The specific effects of an excess of smoke on the general health of a town population has not been distinguished, but from the comparatively high average of mortality amongst the middle classes in situations undistinguished by confined residences, or defective drainage, or anything but an excessively smoky atmosphere; from the comparatively rapid improvement of convalescents on removal to purer atmospheres, there is strong reason to believe that the prejudicial effect is much more considerable than is commonly apprehended even by medical practitioners. As the smoke in Manchester and other towns becomes more dense, the vegetation declines; and even in the suburbs the more delicate species die. Dr. Baker, in his report on the sanitary condition of the town of Derby, after adverting to the state of the places of work as affecting the health of the operations, proceeds to notice the effects of the smoke:—
“The next general cause of injury to public health, and connected with the foregoing, is the corruption of the air caused by the torrents of black smoke that issue from the manufactory chimneys, the nuisance from which is much augmented in heavy and moist states of the atmosphere. There is a law by which those who most offend, as regards their chimneys, can be punished; but of course the magistrates are not also prosecutors, whilst, private individuals, being unwilling to become informers, little is done to check this nuisance; and such is the state of the air, that in gardens in the town none but deciduous shrubs can be kept alive.”
Besides the prejudicial effects on the health of the population by the deterioration of the quality of the air that is breathed, a serious effect is created by its operation as an impediment to the formation and maintenance of habits of personal and household cleanliness amongst the working classes. Even upon the middle and higher classes the nuisance of an excess of smoke, occasioned by ignorance and culpable carelessness, operates as a tax increasing the wear and tear of linen and the expense of washing, to all who live within the range of the mismanaged chimneys. In the suburbs of Manchester, for example, linen will be as dirty in two or three days as it would be even in the suburbs of London in a week. One person stated that, on the Isle of Arran, a shirt was cleaner at the end of a week’s wear than at Manchester at the end of a day’s.
Nor is this the only oppressive tax occasioned by the carelessness; Mr. Thomas Cubitt, the eminent builder, when examined before the Committee of the House of Commons, was asked,—
“Suppose it were intended to build a row of houses, would you not suffer them to be built unless there was a sewer provided?—I would not allow a house to be built anywhere unless it could be shown that there was a good drainage, and a good way to get rid of water. I think that there should be some public officer responsible for that; that there should be surveys of every district, so that the officer should be aware whether the sewers were provided or not. I think there should be an officer paid at the public expense, who should be responsible for that. I think they should not be appointed by the district; there should be no favouritism of that kind; but public officers, changed from point to point, to take care of all public nuisances. With respect to manufactories, here are a great number driven by competition to work in the cheapest way they can. A man puts up a steam-engine, and sends out an immense quantity of smoke; perhaps he creates a great deal of foul and bad gas; that is all let loose. Where his returns are 1000l. a-month, if he would spend 5l. a-month more he would make that completely harmless; but he says, ‘I am not bound to do that,’ and therefore he works as cheaply as he can, and the public suffer to an extent beyond all calculation. I look upon it it has this effect: a gentleman comes to London, and lives in London; I will suppose he fits up his house in the best style he can; he has a taste for good pictures and upholstery, and so on. After a time the smoke has destroyed them, and he is disappointed and annoyed, and the effect is he is brought down in his feelings in a degree from the state in which he was accustomed to have things.”
The appearance of the towns on the Sunday, when nearly all the furnaces are stopped, when there is little more than the smoke from the dwelling-houses, when everything is comparatively bright, and the distant hills and surrounding country that are never visible though the atmosphere of the town in the week-days may be seen across it, presents nearly the appearance which such towns would assume on the working days, if the laws were duly executed, and the excessive smoke of the furnaces prevented. On inquiry of a peace-officer acting where redress is provided for under a local Act, how it was that the dereliction of duty occurred that was visible in the dense black clouds that darkened the town, he replied that the chief members of the Board were the persons whose furnace-chimneys were most in fault, and he appealed whether a man in his condition was to be expected to prosecute his patrons?
The greater part, if not the whole, of the excess of smoke and of unconsumed gas by which the metropolis and the neighbourhoods of manufactories are oppressed, is preventible by the exercise of care in the management of the fires of the furnaces. And here also the measures for the prevention of the nuisance are measures of economy.
Many witnesses whose opinions are enforced by practical examples, state confidently that such nuisances are generally the result of ignorance or carelessness. Amongst others we may cite the authority of Mr. Ewart, the inspector of machinery to the Admiralty, residing at Her Majesty’s Dock-yard at Woolwich, where the chimney of the manufactory under his immediate superintendence, regulated according to his directions, offers an example of the little smoke that need be occasioned from steam-engine furnaces if care be exercised. He states that no peculiar machinery is used; the stoker or fire-keeper is only required to exercise care in not throwing on too much coal at once, and to open the furnace door in such slight degree as to admit occasionally the small proportion of atmospheric air requisite to effect complete combustion. Mr. Ewart also states that if the fire be properly managed, there will be a saving of fuel. The extent of smoke denotes the extent to which the combustion is incomplete. The chimney belonging to the manufactory of Mr. Peter Fairbairn, engineer at Leeds, also presents an example and a contrast to the chimneys of nearly all the other manufactories which overcast that town. On each side of it is a chimney belonging to another manufactory, pouring out dense clouds of smoke; whilst the chimney at Mr. Fairbairn’s manufactory presents the appearance of no greater quantity of smoke than of some private houses. Mr. Fairbairn stated, in answer to inquiries upon this subject, that he uses what is called Stanley’s feeding machinery, which graduates the supply of coal so as to produce nearly complete combustion. After the fire is once lighted, little remains to the ignorance or the carelessness of the stoker. Mr. Fairbairn also states that his consumption of fuel in his steam-engine furnaces, in comparison with that of his immediate neighbours, is proportionately less. The engine belonging to the cotton-mills of Mr. Thomas Ashton, of Hyde, near Stockport, affords to the people of that town an example of the extent to which, by a little care, they might be relieved of the thick cloud of smoke by which the district is oppressed.
At a meeting of manufacturers and others, held at Leeds, for the suppression of the nuisance of the smoke of furnaces, and to discuss the various plans for abating it, the resolution was unanimously adopted, “that in the opinion of this meeting the smoke arising from steam-engine fires and furnaces can be consumed, and that, too, without injury to the boilers, and with a saving of fuel.” Notice of legal proceedings being given against Messrs. Meux, the brewers in London, for a nuisance arising from the chimneys of two furnaces, they found that by using anthracite coal they abated the nuisance to the neighbourhood, and saved 200l. per annum. The West Middlesex Water Company, by diminishing the smoke of their furnaces saved 1000l. per annum.
The gas-companies in the city of London were indicted for throwing their refuse into the Thames, and compelled to dispose of it otherwise; and they found out that they had been guilty of waste as well as of nuisance; and it is stated that the whole of what was formerly cast away has now become an important article of commerce.