2
very inferior description. On the average, on the assumption, that the popula-
tion as given by Colonel Mason is correct, there are only 4.6 persons to a house,
so that the houses are not according to this statement overcrowded, but I am
informed in reality they are so, as it is found that a very large number of persons
belonging to the town really live in the houses of their friends in the Sudder
bazar where they are not subject to any taxation whatever.
5. The better class of houses have a sufficient plinth two or three feet
high and are built of cut-stone with laterite walls or entirely with laterite, but
the walls of the inferior sort consist simply of mud bricks whilst the entrances
to some of these houses are very small. For example the doorway of a house
in Karkur street was only 4 feet high by 14 inches broad. The houses are
chiefly built on the ground floor and are all tiled, but they are not provided with
any means of ventilation, the consequence being that their interiors are dark,
close smelling and unwholesome, and some of them are of great length so that
there is little or no ventilation, and although regularity has been observed along
the line of streets, there is none with reference to the rear which generally opens
into a small court-yard enclosed by a mud wall. The filth in some of these
places was very great, and proved that there was an entire absence of any proper
systematic inspection.
6. There are said to be 380 private privies in the bazar, of which 232 are
built under the roof of the house, whilst the remainder are in a far safer position
as they are detached.
7. The drinking water of the inhabitants is entirely derived from wells
excavated in the laterite of which it is said 64 are private and 3 public. Many
of the private wells are situated within a few feet of a privy.
8. There are only 2 public latrines, one for males containing 14 compart-
ments, and another for females with 20 compartments, They are situated in the
extreme east on a high bank which appears as if it had in bye gone days formed
part of a bund just above the banks of the Bogarvis Nullah. Their condition when
I saw them was simply disgraceful. Each building consists of two rows hack
to back separated by a paved central passage. At the men's privy the cesspool for
the offensive fluid to run into has been placed on the highest part viz., on the
north end but though it was full, it was covered over with such a thick scum
that an Officer who was accompanying us did not see that it was a cesspool and
walked into it, but the pavement in the centre even if it had been properly laid
in the first instance has sunk towards the south and a filthy fluid composed of
urine, fæces, and ablution water was seen flowing out over the open ground.
The stench of the place was horrible, and I can easily conceive that people do not
like to visit it. In each compartment there is placed an iron box, but the urine
guards have been bent down, and the men evidently do not micturate into it as
a pool of urine was seen on the ground in front of each compartment. I could
not enter the female latrine as it was occupied at the time, but on looking down
the central passage I saw nightsoil flowing into it and nothing could be worse
than its condition.
9. Colonel Mason was good enough to have a census taken of the number
of people visiting these privies from 4 A.M. till 8 P.M., on the 13th August when
it was found that 477 persons visited them. Now taking 4.6 persons as the
average number of occupiers of a house and multiplying these figures by 380, the
number of privies in the bazar, it will be seen that only 1,748 persons used the
private privies so that if this number is added to the visitors of the public latrines
only 2,225 residents could have used any privy on that day and the very serious
question arises where did the remaining 2,390 persons ease themselves ? It is