The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-11-24 00:00:00

LETTER XIX

" Property has its duties as well as its rights."

THE DAMP, FOUL STATE OF DWELLINGS, AND THE
H AST' uCCOPATION OF NEW-BUILT HOUSES, SOURCES

liF DAN G a—/continued)

It I u. posing to what extent the evils of premature
iui ahi it,t4 of new houses may be, and has actually been
ito in the town of Liverpool alone. The dangers are
set-) wed , and the mistake not infrequently attended with
a ia,ai result, as the experience of every medical man will
',new. 1 don't suppose there is a medical practitioner who
has been resident here for a few months, and has not
witnessed some or other fatal or lamentable case from this
cause.

The people in general seem to be involved in ignorance
of the deleterious effects of living in new or damp houses.
The occurrence of several fatal cases has still been ineffi-
cient as .a warning to the many who blindly rush in eager
haste to occupy what are technically termed " green "
houses! I shall first give a few instances of these 54d ef-
fects, then I shall allude to the cause of them, and finally
ue suggested tor the cure of teem.

Here is such a list as I have had either personal know-
ledge of, or have the best authority of others for. As for
the real extent of the evil, I cannot adequately report any-
thing like it. I cannot quote a number proportionate to
the new houses themselves. It would not gain credence
it I were to say that, in my own judgment, the fact of the
first tenants of a new house, especially if that be of the
smaller or cottage kind, escaping without prejudice to
their health, of some kind, would be as an exception to a
general rule. The larger calibre of house is not certainly
quite as obnoxious as the smaller to this evil of unwise
haste, mostly perhaps because the ornamenting, &c. &c.,
of it, consumes more time ; partly because they are more
often built for a private owner; partly because the rough
drying of the walls, &c., is essential to the finishing work,
decorative or plain.
Mr. Blower, surgeon, gave me the following fact, which
illustrates the dangers I have so often alluded to :

1. A poor woman he visited in a court in a street leading
out of Whitechapel, was a resident of a house so arranged
that most of the ventilation of her apartment was " by the
leave" of the ashpit. a circumstance neither creditable to
the house-builder nor to the town. The foul atmosphere she
was thus doomed to inhale was repugnant to her, in spite
of habitual endurance. She was confined ; the infant
died in a fortnight (this is just like a case I very lately de.
scribed, where infant life fell an early sacrifice); the mo.
ther made a lingering recovery. Removal to the country
for a while restored her. " She returns back to her
house ; she has an attack of slow fever. She retires to
Egerton, and improves. She returns home again, and
sleeps one night in the old effluvia, and again takes slow
fever !"
These are the very words of description I have down in
the handwriting of the narrator. They prove the fact so
conclusively, of the prejudicial nature of these stinks, as
a direct cause of a slow febrile movement, in the indivi-
dual exposed. whether for a constancy or for a single
night, to the poison, that I should, it I had introduced the
wording myself, almost begin to suspect that my own cit.
cription was an over-statement, arising out of my eager-
ness to prove a certain point; in fact, if I had coined a
fictitious case, for the purpose of putting an extinguisher
upon scepticism, I could not have been as happy in my
hitting off the required links in the chain of demonstrative
evidence. Another furnishes the facts, and the public can
exercise a judgment free from any bias whatever.. This