The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-12-15 00:00:00

CORRhSPONDENCE.

ON THE SANITARY CONDITION OF SOME
PARTS OF LIVERPOOL.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

LETTER XXI

Property has its duties as well as its rights."

THE DAMP, FOUL STATE OF DWELLINGS, AND THE

HASTY OCCUPATION OF N EW-BUILT HOUSES, SOURCES
OF DANGER—(continued).

The last case, then, was one of the list of preventible
diseases. The many weeks of interrupted attention to
business, were so many sacrifices to the selfishness of
society and the ignorance of the dupes of that selfishn-ss.
The following are so many more instances, only further
enhanced by the greater poverty of those called upon, or
obstinately willing, to become the prey of causes of dis-
ease removable or mitigable. I shall less minutely par-
ticularise some of the following facts, and venture, upon
the slender stock of credit I may have earned, to call for
a little exercise of faith, therefore, upon the reader's part.
A. shop and back room, which served as house-place
and bedroom, are situated upon one of the very highest
elevations of the ground upon which this town is built;
therefore so far removed from the prejudicial operation of
those causes to which the lower levels of the town are
exposed. This house-place and bedroom are built upon
a large water-tank, the aperture of which is closed by a
large iron slab, which is under the only bed, for which
latter there is but that one at all suitable or npable cor-
ner, owing to the unfavourable position of the door, win-
dow, and fireplace. The tank supplies with water a house
above of three stories at least, if not four. The floor of
this room is otherwise slabbed with stone. The flour is,
therefore, from its being the ceiling in eff, et of a water-
chamber, always more or less damp and cold. The fire
fails to render the floor temperate, or the air of the room
generally comfortable. There seems no mediate transla-
tion between roasting at the fire or shivering with the
cold. I happen to know, as I think, rather intimately,
the natural history of this cold chamber. It is now about
three or four years since I attended an occupant (perhaps
the first) of this room—a poor woman and her husband,
struggling for an honest livelihood. She was confined in
this place. in a bed over the iron-mouthed teak. I do
not remember the particulars of her recovery; but the

child lived, whilst in the course of a short period the poor
mother sank in pulmonary consumption. The infant was
sent away into the country to be nursed, and was living
and well but a few weeks ago. In the course of time, 1
was also called upon to visit the successors of the first
family in the same place—another industrious pair In
this instance, too, I was present at the wife's confine-
ment. She recovered, but with some drawback from a
supposed ordinary cold. She eventually rallied, and yet
often was the subject of cold and feverish heats. My
mind was not so much attracted to the dangers of our
Liverpool population then as since. She again expected
to become a mother, but her health was prejudiced by a
succession of colds; in fact, she could hardly ever be said
to be free from them. She was confined, and after strug-
gling with a ri,rumatic attack and some kind of disorder
of the feet, she recovered. During these attendances
upon both her husband and self for heavy colds with
coughs, I used to remonstrate earnestly with them, her-
self especially, against remaining in such unhealthy apart-
ments. I reasoned with her upon the folly of staying at
the imminent risk of health, if not of life. It was of no
use. The apartments were otherwise suitable for busi-
ness; the locali y had the command of a certain custom,
and blind obstinacy determined a deaf ear to my oft-
repeated warning. The. conviction grew upon me that
such must prove fatal to some or other member of the
family. At one time I did apprehend consumption in the
husband, but he rallied. 1 left them with a death note
for my prophecy of the future. I have since been excused
attending, perhaps because my hygienicnotions were not
agreeable. I heard some time since, from a near relative
of the family, that two of the children had died of hooping
cough. . .

fleave this history without one additional observation.
I turn to the next.

A family recently arrived in Liverpool, the father of
which had recently got a situation in one of the public
offices. They took a new house before it was completed,
in a locality once covered frequently with water, on a
plain recently sewered in something like a proper fashion.
They had not been long housed before the mattresses grew
mouldy ; the father got a rheumatic attack ; one child
became deaf, another had its legs crippled with rheuma-
tism, and a third I attended in consumption until it died.
The latter illness was admitted to have been threatening,
or perhaps bad actually seized upon its victim, before they
came; yet undoubtedly the last chance of its youthful
struggle with this remorseless malady was taken away by
the imprudence of entering a new damp house. The next
house has been inhabited eighteen months, by parties who
took to it green—the wife is now in consumption. Numbers
of persons are now awake to the risk of damp new houses,
and are anxiously trusting that the legislature will inter-
fere early to save future victims.
Of the next case I have only brief notes, but I do not
bring forward a single case which was not attributed by
the parties concerned, their medical attendants, or my-
self, to the cause or causes I herein assign.
A young man, a cripple, aged 25, went with his family
into a new house, and in half a year died of dropsy. It
may be said he was weak, and prone to the disease which
carried him off. This argument, if good, tells for me as
much as against ; for his weaker frame, if it were so, ren-
ders him soonest obnoxious to the prejudicial influence cf
new houses.

