“There are too many slaughter-houses in crowded districts,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras (1856–7). “It is impossible that slaughtering of animals can be carried on amongst a dense population without proving more or less injurious to the public health.
“This it does in several ways—by occasioning the escape of effluvia from decomposing animal refuse into the air and along the drains, and by the numerous trades to which it gives rise in the neighbourhood which are offensive and noxious, such as gut-spinning, tallow-melting, bladder-blowing, and paunch-cleansing.”
Even in the Strand District there were (1856)—
“Nuisances arising from various branches of industry, the slaughtering of sheep and calves in the back-yards, and even in the cellars and kitchens, and the keeping of cows in the basements under private dwelling-houses, conditions which continue to exist in the most crowded parts of this district, and should on no account be permitted in such a district:” whilst in Westminster “pig-keeping existed to a very considerable extent.”
In some of the outer parishes the “fœtid emanations” caused in the process of brickmaking added to the general impurity of the air.
There were many other local causes of impurity of the atmosphere, some even caused by the Sanitary Authorities themselves. Thus the more thorough scavenging and removal of the filth of streets and houses, vitally necessary as that was, resulted in the accumulation of great heaps of filth in crowded centres.
Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Fulham reported that:—
“The collection of dust heaps, and dust contractors’ depôts, constitute a most injurious and offensive nuisance—enormous quantities of animal and vegetable matter are heaped together, from which the most noxious effluvia constantly arise.”
And the Medical Officer of Health for Rotherhithe pointed out (1858) that:—