The Express.
London, England, 1847-09-30 00:00:00

charge of those duties which arc now nominally per-
formed, in the City, by ward inquests—in the other
parishes of the metropolis, by officers, under different
titles, connected with the vestries. Practically, how-
ever, and even with the extended powers and simple
forms of procedure conferred by the late Nuisance Re-
moval Act, it is not, generally, till some public-spirited
person takes up the nuisance on his own account, that
the parochial artillery is brought to bear upon it. In-
habitants of the more respectable quarters of the
metropolis know nothing of the abominations that
poison their poorer neighbours. The poor man sen-
sibly feels the immediate annoyance ot' the nuisance,
but little dreams of its more serious and remote
effects. This ignorance is shared by all alike, except
medical and scientific men, whose duty, or whose hu-
manity, leads them into the filthiest parts of London.
The decomposing refuse of our cesspools and sewers
gives rise to three distinct gaseous products, each of
which has its fatal influences, if the human
system be exposed to it, in a condensed form. These
products are, sulpharetted hydrogen, hydrosulphuret
of ammonia, and nitrogen. The air containing these
exhalations has been collected, and its vapour con-
densed by cold, and other agents. A residuum has
been obtained, which has been proved by experiments
to produce every variety and type of fever in healthy
animals. In the form in which these poisons are
usually breathed—that is, largely diluted with air—
they produce only languor and depression. But when
the poison is less diluted, or given off in more con-
centrated forms, it produces fevers, choleras, dysen-
twice, and other epidemics. Sometimes, as when
issuing from freshly-stirred cesspools, or newly-
opened graves, it kills as instantaneously as prussic
acid.
All parochial or local action on the sources of these
poisonous exhalations is most active when least
wanted, and least active when most wanted. For
example, first-class streets are ecavengered once a
week ; second-class, once a fortnight ; third-class,
once a month ; and worst class never. This, it is
obvious, is an exact inversion of the proper order.
Those streets that are never cleansed are precisely
those which should be cleansed daily.
Oar columns of yesterday contain a painful illus-
tration of the neglect or insufficiency of oar present
machinery for the suppression of nuisances. Christ.
church workhouse, in the Whitechapel union, is
situated in a neighbourhood polluted with nuisances
of the most pernicious kind. Several children in
that workhouse died last week from disease attri-
buted by the surgeon entirely to the poisonous ex-
halations from these places. An inquest was held on
one of these poor little victims on Tuesday. The
surgeon ascribed her death to the effects of an atmo-
sphere loaded with the effluvia from a manufactory of
manure from night-soil and bullock's blood. These
odoriferous compounds are exposed to the influences
of sun and wind in the open air. A description of
two such establishments, from Dr. HECTOR GAIN'S
instructive lecture on the Unhealthiness of London,
and the necessity of remedial measures," will enable
our readers to apprehend how sufficient such causes
may be to produce such effects.
As an instance of one of the nuisances existing in London,
I may refer to a nightman's yard in Ty/own-street, Church-
street, Shoreditch. In passing through this wretched
quarter of London, where destitution and misery are only
equalled by the intense filthiness which is painfully and per-
petually present, summer and winter, I stumbled on this
revolting spectacle. Mountains of filth, dust, dirt, and
ashes, mixed with decaying animal and vegetable matter and
manure, were classified and piled up as high as the houses,
and covered a very large space of ground. The continual
additions which are daily made to this enormous accumula-
tion, and the sifting and sorting of it, cause the loose par-
ticles en the surface to be wafted by each wind over this
wretched locality, to be deposited in the streets and houses,
and inhaled by the inhabitants. In Edinburgh all this
refuse is daily removed three miles from the outskirts of the
town, and the sale of it supplies the municipal body with
[ands not only sufficient for the perfect cleansing of the
town, but affords them a profit of several thousands of pounds
- sterling.
• On the western aids otSpitalfields workhouse, and entered
boa a died dolled QlllllllllAiffeet, is a nightinaks yard, on a
. ardlisr sole lbw 1110,04 described. A heap of dung, and
terse of every ilowlptioa, about the size of a pretty large
house, lies pled to the left of the yard ; to the right, is an
artificial pond, into which the contents of cesspools are
thrown. The contents are allowed to desiccate in the open
air; and they are frequently stirred for that purpose. The
odour which was given off when the contents were raked up,
to give me an auurance that there was nothing so very bad
in the alleged nuisance, drove me from the place with the
utmost speed I was master of. On two sides of this horrid
collection of excremental matter. was a patent manure ma-
nufactory. To the tight, in this yard, was a large accumula-
tion of dung, de.; but, to the left, there was an extensive
layer of a compost of blood, ashes, and nitric acid, which
gave out the most horrid, offensive, and disgusting concen-
tration of putrescent odours it has ever been my lot to be the
victim of. The whole place presented a most foul end filthy
aspect, and an example of the enormous outrages which are
perpetrated in London against society. It is a =tins fact,
that the parties who had charge of these two premises were
each dead to the foulness of their own most pestilential nui-
sances. The nightman's servant accused the eternises of the
manure manufacturer as the source of perpetual foul smells,
but thought his yard free from any particular cause of com-
plaint; while the servant of the patent manure manufacturer
diligently and emmestly averted the perfect freedom of his
master'e yard from foul exhalations; but considered that the
raking up of the drying night soil, on the other side of the
wall, was ' quite awful, and enough to kill anybody."
The jury, in pronouncing their verdict in Wednes-
day's case, expressed their surprise that such a
nuisance as the manure manufactory should be
allowed to exist. They might have reserved their
wonder. There are whole districts of London in
which these sources of disease and death stand by
scores, pell-mell with the dense and miserable
life they do so much to embitter and shorten.
It is remarkable how little one is affected by
the most weighty considerations, if at all remote,
in competition with the most trivial, if immediate. A
shilling in the pound added to a rate is a palpable
and duiagreeable fact, against which it is idle to set
the annual saving of 20,000 lives and a million of
money. Such calculations of the gain to life and pocket
from efficient sanitary regulation do not appear more
exaggerated to the ignorant, than they seem under-
rated to those who have studied the subject. It is to
be hoped that the number of the latter is increasing
daily. Only by their increase can the dead weight
of parochial ignorance and selfishess be overcome.

