Excerpt from Report of the Commissioner Appointed, Under the Provisions of the Act 5 and 6 Vict. C. 99, to Inquire Into the Operation of That Act, and Into the State of the Population in the Mining Districts, 1850
There seems to be every motive to recommend the introduction Defective of the Sanitary Act into these lar e overgrown village-towns, mm t where the enlightened guidance an useful control of a general use system is greatly wanted. The large town of Wednesbury, with its population of probably has taken the lead in this, and has petitioned the Commissioners of the Board of Health for that purpose. The applicants were, unhappily, able to prove a rate of mortality during the last. 10 years, much above the average required by the Act. They sufi'ered greatly during the recent infliction of the cholera. I visited, with the superintending sur geon and an inhabitant of the town, several of the narrow and close courts, small squ'ares, and. Unpaved streets, and the interior of many of the houses in them where the cholera had chiefly raged. Many of these places were built by speculators having very small means; others, however, and some of the worst, be longed to comparatively wealthy owners, and notwithstanding all that had been done during the prevalence of the epidemic to take off the refuse or make these places a little less noxious, their aspect was deplorable, and the amount of human suffering that must have been endured by those affected by the disease and those attend ing upon them can scarcely be understood except by any one who has seen the localities in which these melancholy scenes occurred.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.