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HOUSE-DRAINAGE.
I. It is not in my power to lay before you any
numerical statement of the proportion of drained
to undrained houses. From such information as
I possess, I may venture to speak of imperfect
house-drainage as having been a general evil in all
the poorer districts of the City; and the latest
intelligence on the subject leads me to consider
this great evil as but very partially removed. So
far as I can calculate from very imperfect materials,
I should conjecture that some thousands of houses
within the City still have cesspools connected with
them. It requires little medical knowledge to
understand that animals will scarcely thrive in an
atmosphere of their own decomposing excrements;
yet such, strictly and literally speaking,
is the air which a very large proportion of
the inhabitants of the City are condemned
to breathe. Sometimes, happily for the inmates,
the cesspool in which their ordure accumulates,
lies at some small distance from the basement-area
of the house, occupying the subsoil
of an adjoining yard, or (if the privy be a public
one) of some open space exterior to the private
premises. But in a very large number of cases, it