A vrw days ago a person, of the name of DARBY,
was indicted at the Central Criminal Court for obtain.
ing money under false pretences. It appeared that
the prisoner had induced the prosecutor to discount a
bill for 851., accepted by one TERRY, by means of
certain statements as to the character and responsi-
bility of the acceptor, which were in fact untrue.
To prove the guilty knowledge of DARBY, that his
representation' were false, the counsel for the prose-
cution tend in evidence the examination of the de-
fendant hi , taken in the Court of Bankruptcy, in
which he
ad
that TERRY was his brother-in-
law, andlarse not, as alleged to the discounter of the
bill, a West India merchant, but a person in poor cir-
cumstances. The solicitor, who had opposed the
defendant in the Court of Bankruptcy, stated that the
examination in that court had been conducted
with a view to the establishment of the
charge
of misdemeanor, which it was now l)t
forward to support. On an objection being
taken to the admission of this evidence, the Recorder
rejected it, on the ground that "it wee contrary to
natural justice and to the principles of the law of
England, that a man who was in the peaks of
the defendant should be compelled to MIRO! gin-
tions without any caution, purly framed with a
view to prefer a criminal charge against him.?
Accordingly the prisoner was acquitted.
With all our respect for the law of evidence, we
cannot but think that when a criminal charge is
clearly brought home to a defendant—when judge,
itiry, and spectators are satisfied of his guilt beyond
a doubt—it is, on the whole, desirable that the verdict
should, if possible, correspond to the universal per-
suasion. " Natural justice" is but a vague term for
the acquittal of the guilty, and "the principles
of the law of England" are even more uncertain
_ _

and indefinite than atnre or justice. The Recorde
- that the ,of - •

is fully lustified in asserting ttia, dicta of various
judges, in which alone " the principles" to which he
refers are to be found, have introduced into the doc-
trine of evidence, in the department of admissions
and confessions, a collection of blundering refine-
ments and clumsy subtleties which would have de-
lighted MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS, or the philosophers
of ',sputa. Thus it has been held, that if a prose•
cutor or constable tells a thief that what he says will
be used against him at his trial, a subsequent con-
fession may be given in evidence; bat if he is told
that his statement will be used for or against him, it
must be excluded, on the ground that a hope of
benefit was held out to him. Of late, we believe the
judges have been disposed to retrace their steps in
some degree, or, at least, to carry their ingenious
prudishness, in shuttin ears to confessions, no
farther ; bat thedoctrines which have already been