The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND Saturday Morning. Thursday, May 16, 1889. "MARVELLOUS SMELLBOURNE.”

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 299, 16 May 1889, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND Saturday Morning.

Thursday, May 16, 1889. "MARVELLOUS SMELLBOURNE.”

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country's. Thy God’s, and truth’s.

The above is the suggestive title by which Melbourne has been dubbed by its own people, and the name is certainly not a misleading one. In that otherwise magnificent city the neglect of sanitary precautions has had terrible results ; so great indeed has been the ravages of typhoid that a Sanitary Commission has been appointed to enquire into the cause of the present state of things. The conclusions arrived at by the Commissioners are thus alluded to by a Melbourne paper:—“ The' picture they draw of Marvellous Melbourne is so shocking and disgusting that even Sir Henry Parkes would be touched with commiseration for its inhabitants. The city is described as a sort of Aceldemi or huge field of blood and garbage, through which flow, or rather stagnate, rivers, creeks, and watercourses, slab and thick with impurities of the foulest distinctions, while the street channels are choked with pestilential refuse of the hospitals and the ordure that escapes from the back yards of countless houses built upon undrained swamps or in the neighborhood of waste lands filled np with decayed vegetables.

decomposed meat, dead dogs, and nightsoil. Everything is as bad as it possibly can be—in fact, even to the night pans and underground sewers, in which wo fondly trusted for safety from pollution, but which the Comissioners now condemn in unmeasured language as depositories of malarious germs and generators of contaminating gases that poison as they go, and are accountable for a death rate so far in excess of what we might expect in so bright a climate among a population so well fed and prosperous In certain

suburbs, notably Footscray, Kensington, Kew, and South Yarra, the air is tainted by evil odours from noxious trades. In the more distant suburbs all round the city are depots for nightsoil, at most of which the material is simply run over the surface of the ground, and then ploughed in. It is a matter of common notoriety that the contents of nightcarts are frequently deposited on public roads. From the evidence given, it appears that the municipal authorities, as a yule, do not trouble to ascertain what is done with the night-soil collected by their contractors; that they are satisfied if it is taken out of their own boundaries.”

What a paradise Gisborne must be in comparison with such a place 1 The report reminds one of the “ Eden ” described by Dickens, only that one place was a dismal wilderness and the other, is the premier city of Australasia. A short time back we published a paragraph stating that from December there had been 3,670 cases of typhoid fever reported in Melbourne; of that number 386 had been fatal, and the disease was then on the increase. In the same period there had been 386 cases of diptheria, of which 132 were fatal. These facts speak very badly, and the wonder is how so many people can face the evil results of flocking to such a fever bed ; that health and even life can be risked in the hope of a little temporary gain. The appalling sanitary condition of the city is very discreditable to Melbourne people.