[Chapter VII.]
"STREET CLEANSING."
Clean well-swept streets not only add materially to the prosperous appearance of a town, but they also have a very marked influence upon its health and upon the morale of its inhabitants; wet, and muddy, badly formed, ill-drained streets, cause dampness in the subsoil of the dwelling-houses in the vicinity, and a humidity in the atmosphere, both of which tend to produce a low standard of health in their neighbourhood, irrespective of the wet surface through which pedestrians have to wade whenever they are obliged to cross such streets. Dusty streets, too, are very injurious from the fact of persons inhaling the gritty silicate loaded air arising from them; such an atmosphere is known to produce disease of the lungs, even when it is free from the dust arising from horse droppings or other organic impurities. Professor Tyndall, in his beautiful experiments, has proved that dusty air is alive with the germs of the bacteria of putrefaction, whilst the pure fresh air which he gathered on a mountain peak in the Alps is innocent of such germs, and is absolutely powerless to produce any organisms. Persons living in streets that are improperly swept or watered are unable to open the doors or windows of their houses with impunity by reason of the dust.
The definition of the word street, as given in the Public Health Act, 1875, is as follows:—"Street includes any highway (not being a turnpike road), and any public bridge (not being a county bridge), and any road, lane, footway, square, court, alley, or passage, whether a thoroughfare or not."
With reference to turnpike roads the Act further states that any Urban Authority may by agreement with the Trustees of any turnpike road, or with the Surveyor of any county bridge, take on themselves the maintenance, repair, cleansing, or watering of such street or road.
It is very questionable, however, whether the onus of cleansing private courts and alleys which are not repairable by the Urban Authority should be borne by them, although for the sake of the public health it is highly desirable that such work should be so undertaken.
The great difficulty attached to this duty arises from the fact that as a rule these private courts and alleys are very badly paved, if paved at all, full of pits, where pools of stagnant mud and water collect, and even in the best cases, the interstices between the pebbles, or other paving, are filled with filth arising in great measure from the dirty habits of the people, and this filth it is found exceedingly difficult to dislodge. The remedy for this is to compel the owners of the abutting properties to have the courts and alleys properly paved with asphalte, or other equally impervious material, after which it would be easy for the Urban Authority to cause them to be swept at least once a day, and flushed with water in the hot weather once a week, but in order to compel the owners to execute this very desirable work it would be necessary to put the complicated machinery of section 150 of the Public Health Act, 1875, in force, and the expense to the landlords would be in many cases very disproportionate to the value of their property.
Out of the ninety towns to which reference has before been made, the authorities of only nineteen of them cleanse the private courts and alleys in their jurisdiction. The sweeping and cleansing of streets should be effected either at night or very early in the morning; if, however, the bad practice of bringing the house refuse out into the streets in inappropriate receptacles is in vogue, it becomes necessary to sweep the street later in the day, after the contents of these receptacles has been removed. In most cases it is necessary to cleanse the principal streets of a town at least once a day, and this appears to be the practice of nearly all the ninety towns referred to, but only seven of them appear to have this operation repeated more frequently; in several cases, however, the horse droppings, &c., are removed at once, under what is called the "orderly" system, and this is especially necessary in streets that are paved with such materials as wood paving, asphalte, or granite setts. The suburban streets of a town need only be cleansed once or twice a week, except in special cases of extremes of mud or snow. It is important, however, that the gully pits in all parts of the town should be cleared out constantly, and men should be employed for this purpose, as well as to cleanse and disinfect all the cabstands and public urinals at least once every day.
Street cleansing is effected either by hand-sweeping and hand-scraping, or by machinery. As to which is the most economical much depends upon the value of labour, and also upon the condition of the roads to be dealt with, but in point of time and as a general rule the value of a horse rotary brush-sweeping machine is undoubted, the only time at which such a machine fails to do effective work is on the occasions when the mud to be removed (owing to a peculiar condition of the atmosphere), has attained a semi-solidity, and is of a stiff and sticky consistency, when it either adheres to and clogs the brushes of the machine, or is flattened by them on to the road instead of being removed.
The simplest and best of these machines, in my opinion, is that manufactured by Messrs. Smith & Sons, of Barnard Castle. It sweeps a clear width of six feet, the rotary brush, which is divided into four or more parts, works diagonally, it is drawn easily by one horse, clearing itself of mud or dust in its progress, and the makers say that it can sweep 15,000 square yards of road surface in one hour, this being equivalent to the ordinary work of about 50 men in the same time!