The Express.
London, England, 1867-01-07 00:00:00

APTEB THE PROST.

After the frost, says the Times, a deluge. While
the frost lasts water is not to be had, but when the thaw
oomes the lead pipes burst, and • shower falls through the
floors and ceilings of the upper stories, the dampness re.
nisining for months, while downstairs there is a flood.
The plumbers and glaziers, poor souls, are hardly to
be blamed if they do their best to increase their business,
and but half-drowning us, so long as we can just keep
our heads above water, is • venial affair. The person
really responsible is the architect, or the builder acting
with the architect, who place cisterns out of doors, or just
under the slates, and carry leaden pipes as certain
to burst either outside the wall or just inside, or, what is
really worse than either, insidiously within the wall hidden
by plaster and paint. To tell • householder to obviate the
flood by emptying the cisterns at the first visitation of
frost is like telling • man who complains of the
food furnished him to do without it. All that
is required is to keep the waterworks completely within
the range of the internal temperature of our houses, and
nothing can be more easy. The smoke-flues in a house in
a London street are in the middle of the partywall, and it
would always be easy to carry up by their side, in such a
way as to share their warmth, an air shaft for the double
purpose purpose of containing the water pipes and supply-
ing sufficiently warm air to the chamber containing the cis-
tern. Such anair-flue, ascending from theback of thekiteben
fire, would contribute an amount of he►t sufficient to
qualify very considerably the usual chill of our attics
or garrets. The English are most wasteful of fuel
and heat. They are so enamoured of the " fireside" that
they content themselves with piling on coal on the open
grate as long as they can afford to buy it, at the very time
that they go shivering to bed and spend hours in bed-
rooms carefully protected from the warmth of the family
circle or the kitchen range far below. The whole matter
is one in which we have still to use our heads to save our
coals ; and it is the business of our house architects and
builders to help us. A little common sense applied to
the subject of the protection of our water supply may be
a step to more extensive improvements in our domestic
architecture.

The Daily News hopes the recent experience of the
London streets will establish clearly in the minds of all
inhabitants who do not happen to be vestrymen that the
parochial governors are utterly unfit to be longer entrusted
with even the scavenging of the metropolis. Not only
must we have a change of system to give us better ad-
ministration, we want also in some respects new prin-
ciples of administration. It is said that labourers
prefer the work which comes to them from
the owners of private houses ; but why should private
individuals be required to clean any part of the streets?
Common sense and practice teach that what each man
does separately is, on the whole, done badly, irregularly,
slowly, often not at all ; and when done, always at a quite
disproportionate cost. Many do not comply with the rule,
and those who do cause nearly as much harm as good.
Clearly the public body which has charge of the street