the perforations in the inclined bottom tend to keep the coals incandescent at the front, and in a coked condition at the back, and the still intense heat at the back burns up the gases which are liberated below, and also the smoke which would otherwise go up the chimney. The draught door

regulator, instead of being hung on hinges or swivels, is supported on pivots, and stands upright, even whilst being moved backwards and forwards. By this means it allows the heat to be well utilised. The adoption of this simple contrivance is said to save fully one-third of the fuel, as compared with the ordinary grates, and the ashes are taken out in fine powder.

A Rochdale pattern of patent fireback is drawn at fig. 5. The false back is provided with a top plate which works in a slide fixed in the brickwork or back of the fireplace, and when this is drawn forwards coals and cinders are prevented from falling behind. The back can assume any angle, so that the fire-box can hold either little or much fuel, and a hole is drilled in the top of the back and in the sliding-catch in order to pull it all the easier forwards. Another simple kind of coal economiser is a Hulme pattern known as Grunwood's. It may be best described as a tray or drawer made to run between the two bottom bars of a grate. It saves a certain amount of coal because it diminishes the coal-space in the grate, and when the drawer is pushed up it acts as a damper and stops the draught at the bottom of the grate. It fulfils, moreover, the duties of an ash-pan.

The economy of coal is no less a desideratum in the kitchen as in the parlour, and this has not been lost sight of by our homely inventors. What is called an oven-heater is drawn at fig. 6, and it is manufactured in Blackburn. It is merely a piece of fireclay hung from the top bar of the fire-grate, and