NEGLECTED SANITATION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2616, 25 September 1909, Page 5

NEGLECTED SANITATION.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—l will be obliged if you will allow me space to give a little publicity to the scandalous way the Borough Council allows insanitary premises to exist. I will state no vague cases, but what exists close to my own back door. A year ago a man erected two cottages facing the narrow railway reserve that turns off Fitzgerald Street near the river. This reserve is only about 30 feet wide. .Another house was already on the same piece of land, facing Ormond Road, which is only about threesixteenths of an acre. At the back of each cottage was dug out a cesspool, a few rough boards put over them, with a few shovelfulls of earth to hide from view this death-trap. Into these receptacles has been conducted the water from the wash-house, scullery, and overflow from the tank. After a time they liegan to 6mell, and then we had heavy rain, and the one next my yard overflowed, and there were dead worms and filth coming under the fence. I informed the Council authorities, and expected action to be taken. Nothing was done, and I felt like compelling them to "act. When the scourge of typhoid was raging, and the supposed inspectors from Wellington were investigating, I made it my business to again draw attention t-o the matter, and was assured it would he attended to. The inspectors called at my house and gave orders to have a small heap of hedge clippings, which were quite harmless, destroyed. The same evening I put a match to them, and in ten minutes that nuisance was abolished. I thought, of course, that for certain there would not be allowed such a thing to remain as the nuisance already mentioned. As the cooler weather came on a sour or swill smell was prevalent, and we wondered where it wa s coining from, but the last heavy rains put all doubt on one sd.de, and we discovered the cesspools were there unaltered, and as stinking as ever. The one next to our yard was overflowing, and the foul matter finding its way again into our yard, and the garden of the tenant next door.

Cesspools have been for the last fifty i years recognised as the most potent inI llueili-es which affect health. not only as I ivcv.-J" tvnkaid. hus cojisuniption. and kindred diseases. What value caii' bo placed on the sanitary reports which were placed before the Council? Here is ocular demonstration that they were worse than a farce; they were a snare and a delusion. The members of the Council shook hands over the clean state of the borough, and vowed vengeance on the fellows who dare say otherwise. To those who keep their eyes about, and have any idea of sanitation, that meeting when Gisborne was declared a clean, town was most farcical. Gisborne scents to live under very lax conditions; every man is a law unto himself, and the authorities are openly defied, not only in sanitary matters but in others; the very house which, has become such a nuisance to me ought not to have been allowed to be erected. The 294th section of the Preventing Overcrowding Act reads:— (1) Every person who erects a new dwelling house in a borough shall provide at the side or in the rear thereof an open space exclusively belonging to such dwelling house, and of an extent of not less than three hundred superficial feet. (2) Such open spaces shall extend throughout the entire width, or, in the alternative, throughout the _ entire depth of the site, and shall be free from any erection thereon, above the level of the ground, and shall be maintained while the site is occupied by the dwelling house. (3) The minimum distance across such open space from every part of the dwelling house, and from any part of any wash-house, shed, or convenience, or other erection attached thereto, shall be as follows: (a) If the height of the dwelling house does not exceed fifteen feet house does not exceed fifteen feet, fifteen feet, and eo on according to the height of the building. Now the Council allowed this house to be put within ten feet of an outhouse, and also to the detriment of good property next door. "When this Act was being passed, some of the members tried their hardest to make the area not less than an eighth of an acre on which a dwelling house could be erected. The Council are creating what will one day be a slum by allowing dwellings to be'erected on the railway reserve, a lane only 30 feet -.vide. Some other time I may ask you for a little space on this matter as well as the effects of overcrowding on the children of our workers.—l am, etc.,

T. E. TONEYCLIFFE.