The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-06-29 00:00:00

EXPERIENCES OF A LIVERPOOL SURGEON

TTTE NEW VILLA.
(Continued from the Standard of the 15th instant.)
The kitchen of -- Vilia was what is called a cellar
kitchen; and that not of the.best class. In fact, it was
an apartment which would not for a moment be tolerated
under the provisions of any sanitary act, as a dwelling for
the lowest class of our population. It was ample in size,
it is true, sufficiently lofty, and replete with every neces-
sary convenience • but its ceiling was barely 18 inches
above the natural level of the soil outside the house, those
IS inches being made no by the two low steps from the
gravel walk, and the additional st; p into the hall, the
space occupied by the flooring of tine parlour above and
the ceiling below being deducted. The advantage of these
eighteen inches, however, were almost entirely lost by
the ground up to the wall being artificially raised to form
an imposing flower bed. The light was admitted by two
low windows, opening into a kind of trap covered over
on the outside by a grating. The only source of thorough
ventilation was by means of the coal grid at the back, and
by the staircase, when open. There was an additional inlet
for the air through a small grating, in front of one of the
door steps, which shed a dim light into the pantry. The
floor, I need not say, was flagged ' • and the flags, although
not precisely resting upon the surface of the clay founda-
tion, were so little removed from it by the few loads of
broken bricks, cinders, and other rubbish, which had
been thrown in to make a level surface, that it might be said
to have been resting on the clay. The drain from the
slopstone passed under the kifchen towards the front of
the house, the scullery and pump being at the back.
The side walls of such an apartment, which was at the
least nine feet in depth, with the unchained soil of the
garden round it up to within a few inches of the ceiling,
cannot be supposed to have been very dry, unless some
lining matter had been interposed—a stratum of cinders,
or
slates placed to throw off the lateral moisture. I
-found it the reverse of dry. The plaster of the walls,
which in dry weather, (as it was when the4ouse was first
taken, I was told was, or appeared to be, thoroughly set
and hard,) was at the time I saw it soft and steaming with
a kind of dew which the action of the fire rendered most
noxious—distressing to those who breathed it. The
•fioor, in parts, betrayed evident symptoms of damp ; and,
when washed, the portions so affected—probably those
having the minimum portion of loose matter between the
flags and the clay foundation,--were only dried after a
long interval, and by the aid of a powerful fire. The at-
mosphere of the kitchen during this drying process was
dose and most unhealthy ; and to a delicate constitution a
constant exposure to it would be very prejudicial. As an
aggravation of the evil it must be remembered that of
ventilation, in the proper signification of the term, there
was none in this very common specimen of suburban
cellar kitchens ; and I am inclined to think that no cellar
kitchens ought to be tolerated, in town or country, to
which sufficiently spacious areas are not attached.
It was about ten days after I had first prescribed for
the maid servant of my friends, and before she' was
thoroughly convalescent, that I was called upon by
Robert 5 to attend his young wife who, he said, was
strangely indisposed, upon which I hurried at once to
obey the summons ; and for the first time I now heard of
the exertions which Mary had been making to supply the
want of her servant's efficient services, and ascertained
the state of the kitchen in which, of late, she had spent
so large a portion of her time. I need not say how inex-
pressibly I was shocked at the condition of the place, or
how peremptorily I interposed my edict against her again
venturing upon the execution of the task, to which she
had set herself.
I found poor Mary labouring under somewhat similar
symptoms to those noticed as affecting the servant, but
in a more aggravated form, as might have been antici-
pated from a disease arising from the same cause, but
operating upon a frail and susceptible constitution.
My first impulse was to remove her from a dwelling
is which it appeared that good health was not to
be had. Accordingly, she was so removed, well
guarded against cold, to my own house, where, after a
few days of careful treatment and change of scene and
occupation, she became convalescent. For above a week
more, however, she continued feeble, and affected with
a susceptibility of the slightest chill ; and when, at length,
she insisted Upon once more returning to her own home,
it was the last caution that I gave to her husband that,
as the weather was ungenial, she should be kept as much
as possible within doors, and that, for a time, a constant
fire should be kept lighted in whatever apartment she
might choose.
