Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State For the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry Into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; With AppendicesChadwick, Edwin
History
Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State For the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry Into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; With Appendices
Chadwick, Edwin
Housing -- Great Britain; Public health -- Great Britain
Two-thirds of the usual expense of street cleansing is the expense of
cartage, which, with a proper adaptation of the sewers, is wholly
unnecessary. The exclusive use of hand-labour in street-sweeping is
pronounced by competent judges to be a mere barbarism, and several
machines have been invented which demonstrate that by mechanical power,
moved by horses, the cleansing may be effected in a far shorter time.
Some of these scrape the mud in ridges to the sides, where it remains
until it can be lifted and carted away. But this is objected to as
inconvenient by the shopkeepers, and the scavengers object that it is no
convenience to them, inasmuch as raking it in heaps prevents the
evaporation of the liquid, and increases the cartage; and, moreover,
that the process of sweeping by hand is as quick as the carts can return
for its removal. A machine has been used at Manchester which rapidly and
cleanly sweeps the level surfaces of the streets into a cart; but there
is still the encumberance of the labour, and cost and delay of carting
the refuse to a place of deposit, which may be several miles distant,
and returning to reload. The value of a process of street-cleansing is
proportioned to the rapidity with which it is performed, but at present
it is usually delayed until the sun or the air has done a large portion
of the work by the evaporation of the moisture, commonly however to the
deterioration of the air of the town and the health, and also to the
deterioration of the value of the refuse.
On examining these obstructions to the cleanliness and salubrity of our
towns, it became apparent that the expensive and slow process of the
removal of the surface refuse of the streets by cartage might be
dispensed with, and the whole at once carried away by the mode which is
proved, in the case of the refuse of houses, to be the most rapid,
cheap, and convenient, namely, by sweeping it at once into the sewers,
and discharging it by water.
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