mixed by hand, in consequence of their more complete amalgamation. But with some speculating builders the mill appears to take the place of all other ingredients except rubbish, often of the vilest quality, no sand being used at all, and the lime being supplied only by the old mortar adhering to old broken bricks. It need not be stated that such mortar is quite useless, and never becomes hard. Really good mortar, after being thoroughly set, should be so hard as to receive no impression when scratched with the finger-nail, but some considerable time must elapse before this result is attained; and if a building has to be erected with great rapidity, it is much the safer plan to use cement. Exactly the same precautions have to be taken in making mortar as in making concrete, the only difference between the two materials being that large stones are used for the latter, and sand only for the former.

COMMON DEFECTS IN THE SANITARY ARRANGEMENTS OF HOUSES, WITH

THEIR REMEDIES.*

BY PROF. W. H. CORFIELD, M.A., M.D. (OXON.) Professor of Hygiene and Public Health, Univ. Coll., London. THE best plan in the examination of a house is to begin at the top of it, and so we will begin examining a house from the roof, proceeding downwards, and in our way I will point out the different mistakes that are likely to be made in the sanitary arrangements in various parts of the house.

The first thing which we must consider is that we have to get rid of the water that falls on the roof. The water from the gutter in front of the house may be disposed of in one of several ways. It may be conducted by a pipe outside of the house down the front into the area; or it may be conducted by a gutter through the roof, or, perhaps, through one of the rooms in the upper storey into a gutter, over the middle of the house, between two parts of the roof, and down the middle of the house by a pipe into the drain; or it may be conducted direct from the gutter by a pipe, not outside the house, but inside the house, passing down through one or two storeys, inside the rooms, perhaps through the best bedroom in front of the house, through the drawing-room, carefully hidden by some casing made to look like an ornament, through the dining-room and kitchen into the drain in the basement. Smells having been perceived in different parts of the rooms, especially in the bedrooms, various sanitary arrangements may be improved, and even made as perfect as they can be, by a kind of amateur tinkering prevalent nowadays in sanitary matters; and yet this defect, which is so exceedingly serious, which is known to give rise to serious disease, is entirely overlooked-perhaps for years. The same is the case when the rain water is carried in a gutter through the roof into a gutter between the two roofs in the middle of the house, and down by a rain-water pipe inside the house. In such cases similar disasters may occur.

But there is an additional danger from the fact that these inside gutters are in themselves most pernicious things. Soot and rotten leaves collect in them, and air blows through them into the house; and

• A lecture delivered at the Parkes Museum, June 14, 1883.

especially when these gutters are under the floors of bedrooms, this foul air is often the cause of illnesses which occur in these rooms. Even gutters which are not themselves directly connected with the drains, and which are open at both ends, but in which decayed leaves and soot accumulate and give off foul air into the rooms, may be the cause of sore throats. I | have known this to be the case in rain-water gutters, which have been carried inside the house so that they might not form an unsightly feature outside, and which have passed through bedrooms under the windows in a kind of position in which a sink would be. These gutters have been open at both ends, and only ten or twelve feet long; and yet in such a case I have known illness to occur in these very rooms, which I should never have suspected to be due to these gutters if I had not known in previous cases that illness had arisen from the passage of rain-water gutters through rooms.

Another plan to dispose of the rain water is to carry it in a gutter right through the house to the back (the gutter may pass through the roof or the garrets), and the same remark applies to this method of construction as to those I have described, except that it does not imply necessarily a defective pipe running down to the drain.

Well, then, the rain water from the roof should be conducted by pipes placed outside the house; and there is no reason why this should not be always the case. If these pipes are not disconnected from the drains below, but are connected with them either directly, or even indirectly, if I may so call it (with a bend in the pipe to hold water), in either instance cases of disease will arise in the rooms, the windows of which are near the rain-water pipes.

