“Typhus fever has existed for the last three or four months in the parish of Flitwick, and although the number of deaths has not been considerable as compared with the progress of the disease, new cases have occurred as those under treatment became convalescent, and several are still suffering under this malady. The cottages in which it first appeared (and to which it has been almost exclusively confined), are of the most wretched description: a stagnant pond is in the immediate vicinity, and none of the tenements have drains; rubbish is thrown within a few yards of the dwellings, and there is no doubt but in damp foggy weather, and also during the heat of summer, the exhalations arising from those heaps of filth must generate disease, and the obnoxious effluvia tends to spread contagion where it already exists. It appears that most of the cottages alluded to were erected for election purposes, and have since been allowed to decay; the roofs are repaired with turf dug in the neighbourhood, and the walls repaired with prepared clay, without the addition of lime-washing. Contagious disease has not been remarkable within the Union in any other spot than the one alluded to.” _Messrs. Smith_ and _Moore_, the medical officers of the Bishop Stortford union, state,— “We have always found the smallest and most slightly-built houses the seats of the lowest forms of disease; and although, during the last year, no epidemic or infectious disease here prevailed, it is but just to state that, generally speaking, the cottages of labourers in this district are small, badly protected from both extremes of weather, badly drained, and low in the ground.” _Mr. J. S. Nott_, the medical officer of the Witham union, states,—