Mr. Spear's report to the Local Government Board on sanitary administration in the Bridgend registration district, Glamorganshire, with special reference to the arrangements existing in the district for the discharge of the duties of Medical Officer of Health / [John Spear].

Spear, John.

Date:: [1889]

Credit: Mr. Spear's report to the Local Government Board on sanitary administration in the Bridgend registration district, Glamorganshire, with special reference to the arrangements existing in the district for the discharge of the duties of Medical Officer of Health / [John Spear]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$to be derived from medical authority, and is unable, at least within any reasonable time, to carry out even such improvements as he deems necessary should they infringe private interests. I will give one or two instances, among such a number as to indicate that the difficulty is constant, to show how ineffectual have been his efforts. On the 24th June 1886 Mr. Leyshon reported that there was insufficient privy accommodation at Verity's Court, Cowbridge, and notice to provide it was served on 5th July ; on September 23rd the notice was reported not complied with. On April 26th, 1887, small-pox broke out in Verity’s Court, and the inspector then reported “Mr. Rees * has deceived me by promises until the notice given him is powerless; will the authority “ please direct me to give him a fresh notice.” Fresh notice was served on May 9th, but it had not been complied with when Cowbridge was made an urban district on November 1st, nor has the work been done, I believe, up to the present time. [I visited Verity’s Court and found that deficient closet accommodation was by no means the worst of the evils existing there. The houses have no through ventilation, and within 3 feet of the door of one of them was an enormous midden containing five or six cart-loads of refuse (two loads had been removed some three weeks before, and this accumulation left), and foul liquid from the midden was oozing on to the surface of the dilapidated yard—the space from which the houses derive their air supply. In one bedroom of 840 feet cubic capacity, that is to say, giving space for three inmates at the most, six persons were sleeping. The medical officer of health informed me that a case of typhoid fever had occurred in this court since the small-pox outbreak.] In his reports for 1885 and 1886, Dr. Randall had referred to the defective privy accommodation at the village of Wick (at the school-house amongst others), urging the authority to secure the adoption of pail closets or “ at least small impermeable pits,” and in a quarterly report of 1887 he specially referred to the Star Inn, where liquid from the privy “ soaked under the floor of the house,” and advised the substitution of a pail closet. On the 10th November the inspector of nuisances reported upon the case. “ I find no nuisance in or about the privy,” he said, but he admitted that it would be better removed from against the wall of the house, and accordingly a notice “ to provide proper privy accommodation ” was issued on November 21st. On January 5th, March 13th, and May 30th, it was reported that the notice had not been complied with ; on July 13th the new privy had not been completed ; on August 1st it was reported finished. As to the others reported by the medical officer of health to require structural alterations, the inspector of nuisances reported (August 1st, 1888), “There are a few rudely constructed privies at Wick, but I am not prepared to say that they are a nuisance.” [I visited this village in the course of my inspection. The new privy at the Star Inn was a few yards further removed from the house, but was of precisely the same character as the last, with deep porous and unventilated cesspool. The closet accommodation in the village generally, including the school-house, was of a similar kind, allowing much accumulation and soakacre of foecal matter about the houses, and constituting a serious danger to the inhabitants. Several of the houses also, from dilapidation and dampness, are in their present condition unfit for habitation.] On October 28th, 1886, Mr. Leyshon reported “There are J11 houses belonging to the Rev. Mr. Morse at Bryncoch with only five privies, and also a very foul and stagnant gutter at the back of the premises;” and on the 8th November 1886, a notice was served to abate these nuisances. On 18th January 1887, notice reported not complied with; February 7th, reminder sent; May 4th, “notice not complied with.” On October 21, the inspector finds “ nothing fresh at this place calling for special notice ” ; on December 7th he finds the privies “ require cleansing.” Later in the month typhoid fever is reported by Dr. Randall to have broken out in Mr. Morse’s houses, and on January 8th, 1888, the privies were “cleansed.” On the 5th of May, Dr. Randall, referring again to the outbreak of typhoid fever, spoke of the privies at Mr. Morse’s houses as “most unsatisfactory.” It then appeared that the notice served in October 1886, as to the privies and drains, had never been complied with, the inspector excusing himself on the ground that some of the houses had been unoccupied. On the 21st May 1888, a second and similar notice was served. On July 31st, Mi\ Morse was reported to have completed the drains, but not the privies ; on September 4th he had “ com¬ pleted the new privies and also the drainage.” [It was essential that I should see the results of all this labour, extending over nearly two years, and I accordingly visited the premises. I found the 11 houses built in two rows at right angles to each other, their backs facing upon the common yard—a triangular piece of wholly unpaved ground. Until the recent alterations all liquid sewage had flowed across this unpaved space in an open gutter ; now a pipe had been laid with three gully openings. The latter, however, were so badly constructed that much of the sewage still spread itself over the unpaved surface. The surface was still filthy and sewage-sodden, and one tenant complained that the liquid filth flowed into his kitchen. Moreover, the drain terminated within three feet of the lowermost house, and there the sewage created, in a dilapidated gutter, a foul nuisance. Within the triangular space, about 23 feet from the houses, the original privy cesspits stand in two separate blocks, and now a third block was built, the cesspit of which came within about 18 feet of the houses. The original cesspools$