The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-10 00:00:00

CATCHING A TAR-TAR.

The old adage which declares that they who touch
pitch cannot escape defilement seems equally ap-
plicable to those who have to do with tar, as far as
regards that variety of it produced during the ma-
nufacture of gas. The greedy inhumanity recently
displayed by a City gas comPany, whose works
were injuring the health of the residents in one of

the most crowded neighbourhoods of London,
ap-
pears amiable and philanthropicin comparison with
the proceedings disclosed during a recent trial at
Kingston. So horibly nauseous and injurious is
the filthy refuse matter resulting from the manu-
facture of gas, that it is expressly forbidden by law
to be exposed, lest its emanations prove injurious
to health. It is even filthier than the waters
of the Thames, with whose stream its ad-
mixture is specially prohibited by the Corpora-
tion of London as conservators of the river ; for,
strange to say, the Thames, only odorous with the
essence de mille-sewers, is a conservatory. Now,
the London Gas works Company have an esta-
blishment at Vauxhall, near to the river's edge ;
and it seems that the opportunity thus afforded to
save the expense of removing or deodorising the
refuse matter was too much for the virtue of the
directors to resist. Moreover, if the worst came to
the worst, they were hand and glove with the Cor-
poration, who would not be very hard (as was sub-
sequently proved) ontheir own particular friends.
So, in defiance of the conservatory prohibition, and
with a full knowledge of the injurious influence on
human health and life exercised by the emanations
from gas-refuse' however diluted, the London Gas
Company, with diabolically deliberate ingenuity,
ran a concealed iron pipe to the middle of the river.
and by means of a steam-engine specially fitted for
the purpose, pumped their gas-refuse into the midst
of this much-suffering stream. This noxious mat-
ter, known in the trade as " blue hilly" (perhaps
the origin of the French malediction, ventre blue),
and which is strongly charged with sulphuretted
hydrogen, has been for months polluting the air
breathed by thousands of those very poor who are
crowded so thickly together on the river's edge
at Lambeth and Vauxhall. We are fully justified
by the laws of sanitary science in asserting that the
coup-de-grace has thus been given to many a feeVe
child, and many a drooping, half-starved invalid.
If the proceedings of the gas company displayed
considerable ingenuity (in a Newgate-calendar point
of view), the mode of detection pursued by the City
officers was equally clever. They attached a Bose
to the opening of the pipe, and so conveyed the
contents, belched out from its mouth, into a neigh-
bouring barge. An action aglinst the company was
commenced at the Kingston assizes. They had no
plea to justify their defiance of the laws of huma-
nity end of the country ; they could only offer to
do whatever was required of them for the future ;
and on this agreement—one that would have been
considered simply absurd if proposed by a burglar
or felon who had infringed the laws in far less de- '
gree—the-company was allowed to enter into its
recognisances for future good behaviour, and was
let off with merely having an adverse verdict re-
corded.—Lancet.

MONDAY EVENING CONCERTS FOR THE PEOPLE.—We
hear that Mr. Henry Seymour Carleton, whose imita--
tions have become so popular of late, is to make his ap-
pearance at the above concerts, St. Martin's Ball, on
'Easter Monday, in an original entertainment, by one of
the authors of " The Great Gun Trick," and " Like and
Unlike," entitled " Familiar-Faces ; or, Old Friends in
New Places." We feel assured of his success.
[AnvEsTissmErrr.]=The possibility of abandoning medicine
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