I have a note of rheumatism in a housekeeper, attri-
buted to entering a new house which was damp ; another
to tho dozopocz•o of a acr,
another of a most severe form of sore throut, cough, &c.,
ending asthmatically. These cases are peculiar and re-
cognisable again by those who have ever seen them, as a
congestive form of attack of the lining of the windpipe.
and not unknown to the Romans, as the erudite medical
editor of our health of town's advocate has pointed out.
The other day 1 went int, a house to visit a patient. I
happened to make some passing remark, whilst waiting,
and found the young woman I was conversing with, had
been lately married, and was going to commence some
line of business along with her husband, for which pur-
pose they were going to quit a comfortable house, and to
enter upon a new house, which she acknowledged was
not yet completed as to the building, and of course which
stood no chance of being dry and tenantable. Had it
even waited until the finishing touches had been put to
the entire, it would yet have been a matter of risk ; but
as it was, the argument might be certainly urged a for-
tiori. She had at the time a heavy cold with a cough
upon her, and I felt it a duty arising out of the casual
acquaintance with the facts, to warn her emphatically of
the great danger to which she was about to be exposed.
She took my officious kindness, if it could be construed
into such, in the same good part in which it was given ;
and, thanking me, replied that they had commenced their
rent, and must make the best of their bargain. A day or
two after, on my calling, I inquired if she were gone. It
was true she had gone to brave all the dangers, probably
eventually to rue the rashness of her haste.
Can it be said, after such a case as this, and others
corresponding which 1 have already brought forward,
that the people can protect themselves, or should be left
to look atter their own interests, without legislative in-
terference ? Surely no one who knows the industrious
classes would say that they have the knowledge or the
forethought to enable them to reckon correctly upon the
future, in such cases, where sanitary laws are not under-
stood or appreciated. A stringent law is required to an-
tagonise the rapacity of a builder for his return of inte-
rest, and the recklessness of ignorance in tenant-candi-
dates for new houses—na;, for three-quarter houses ! I
trust that, in future general sanitary measures, provision
will be made for surveying new houses when completed,
and certifying thereupon as to their fitness for being in-
habited. Many a life would be saved to the state and to
society, and for God's ulterior purposes, were such a
power granted to authorities.
Many of my readers will recollect a striking instance of
serfdom to a builder, published by an " Ex Parish Doc-
tor," some months back, in the columns of this paper,
where a builder was reported to have urged some workman
employed by him to go and warm a new house, one of a
number he had built for sale, and for which it was of the
greatest importance, in order to effect a good sale, that
they should be already tenanted—that is, beginning to
return interest for the outlaid capital. The poor fellow
got a very severe attack of rheumatism—lost his property,
through loss of health and working strength —lost his
employment, through loss of the former—and gained a
hospital refuge, a desolate hearth, and found out the utter
selfishness of his fellow-man, in the person of a jerry
builder ! In what essential particular does such a state
of dependence upon cool, calculating selfishness, with a
full stop at sickness in the shape of hospital relief and
lost situation, differ from the serfdom or villainage of the
feudal ages, or of Russia Proper at the present age ?
What worse is the slavery of the southern part of the
United States, or the West Indies previous to emancipa-
tion, in all their human outrage, than such instances as
this ? The feudal lord or the slaveholder was compelled
to maintain his serf or slave in sickness as well as in
health—" for richer for poorer"; and though tyrannical
and brutal often, yet not always so, nor universally so.
But here an employer places his victim in danger, breaks
him from the ranks of the self-maintaining, ruins him,
and then casts him and his upon the charity of fellow-
, townsmen, whose alms are clubbed together to enable
such a calculating man-monster baying bought his serf
in the cheapest, to sell him in the dearest market; and
having got all, to throw him up a burthen upon society—
an enormity suited to the 19th century, but never refined
upon in the medtraval ages to the same shrewd extent.
I end for the present with this cursory glance at the
villainage of the 19th century, where free-will has sup-
planted hereditary bonds but to heighten the torture of
the victim, whose ignorance, credulity, and want ratify
the suicidal deed. . .

The present rate of multiplying new houses unsewered
is wretched. Though bright with the last finishing
touches of the various workmen and artisans, they are
yet " unclean "—absolutely unclean for the purposes of
life, because unprepared for habitation. An unsewered
house is ready to the eye and inviting, but disease lurks
in its precincts. The gin-palace, with its luring invita-
tion, and the newly-built but unsewered house, are twin
brothers, whose mission is armed with malevolence and
destruction, to wield the unseen stiletto whilst saluting
with the accents.of invitation and friendship. But as for
entrapped families, entrapped with their eyes open, they
might and ought to have inquired about the sanitary po-
sition of the house they were about to enter, as much
called for as inquiry about water, and if taxes and rates
were paid up by previous occupants, &c. Let the public get
into the habit of asking these questions, and the landlords
will sewer and drain without the compulsory clauses of
act,: of parliament.

I am, Sir, yours truly,
G. C. WATSON,

Nov. 28, 1846.