[262] Parkes.
The lid attached to the seat should have a hole cut in it, so as to allow of the handle being pulled up when the pan is covered, which, strange to say, in perhaps ninety-nine cases out of every hundred it never is, after being used. Of course, in the absence of the ventilation of the pan and soil-pipe, the result of keeping the seat covered over would only be to fill the pan with malodorous and more or less dangerous gases, which would escape into the closet when the lid was again raised.
3. Precautions.—The use of unduly large pieces of paper, such as cause stoppage and obstruction in the discharge-pipe, should be particularly avoided. Any defect or impediment in the working of the closet should be remedied at once. As a general rule, servants are very careless in all matters connected with the water-closet; so much so that the masters of many houses are themselves compelled to exercise supervision over it.
During very hot weather, or the prevalence of an infectious disease in a dwelling-house or in the neighbourhood of the house, some disinfectant should be added to the water that supplies the closet. A substance that will very satisfactorily answer this purpose is the commercial sulphate of iron known as green vitriol. A pound of it should be put into the tank when filled with water.
The same disregard of sanitary obligations so frequently shown in the construction, site, &c., of water-closets is more obvious in the case of privies. The Public Health Act not only renders unlawful the erection or rebuilding of any dwelling-house without “a sufficient water-closet, earth-closet, or privy and an ash-pit, furnished with proper doors and coverings;” but also requires that, “If a house within the district of a local authority appears to such authority by the report of their surveyor or inspector of nuisances to be without a sufficient water-closet, earth-closet, or privy and ashpit, furnished with proper doors and coverings, the local authority shall, by written notice, require the owner or occupier of the house within a reasonable time therein specified, to provide a sufficient water-closet, earth-closet, or privy and an ashpit furnished as aforesaid, or either of them, as the case may require.”
Although in many large towns and cities a more or less effectual supervision may be exercised by the sanitary inspector in the above direction, as every one’s experience of the usual outdoor privy of a small English country town or village, will suggest to them the extreme toleration prevailing amongst the sanitary authorities in many provincial and rural districts in this particular. Ventilation is as essential for the privy as the water-closet, so also is the thorough trapping of the exit-pipe from the pan, as well as the cleansing and flushing of this latter by water directly after it has been used. Yet how rarely do we find not only all, but not even one of these
conditions fulfilled in the arrangement of the ordinary privy; but instead an untrapped, immovable pan (and in some cases even this is wanting) covered with filth, and no contrivance of any kind for a constant water supply.
No wonder, therefore, that the atmosphere of an ordinary privy should be so foul and noisome as it invariably is.
The following specification for a useful description of privy is published by Messrs Knight & Co., 90, Fleet Street, London:—
Specification.—The privy and dust-bin to be built of 41⁄2-inch brickwork, in well-ground mortar of approved quality. Two rows of 41⁄2 and 3-inch bond timber to be built in at back of privy for securing ventilating-shafts. The ventilating-shafts to be 7 by 41⁄2 inches, inside measurement, of best red deal boards 1 inch thick, closely put together with strong white lead paint, and well nailed and carefully seamed to the 41⁄2 inch and 3 inch bond timber. These shafts to have coats of boiled tar both inside and out.