Report of the Sanitary Committee of the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London, together with a report of the Medical Officer of Health on the objections raised by the Butchers' Trade Society to the bye-laws proposed for the regulation of slaughter-houses

by W. Sedgwick Saunders; City of London . Commissioners of Sewers. Sanitary Committee

Bye-law VIII.

That where any Slaughter-house or Pound cannot be sufficiently ventilated by openings on to the public ways, or on to other open places, it shall be ventilated from the roof, which shall be so constructed as to admit freely of the escape of air, and that rings for burning gas be fixed in the roof so as to increase the upward current when a-light, and that both Slaughter-house and Pound be properly lighted either from the public ways or other open spaces, and where that be not practicable, then from the roof.

Objections.

The chief arguments relate to matters quite irrelevant, and are very confused and unintelligible. The only part of the “objection” belonging to this Bye-law is that which refers to the proposal for increasing the efficiency of the ventilation by rings of gas, which the Butchers characterise as “absurd.”

Reply.

The question raised here is as to the proper mode of ventilation and lighting, and seeing that it would be worse than folly to perpetuate the evil of allowing an intercommunication between the side walls of some of the present ill-devised, and worse-kept, Slaughter-houses in Aldgate High Street, your Committee were driven to the alternative of requiring both light and ventilation to be sought for in the roof.

The ring of gas spoken of so contemptuously by the Butchers will have the effect of rarefying the vitiated air in the Slaughter-houses during the process of slaughtering, and by producing an up-current, quicken the ventilation.

Upon this point Mr. Darbyshire, before quoted, says, speaking of his work at Manchester, “the Slaughter-houses are well lighted from the roofs, top lights being superior to side lights for purposes of slaughtering.” All the Markets recently constructed by the Corporation of London are similarly lighted and ventilated, and at the Abattoir in Edinburgh the whole of the ventilation is carried on by large ventilators, and other contrivances, in the roof.