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OFFENSIVE AND INJURIOUS TRADES.
III. With respect to offensive trades and occupations
pursued within the city of London, my task
of recommendation is an easy one. To any person
conversant with the simplest relations of cause and
effect, it is quite notorious that the decomposition
of organic matter within a certain distance of human
habitations, unfailingly tends to produce disease;
and every one who is competent by knowledge
and impartiality to pronounce an opinion on
the subject, must feel that no occupation which
ordinarily leaves a putrid refuse, nor any which
consists in the conversion or manufacture of putrescent
material, ought, under any circumstances, to
be tolerated within a town.
1. First, in regard to slaughter-houses, I may
remind you that, on the 23rd of January last, when
your Honourable Commission first met under the
new Act of Parliament, I recommended to you on
sanitary grounds, that in such rules as you might
make for the regulation of slaughter-houses, all
underground slaughtering should be absolutely
prohibited. It was laid down, however, that your
Act of Parliament would not enable you to