“In the 10 houses at the upper end of this street (three of which are untenanted) there has been 21 cases of continued fever. Every house, with three exceptions, has had several cases, in some of them as many as four in number. In one, five cases have occurred.
“Seeing this fact, I examined the adjoining yard and gardens, and found a stagnant pool of water and an open ditch about two feet wide, into which the refuse water from the houses, and from two pigsties, was allowed to accumulate. It is about 15 or 20 yards in length. Adjoining the gable end of one of the untenanted houses were found heaps of ordure and other refuse matters undergoing the process of decay.
“The west end of this street opens into some gardens, where free ventilation may easily take place, and, I have no doubt, has prevented the spread of infection to the south side of it.”
The following is the comparison of the different mortality in a drained and an undrained district, made by Mr. Crowfoot, surgeon, of Beccles, one of the most eminent of the medical practitioners in Suffolk. In a letter to Mr. Twisleton, the Assistant Commissioner, he states—
“You are aware that these two towns of nearly equal population are nearly alike as to natural advantages of situation, &c., except that Bungay, having a larger proportion of rural population inhabiting the district called Bungay Uplands, ought to be more healthy than Beccles, which has nearly its whole population confined to the town. About 30 years since, Beccles began a system of drainage, which it has continued to improve, till at the present time every part of the town is well drained, and I am not aware of a single open drain in the place. Bungay, on the contrary, with equally convenient opportunities for drainage, has neglected its advantages in that respect, has one or two large reservoirs for filth in the town itself, and some of its principal drains are open ones. The result you will see is, that Bungay, with a smaller proportion of town inhabitants, has become of late years less healthy than Beccles. I have carefully taken the number of burials from the parish registers of each town for the last 30 years, and dividing them into decennial periods, I have calculated the proportion which the deaths bore to the mean population, between one census and the other, during each 10 years; the only possible source of fallacy is the want of the census for 1841; but in its absence I have supposed the same rate of increase as took place between that of 1821 and that of 1831 for each place. Sinking fractions, the following has been the proportion of deaths to the population in the two towns:—
| Beccles. | Bungay. | |
|---|---|---|
| Between the years 1811 and 1821 | 1 in 67 | 1 in 69 |
| Between the years 1821 and 1831 | 1 in 72 | 1 in 67 |
| Between the years 1831 and 1841 | 1 in 71 | 1 in 59 |
You will therefore see that the rate of mortality has gradually diminished in Beccles since it has been drained, whilst in Bungay, notwithstanding its larger proportion of rural population, it has considerably increased.
“The Ditchingham Factory may have given a greater increase of population to Bungay than I have allowed for, but, on the other hand, the Roman Catholics and the Independents bury many of their dead in their own ground, which I have not calculated upon. Since writing the above, I have been over to Bungay, to examine more particularly the state of its drainage, which is much worse than I had any idea of. If their population should much increase, their mortality will increase much faster.”
A frightful picture of a considerable proportion of the labouring population of Leeds in respect to sewerage and drainage is afforded by the report of Mr. Baker, who gives the following instance of amendment:—
“In one of the streets of Leeds where stagnant water used frequently to accumulate after rain, and where there was perpetually occurring cases of fever of a malignant character, a deputation of females waited upon me in my capacity of town counsellor to ask if any remedy could be applied to this nuisance, which they declared was not only offensive but deadly. I directed them to communicate with the owner of the property, and to say that if the grievance was not remedied I should take further steps to enforce it. Never hearing again from the deputation, I presumed that the remedy had been applied, and had forgotten the circumstance until the house surgeon of the fever hospital in 1840, in noticing the localities from whence fever cases were most frequently brought to the institution, remarked that ‘formerly many cases of malignant fever were brought in from —— street, but for two or three years there had been none or not more than one or two.’”