The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-04

| A FAMOUS SANITARY ENGINEER. l In 1S46 Sir Robert Rawlinson, who died the other day, startled Liverpool with what was regarded as an extrav- agant scheme for taking, by aqueduct, a full supply from the Bala Lake and other districts in North Wales, not only I for the town on the Mersey, but for | Manchester and Birmingham. That is | but an instance of his interest in this and cognate questions. The recogni- | tion came he was appointed the first | superintendent engineering inspector under the Public Health act of 1S4S. It | was the turning point in his career, | and, following the first inspection and | first report of the conditions in Dover, | there came a long series which assist | ed to elevate sanitation into a branch i of engineering science. Four years later | he appeared at the Institution of Civil | Engineers with short but suggestive paper on the Drainage of Towns" in which he advocated pipe sewers. The | interest excited is suggested by the fact | that it was keenly discussed at four consecutive meetings. It would be | idle to review Rawlinson's attitude | then, for in the paper there was more than the germs of our sanitary sys- tenn of to-day, and the author soon dis covered in the decreasing death rate evidences of the benefits accruing from wider recognition of his pleading.
 The most signal, because the most l quickly realized, results were those achieved during the Crimean cam paign. It is matter of well known history now how the allied armies in the Crimea were dying because of the pestilential surroundings; how Pal merstons government in despair ap
 pointed Rawlinson as an engineering expert, and Drs. Sutherland and Gavin, l to go as a Commission to investigate and act with full powers; how they found the hospitals without ventilation and the area outside covered with filth and the carcasses of animals; how sim pie but vigorously prosecuted remedies resulted in the decrease in the death rate from 70 to 12 or IA per 1000, and how, in fact, the British army was say ed from worse evils than war. These were yeoman services quietly rendered to his country and gratefully recogniz- ed, the first German Emperor, Bis marck and Moltke joining in this l dckHOWJeuSHblll oI tilS great Stl NlCtS. | awlinson returned from the Crimea in jured in a uniquely remarkable way.
 He was riding on June IS, 1854 when cannon ball came whzzing along in front of him, cutting the reins and pommel of the saddle, driving a steel purse against the crest of a rib bone, making a, large flesh wound and seri- ously bruising the bone. On his return home he was engaged to put all our barracks in a thoroughly sanitary con- dition, sanitary committee being es- tablished to carry on the works on the Crimean pattern, with the result that the average mortality in the British army was reduced from 17.5S to below 8 per thousand per annum.
 So also with many towns and villages l in the country The points he insisted | upon were the promotion of domestic and personal cleanliness; not only the provision of drainage, water supply and scavenging, but the establish ment of public baths, washhouses and
 disinfecting apparatus. Some of these establishments, in his opinion, were too grand and costly and placed too re-
 mote from the poor, and were conse- quently failures. Such washhouses and
 baths, he contended, should be situated in the heart of poor districts, their
 management should be economical, their charges the lowest and the disin- lection of bedding and clothing should
 be done gratuitously. Any bedding or clothing required to be burned should
 be replaced without charge to the poor, afflicted sufferers, this being a char itable act and the truest economy for
 the rate-payers. Punish family for
 having disease" he used to say, "and
 they will shrink from you; treat them kindly and sympathetically, and the poor will respect you.
 Lord Palmerston, in 1864 made him a
 c. B.: MT. Gladstone, in 1885, recom-
 mended him for knighthood, and at
 Christmas, 1889, Lord Salisbury nomi-
 mated him a K. c. B. He became a member of the Institution of Civil En-
 gineers in 1866, and was chosen presl-
 dent in 1S94.-From Engineering.