The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-06-02 00:00:00

ASSOCIATION FOR CLEANLINESS.

A notice appeared in the Times of the 15th ult., beaded,
" Association for Cleanliness," in which, after stating the
number of increasing daily averages of poor people who
had availed themselves of the baths and wash-houses be-
longing to the association in Glasshouse.yard ; the fact is
given that "nearly 300 persons inhabiting small tene-
ments and rooms have availed themselves of the gratui-
tous supply of whitewash given by the association."
This is an excellent plan and obviously worthy of imi-
tation in the provincial towns. Such a step, if it could be
extensively carried out, would be en inestimable benefit
to the poor, and it is not an extravagant work of charity.
Apart from the disinfecting properties of the lime, the
scrubbing, and scouring, and ransacking, as processes in-
separably connected with the use of the whitewash, must
be a highly useful practice and sanitary lesson. This and
other collateral moral results are too obvious to dwell up-
on. Perhaps it is impossible to find a more powerful and
manifold Sanitary agent than the brush of the white-
washer. It is a schoolmaster for lesser morals as well as
an anti-contagion organ. _ .

Jr the parish are vise in sending the whitewasher to
every abode whence a fever patient has been brought to
the fever-wards, and this is done always, to their credit,
yet the converting an exception into a rule general would
be of immense advantage to all classes of the community.
Diseases of an infectious kind overleap classes and spread
amongst all ranks when once intensely developed. Hence
the interests of all the community are bound up in the
one bundle of social life. All therefore are compelled to
feel a keen interest in the poor man's mean abode, by the
order of Providence. The formation of a Cholera Board
on emergency is the witness to the conviction of this
truth, but it is not only then that the half selfish, half
charitable obligation is in force. It is not a riot act
simply meant for any tumultuous emergency—it is a con-
stitutional magna charta of our social common weal, co-
equal with man's multiplication and never obsoleted, but
under tremendous penalties for the re-cognition of its im-
perative majesty. We venture most respectfully to suggest
to the " Health Committee" that the adoption of the
above plan, viz., the gratuitous distribution of whitewash
materials, would be even worthy of the second corporation
in the kingdom. Funds there are and must be for all
needful work of this kind, in which the question of life
and health is at stake.

Thus by a deliberate and most efficient measure one
grand duty of a Cholera Board might be wisely forestalled
and well done. Typhus fever would be reduced to a sur-
prising minimum, and other diseases mitigated in their
severity. Even a gorgeous municipal temple might suffer
a delay in its completion for the sake of the more vast
t, triple of the whole town, being dedicated to the goddess
llygeia. The hidden recesses of Liverpool proper might

converter

:co a Sfi

ppers and enlivened by the ctrern,
in exchange for filth and pollution.