“It is little use causing our own dust to be carted away if Rotherhithe is to become the receptacle of all the ashes and offal of a large neighbouring parish (Bermondsey). On a piece of land near the Viaduct there stands an immense heap of house refuse, covering an acre of ground at least, and forming quite an artificial hillock, the level of the surface having been raised 12–14 feet. The bulk of the heap is composed of ashes with a due admixture of putrefying vegetable matter and fish.”
A little later he reports it as 1½ acres in extent, averaging 15 feet high, in one place as high as 20 feet.
How to deal with these noxious or offensive trades was felt by some of the Medical Officers of Health to be a great difficulty.
“We have the health of the community on the one hand,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth; “the great manufacturing interests on the other…. We have all a common right to an unpolluted atmosphere, and it is our bounden duty to withstand any encroachments on that right. The personal aggrandisement of the manufacturer must not be achieved by the spoliation of the property, the comforts, and the lives of his poorer neighbours….
“But the manufacturing interest is not a thing to be trifled with. Destroy the manufactures of Lambeth, and you starve its population. There are nuisances of more benefit than of injury to the community,” and he rather deprecated “a crusade against those interests, the untrammelled prosecution of which has raised this country to its present proud pre-eminence.”
Some of the Medical Officers of Health expressed decided views on the subject (1857):—
“Those who follow unwholesome trades led on by the thirst of gain,” reported one Medical Officer of Health, “have no right to poison a neighbourhood and swell its mortality.”
The Medical Officer of Health for the Strand wrote (1856):—
“… The protection of the public health which has been committed to your charge is, beyond doubt, of infinitely more importance than, and should far outweigh the interests of, private individuals how numerous soever they should be.”
The Nuisances Removal Act, 1855, had given the local authority power on the certificate of the Medical Officer of Health to take proceedings against an offender, and had provided the means for inflicting a penalty. And in some instances it was used, for the Medical Officer of Health for Hackney reported:—