It is exceedingly difficult to persuade people upon this point; but such is the case. You will understand that when the rain-water pipes starting from the top of the house below the bedroom windows, and frequently behind parapets, so that any air that comes out at the top comes out exactly close to the bedroom windows, you will understand that when this is the case, and when these pipes come down straight into the drains and so ventilate the drains, foul air from the drains gets into the house, and disease is the result. But it is more difficult to make people understand that even when these rain-water pipes are trapped at the foot they are almost as dangerous as the untrapped ones, because foul air from the drains will pass gradually through the water in the traps into the pipes, so that these pipes are always filled with foul air and contain gases that have come from the drains.

As soon as it rains, water passes down, and the air of these pipes is displaced, comes out at the top, and so if these tops are near the windows of rooms, cases of disease will happen in those rooms.

So much, then, as to the disposal of the rain water from the roof. While on the roof we can look around and observe the ventilating pipes: Ist, whether there are any or not; 2nd, of what size; 3rd, whether they have cowls or not; and 4th, in what positions they are. If we observe that they end at the top, near to chimneys, we shall see that there is liability, on account of the down draught, of the foul air from these ventilating pipes passing down the chimneys.

Chimneys often have down draughts, and if ventilating pipes are placed near them, the foul air may pass down into the rooms. If, on the other hand, although

not ending near the tops of the chimneys, they are placed close to the chimneys or to walls so that their tops are sheltered, they will not act properly, and they ought to be carried above the ridge of the roof, and end away from walls or chimneys. The same rule applies to chimney tops, they should not be sheltered by higher buildings.

We will now pass from the roof into the house, and the first thing we shall come to of course, inside or just below the roof (or perhaps on the roof), is the CISTERN.

The first thing we observe is the material of which it is made. I will say nothing more now about that, except that lead cisterns (and so, too, galvanised iron cisterns) are affected by certain kinds of water; and it is important, in certain places, that cisterns should be used which are not capable of being affected by the water. Galvanised iron cisterns cause certain forms of poisoning with some waters. However, as a matter of fact, both lead and galvanised iron cisterns are used enormously, without any serious results following from their use.

A cistern is provided with an overflow and wastepipe. If the cistern is on the roof you would think it the natural thing that the overflow-pipe should discharge on to the roof or leads, or into an open head; but, as a matter of fact, it is generally not the case. (By an 'overflow'-pipe I mean a pipe from the top, and by a 'waste '-pipe a pipe starting above the level of the water and passing through the bottom of the cistern.)

Overflow-pipes were not in fashion at all until recently. The fashion was to have a waste-pipe, and the most convenient place to take that into was some pipe passing down the house, which might be a rain-water pipe, but more frequently it was the pipe into which the water-closets discharged, which is called the 'soil'-pipe.

When this is the case the waste-pipe of the drinking water cistern becomes the ventilator of the pipe into which the water-closets discharge; and so in nine cases out of ten the ventilator of the housedrain and of the sewer under the street, and, indeed, one of the ventilators of the main sewers of London. So foul air passes continually by means of this ventilator into the drinking water cistern at the top of the house. Now foul air in sewers and drains contains matters in suspension, and often the poisons of certain diseases, such as typhoid fever; it gains access to the water in the cistern and contaminates it. I do not hesitate to say-I have on another occasion produced figures to prove it-that the main cause of typhoid fever in London and many other large towns is the connection of the drinking water cisterns with the drains by means of the waste-pipes.

Of course the remedy for this-the first remedywas to put a trap on the waste-pipe, as, for instance, connecting it with the trap in one of the closets or sinks. This, of course, is only a palliative, it is not the true remedy. The true remedy is to disconnect this pipe and make it discharge by itself, no matter where, in the open air. Sometimes I should say this pipe is made to discharge into the same pipe that the sink waste-pipe discharges into. It is the practice in London to have a separate pipe for the various wastes and sinks not discharging directly into the drain, and usually carried outside the house. It is also the practice to make the waste-pipes of cisterns to discharge into the same pipe. This is entirely wrong. Because, although disconnected at

the foot, it is to be regarded as a foul-water pipe, and foul air passes through it up the waste-pipe into the cistern. So this practice is to be condemned.

