IMPROVE- MENTS IN AND RELATING TO TREATING AND TRANSPORTING HUMAN EXCRETA AND OTHER LIKE MATERIAL, AND IN APPARATUS OR VEHICLES THEREFOR."
Year: 1880

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Richard Hoodless at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 29th December 1880.
RICHARD HOODLESS, of Ormskirk, in the County of Lancaster. "IMPROVE-
MENTS IN AND RELATING TO TREATING AND TRANSPORTING HUMAN EXCRETA
AND OTHER LIKE MATERIAL, AND IN APPARATUS OR VEHICLES THEREFOR."
Great difficulty is experienced at the present time in collecting human excreta
in towns and converting it into manure economically. If disinfectants be used
the material becomes too expensive; if soil be mixed with it it becomes very bulky
and greatly increases the expense of cartage, while if calcined or converted into
"pudrettes" a large part of its valuable manurial qualities are lost.
"
Now my Invention is designed to save alike the expense of disinfectants or
earth admixture, and the loss by chemical or destructive manipulation, and consists
in receiving the material collected in the ordinary galvanized iron sanitary pans at
the town depots, and tipping it into a screen connected with a trough or tube
which carries the semi-fluid and finely comminuted portion into a wrought iron
air tight tank railway waggon specially constructed with inlet and outlet valves
or doors (or if the town depôt be not on the railway), into a similarly constructed
tank cart. The coarser particles, broken bottles, brick bats, stones, cetera, are
caught by the screen, and can be scraped or jerked off it at intervals into an
adjoining compartment without opening it out to the air, the screen being so
arranged on a pivot as to be movable, and rise up, rotate, and throw the coarse
materials over a partition, and be then lowered into place for a fresh charge, or
it can be scraped at intervals by a scraper or rake that rakes the materials off,
the screen being so arranged with raised or curved edges that falling material
capable of penetrating it will fall upon and through it instead of sliding off the
sides.
The tank carts, if used, on arriving at the railway station are emptied by means
of an air-tight fitting trough or sleeve into similarly specially designed tank
railway-waggons placed below.
On arriving at the country railway station or siding the contents of the waggons
are again transferred by means of air tight sleeves, troughs, or (in rare cases
where the cart has to be on the same level as the waggon) elevators, into tank
Dis 371

page_text: carts similar to the town collecting carts. These can be made with their tanks
placed very low so as the more easily to receive from the railway waggons. They
carry the manure direct to the fields, and being drawn along over the surface of
the land are gradually emptied through the valve in the bottom and the spreader
attached to the rear of the cart; the emission is regulated so as to spread the
manure in such quantity as required, either in little heaps, in continued stream, or
scattered layer, or if desirable the stuff can be dumped in the farm yard, then mixed
with soil or other matter, and applied when required.
By this means the process of emptying the waggons and the carts into each
other is effected without anything objectionable either in smell or appearances,
being confined from first to last in air tight vessels.