Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of LondonSimon, John
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Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of London
Simon, John
Cemeteries -- England -- London; Mortality -- Statistics; Sanitation -- England -- London
There are still under the present head, some points to which I am
anxious to advert. During the two years that your Act has been in
operation, various complaints have been made with respect to nuisances
arising in particular trades; and with many of the causes of complaint
you have been unable effectually to contend. Soap-makers,
tallow-melters, gut-spinners, naphtha-distillers, preparers of patent
manure, dealers in soot, exposers of stinking hides, wire-makers,
dealers in kitchen-stuff, fish-curers, tripe-boilers, type-founders,
gold-refiners, slaughterers, varnish-makers, roasters of coffee and
chicory, whalebone-boilers, iron and brass-founders, keepers of
cattle-sheds, makers of printing-ink, dealers in camphine, cookers of
cats’-meat, and manufacturing chemists, have all, at different times and
in various degrees, been complained of.
In respect of those of the enumerated trades which deal in the
manufacture or sale of organic materials in a putrid or putrescent
state, I have already submitted to you my opinion that the City of
London, the home of a large and crowded population, is no place for
them. With regard to the many other occupations, it would obviously be
absurd, in the present state of society, to think of banishing them from
the City which their industry has contributed to enrich, and where
immemorial custom has given sanction to their continuance, unless you
could with certainty affirm of them, that they cause direct and
inevitable detriment to their neighbourhood. Every useful purpose, as
regards the health of the City, might be fulfilled by the enactment of
some moderate restriction.
Manifestly, it is opposed to the spirit of your Act of Parliament, that
any trader or manufacturer should possess the right of diffusing in the
vicinity of his house, to the detriment and disgust of his neighbours,
any product (whether in the form of running fluid, or volatile dust, or
vapour, or smoke, or odour) which is either disagreeable to the senses
or may be hurtful to the health. Many of the instances which I have
enumerated fall within this description, and yet remain unaffected by
the restrictive sections of your Act.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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