Now from the cistern, besides the waste-pipe, there are pipes which supply the water to different parts of the house; there are pipes from the cistern to supply water to the taps, which are called 'drawoff' pipes; and pipes from the cistern to supply water to the closets; and, as a rule, the same cistern is used for the supply of water to the closets direct and the taps at the upper part of the house. This plan may or may not be very dangerous.

There are two ways of supplying the water-closets in the upper part of the house with water. The one is to have what is called a spindle-valve in the cistern, which fits a hole in the bottom of the cistern, and which is raised by a ball-lever being pulled by a wire, which arrangement necessitates a contrivance called a valve-box, which has a small air-pipe, and with this arrangement there is liability for foul water to be jerked in the cistern. Moreover, the pipe from this valve-box passes into the pan of the water-closet and becomes full of air, which air is liable to get into the valve-box in the cistern. This arrangement, therefore, is decidedly bad. But there is another, in which the valve which supplies the water-closets is under the seat, and the pipe from the cistern is full of water; and that is now becoming the more usual plan. With that plan there is nothing like so much danger as with the other method; in fact, so little, that many people hesitate to condemn this arrange

ment.

However, to put it on no other grounds, it is clearly desirable not to have cisterns supplying drinking water and the water-closets direct. It is better to lay down a right principle, and abide by it, than to see how you can avoid it. The best rule is that water-closets should not, for the reasons I have stated, under any circumstances be supplied direct from the cistern supplying the taps. I say supplying the taps, because I am told continually that this tap or that tap does not supply drinking water. down the rule that every tap is a drinking-water tap, because anyone may draw water at it. We come next to the sink.

HOUSEMAID'S SINK.

I lay

The housemaid's sink is often placed in a small closet just under the stairs, without any window or any sort of ventilation whatever (and we know what kind of things are kept in the sink !), so that the housemaid's sink in such a position has not by any means a very savoury odour. The housemaid's sink should under no circumstances be in such a position. It should be against an outside wall, and have a window. As a rule, the material used for the sink itself is lead, wood lined with lead. Now lead is not a good material. Grease, soap, and so on, have a tendency to adhere to lead, and it is very difficult to keep such sinks clean, and it would be better to have the sink of glazed stoneware.

The waste-pipe of the housemaid's sink, as a rule, is connected directly with the trap of the nearest w.c. There is a grating in the sink, and there is no trap in or under the sink, but the waste-pipe is connected with the trap of the nearest water-closet. This is a bad arrangement. A worse arrangement is for the waste-pipe to be connected with the soilpipe of the water-closet, in which case some kind of trap is generally placed on the waste-pipe of the

sink. This trap is frequently what is called a 'bell' trap, and is placed in the sink. The disadvantage of the bell trap is, that when you take the top of it off you take the bell with it. The bell is the arrangement which is supposed to form the trap by the edges of it dipping in the water in the iron box; and you see at once, when the bell is removed, the trap is removed and the waste-pipe, wherever it goes, is left wide open, and, if connected with the soil-pipe of the water-closet, the foul air comes up into the house. Very frequently also the waste-pipe of the sink has underneath it what is called a D-trap. A D-trap is a trap which the water passing through it can never clean; so it retains foul water; and therefore, even under sinks, such traps ought not to be allowed on account of the foul matters which accumulate in them.

The waste-pipe of the housemaid's sink should not be connected with the water-closet or soil-pipe; neither with any pipe that goes directly into the drain. Its own pipe should not go directly to the drain, which is very frequently the case, but through the wall of the house into an open head or a gulley outside. Very frequently the housemaid's sink is supplied with water, not from the cistern on the roof, but from the cistern not only supplying the nearest water-closet, but actually inside the nearest water-closet, in which case, no matter what valves you have, you are supplying your sink with water which is kept in a cistern inside the water-closet, and that is far worse than supplying a sink with water from a cistern which also supplies the watercloset, with a reasonably protecting valve.

Close to the housemaid's sink, and very frequently over it, is the feed cistern to the hot water apparatus, which has also an overflow pipe, and the same remarks refer to this overflow pipe, except that it is a thing much more liable to be overlooked, as to the overflow pipe of the drinking-water cistern. We come next to the

WATER-CLOSET.

