On the relative merits or demerits of the two competing systems of supply, I have only to speak so far as their adaptation to sanitary purposes is concerned. In this respect, I have no hesitation in saying that the system of constant supply is immeasurably superior to its rival; so superior, that unless competent engineering authorities should decide on its practical inapplicability to the City of London, I would strongly recommend its adoption as the only one, in my judgment, by which the growing necessities of the population can be fully and effectively satisfied.
III. With respect to offensive trades and occupations pursued within the city of London, my task of recommendation is an easy one. To any person conversant with the simplest physiological relations of cause and effect, it is quite notorious that the decomposition of organic matter within a certain distance of human habitations unfailingly tends to produce disease; and every one who is competent by knowledge and impartiality to pronounce an opinion on the subject, must feel that no occupation which ordinarily leaves a putrid refuse, nor any which consists in the conversion or manufacture of putrescent material, ought, under any circumstances, to be tolerated within a town.
1. First, in regard to slaughter-houses, I may remind you that, on the 23rd of January last, when your Hon. Commission first met under the new Act of Parliament, I recommended to you on sanitary grounds, that in such rules as you might make for the regulation of slaughter houses, all underground slaughtering should be absolutely prohibited. It was laid down, however, that your Act of Parliament would not enable you to establish this restriction, which (it was argued) would be equivalent to a direct suppression of many existing slaughter-houses.[19]
[19] Slaughtering in cellars was rendered illegal by the amended City Sewers Act, 1851, and since that year has been entirely discontinued in the City. See page 192.--J. S., 1854.
Considering that, in my first recommendations to the Commission I ought to confine myself to objects attainable by means of the Act of Parliament then just coming into operation, I felt myself precluded for the time from entering on the subject (however important in itself) of the total abolition of urban slaughtering. Now, however, while treating generally of sanitary improvement for the City, I can have no hesitation in repeating an opinion which I have already submitted to the Health-Committee of the Common Council; and I beg accordingly to state, that I consider slaughtering within the City as both directly and indirectly prejudicial to the health of the population;--_directly_, because it loads the air with effluvia of decomposing animal matter, not only in the immediate vicinity of each slaughter-house, but likewise along the line of drainage which conveys away its washings and fluid filth; _indirectly_, because many very offensive and noxious trades are in close dependence on the slaughtering of cattle, and round about the original nuisance of the slaughter-house, within as narrow limits of distance as circumstances allow, you invariably find established the concomitant and still more grievous nuisances of gut-spinning, tripe-dressing, bone-boiling, tallow-melting, paunch-cooking, &c. Ready illustrations of this fact may be found in the gut-scraping sheds of Harrow-alley, adjoining Butchers’-row, Aldgate; or in the Leadenhall skin-market, contiguous to the slaughtering places, where the stinking hides of cattle lie for many hours together, spread out over a large area of ground, waiting for sale, to the great offence of the neighbourhood.