Here, again, was a fatal mistake committed ; and it
has ever since impressed upon me the warning not to be
satisfied with ascertaining the chief cause only of such
attacks as that under which this poor creature had been
suffering ; but to ascertain, if possible, whether there are
any accessaries or collateral causes to be added. It is true
that, in accounting for the first illness of my ward, as I
may call her, I attributed its due influence to both. To
the damp of that vile cellar-kitchen, its unwholesome
flagged floor, and its streaming walls, I attributed the
rheumatic symptoms of both the servant and her young
mistress; but, in the case of the latter, the irritation of
the throat I attributed to the action of the fire upon the
recently plastered kitchen walls, by which, according
to many authorities, the atmosphere would be
impregnated with lime sufficient to create exten-
sive obstruction of the action of the throat and lungs.
It never entered into my thoughts that there could possi-
bly be, in any house, apartments, not formed after the
pattern of that subterranean kitchen, from the habi-
tation of which the same distressing results could arise.
Mary S. returned to Villa. She was anxious, she
said, to see how her little garden ground looked,—whether
her rose trees had bloomed ; and, above all, she was
anxious that Robert, who, although spending his nights
at my house, was at his own house regularly to dinner,
was made comfortable. No servant, she thought, could
so well study his tastes, or administer to his comforts, as
herself; and it would be a delight to her, even although
not permitted to do so with her own hands, to take care
that it was done by others. For some weeks, the weather
having changed in the meanwhile to a high and dry tem-
perature, I heard no further complaints of her health. I
saw Robert S— occasionally ; and in answer to my
inquiries I learnt that, although still delicate and occa-
sionally suffering from headaches and slight returns of
her first symptoms, she was not what a non-medical ob-
server would consider in a state of ill health requiring
treatment. He had himself, he said, had a severe cold
and sore throat—and indeed his altered looks vouched
for the fact ; but he attributed this to the usual causes of
such affections—wet feet or wet garments.
Summer had passed over; autumn bad deepened the
tint of the foliage, and was stripping bare the trees for
the approach of winter, when I was called upon one
morning to attend a double case of illness at the house of
my friend ; and on proceeding thither I found the state
of affairs most distressing. The servant—(it Was not the
same I had before attended : she had left some time be-
fore, an altered and broken-down woman)—l found la-
bouring under symptoms of a very complex kind. With
the increasing damp of theseaSon, the kitchen had re-
sumed its unhealthy character ; and to its streaming walls
and cold wet floor was superadded another fertile agent
in producing disease. I have mentioned that the drain
from the slopstone and the scullery, which were at the
back of the house, passed under the kitchen towards the
front, a few yards from which, I learnt subsequently, it
debouched into a stagnant and putrid ditch. This drain,
from its deficient construction, (being only formed by a
few bricks laid in a square form and without mortar,)
had gradually become almost choked with kitchen refuse
- matter, which had been allowed to accumulate in it ; and
it now gave back its noxious gases through the slopstone,
Poisoning the air, not only of the kitchen itself, but of
'the entire lower part of the house, producing nausea,
violent pains in the head, and the usual symptoms ob-
served under such circumstances. Even the few weeks,
during which the poor girl had been submitted to the
contamination of such an atmosphere, had wrought in
(her a change which years might not have effected. From
, a fresh country girl, as I was told she was when she first
entered the house, ruddy with health and cheerfulness,
sie had been worn down by continual attacks of the
damps and the malaria of that kitchen to a sickly and
attenuated skeleton, racked with cramps and ague and
utterly incapable now of performing the most ordinary
household tasks. With such a case of course it was im-
possible to deal, whilst the patient was surrounded with
all the influences which had produced the complication
of maladies under which she was suffering ; and her
prompt removal became imperatively necessary. She was
taken to a relatives house in the town, where I attended
n from
her until she was able to be removed tdootuhbet
which she had come. But I much_ _ whether she
would ever again be the same healthy person she had
once been.
I have noticed the servant's case first, not because it
received my first attention, but because I shall have o
dwell more at length upon that of her poor young mis-
tress. I found the latter suffering under symptoms, not
violent indeed, but apparently of that confirmed descrip-
tion which at once convinced me of the almost hopeless
task of restoring her. Cold had been superadded to cold,
slight at first and therefore unattended to,, until it had
fastened itself upon her delicate frame ; and to cold had
now been superadded some degree of fever, and, in a
diminished degree, the effect originally observed to arise
from the action of the warmth of the fire upon the newly-
plastered walls of the kitchen. How this had arisen—
how a sleeping apartment could be in a state to produce