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drains can no longer act as such, are either columns discharging at a good
level above the road, or open gratings in the centre of the road. We
receive complaints in respect of both of these; in fact, closing the one at
the road level and erecting columns is usually followed by complaints of
sewer gas blowing in at the upper windows of the adjoining houses. As
Lewisham justly points out, the difficulty has been greatly increased by
the gradual interception of all house drains from the sewer, and with the
concomitant abolition of the former means of ventilation which were
formed by the direct rain water and soil-pipes.
The remedies proposed by the Lewisham Borough Council are
that interceptors should ho longer be enforced under the By-laws, and
that sewer ventilators should be put nearer together. As the Council is
not asked to express any opinion on this latter point, comment is
unnecessary. But as regards the non-insistence on the provision of interceptors
we are both agreed that it is a wise step to take, not only on
account of the better ventilation of the sewers, but also, as we have before
often insisted, on other grounds. Indeed, we have previously advised that
rain-water pipes going direct to the drain and not opening near a window
should be left connected direct with the sewer, even in houses where no
interceptor is provided, and the step proposed by Lewisham is only a little
in advance of this.
It will, no doubt, be contended that the danger of allowing sewer
gas to escape from ventilating pipes attached to houses will be extreme ;
but we do not think for one moment that the danger is equal to that of
allowing the smells from the sewer at the road level, and especially from
those owned by the London County Council—for instances, the Albany
Road sewer, the Victoria Road sewer, and the one in Denmark Hill.
These are good object lessons, so far as evil-smelling sewer ventilators are
concerned.
By the By-laws of the County Council it is required that an
untrapped opening to the drain should be placed as near the interceptor as
possible. This is usually closed by a mica flap, more often out of order
than in, and it not infrequently communicates with a drain, or rather a
miniature sewer, which may take the sewage of ten or a dozen houses.
That such a condition of things can and does give rise to nuisance we have
experienced, and, in defiance of theoretical sanitation, have ordered that
such inlets be closed. Such inlets, however, are prescribed by the
By-laws, although we are convinced that the forbidden practice of
allowing each house to act as a sewer ventilator in comparison with the
so-called air inlets will cause less nuisance.
It is not necessary to enter into the desirability of interceptors,
for, when there has been any possible means of getting out of the By-law,
we are not ashamed to say we have aided and abetted any plan by which
the rule for their enforcement can be evaded.
(Signed) WILLIAM OXTOBY, Borough ngineer.
FRANCIS STEVENS, Medical Officer of Health.
To this I have now little to add, except to quote from a
report made to the Vestry of Camberwell: —