In the great majority of instances the apparatus of this closet is what is known as the pan closet; that is, a closet apparatus which has a conical basin with a tinned copper bowl, called the 'pan,' from which the closet gets its name. In order that this 'pan,' which holds water, may be moved, there is a contrivance underneath called a container, which is generally made of iron, and allows room for the pan to be moved. On pulling the handle the water is discharged into the pipe below. The container being generally made of iron it is liable to rust. Now the disadvantage of this apparatus consists in this large iron box, which is under the seat of the closet, being generally full of foul air. The contents of the pan are splashed into it, and it becomes coated with foul matters which decompose and continually give off foul air. Every time the handle of the closet is pulled some foul air is forced up into the house. That foul air is kept in this box between the trap which is below it and the pan which contains the water above it. In order to allow of the escape of this foul air it is not uncommon to have a hole bored in the top of the container. You would suppose that hole was intended to fix a ventilating pipe to, but nothing of the kind; the hole has been made merely to allow the escape of foul air into the house. Over and over again I have met with cases of disease distinctly traceable to the escape of foul air from these holes. Sometimes a ventilating-pipe is at

tached to this hole and taken out through the wall, but that is the exception. This form of closet is the worst form of closet apparatus yet devised, and is very generally in use.

An attempt has been made to improve it by having a stoneware container, with a place for ventilation at the side, only it is an attempt to improve a radically bad arrangement, and not worth further consideration. Underneath this closet apparatus you will, as a rule, find, if you take the woodwork down, a tray of lead, called the 'safe' tray. But there is no other word in the language that would not be a better description of it than this word! This tray is intended to catch any water that may escape from leaky pipes, or any slops that may be thrown over ; and so it is necessary that this tray should have a waste-pipe. The waste-pipe in nine out of ten cases, probably in much greater proportion, goes into the trap immediately underneath the closet, and so it forms a communication for foul air from this trap to get into the house.

In some instances it goes directly into the soilpipe, and forms a means of ventilation of the soilpipe into the house. Sometimes a trap is put on this waste-pipe, and it is then connected with the soil-pipe, which goes on well so long as there is any water in the trap; but as soon as the water becomes evaporated, foul air gets into the house again.

Sometimes (to show the ingenuity which people often expend upon bad things) this waste-pipe has a trap, and a little pipe from the water supply fixed to feed the trap; but all these ingenious plans have been devised in order to improve upon a principle radically wrong. The pipe should be carried through the wall and end outside the house as a warning pipe.

Scarcely any water ever comes out at all; if any does come out, it shows there is something wrong, so that this pipe should pass through the wall, and be made to discharge outside the house.

In order to prevent wind blowing up the pipe it is usual to put a small brass flapper on the end. Its weight keeps it shut, and the pressure of water opens it.

Underneath the safe-tray you will find as a rule a trap of some kind, and generally the trap that is found is a D-trap, a trap whose name indicates its shape, and which cannot be washed out by the water that passes through it. The pipe from the closet passes so far in it that it dips below the level of the out-going pipe, and thus forms a sort of dip-trap. The pipe which is the inlet from the closet is not placed close to the edge, but a little way in. Why I do not know, except to form a receptacle for all kinds of filth!

You will see it is impossible for the water that passes through it to clear the contents out, so that the trap is simply a small cesspool, nothing more nor less. Into that trap various waste-pipes I have mentioned already are frequently connected.

There is another form of D-trap in which there are two waste-pipes going into the water near the bottom of the trap (probably the waste-pipe of the safe and the waste-pipe of the cistern).

The D-trap, then, is a bad form of trap, because it is not self-cleansing. The water cannot possibly keep it clear of sediment. So that some trap should be used which is self-cleansing, and the water which passes through which is capable of keeping it clean. Now that trap is a mere -shaped bend in the pipe,

to which we give the name of siphon, not because we want it to act as a siphon—for if it acts as a siphon it is of no use!

Now I have a curious thing to say about siphontraps and pan-closets, and that is, that the form of trap which was used first in connection with waterclosets was the siphon-trap, which we now praise; and the form of trap which supplanted it was the D-trap, which we are now condemning and taking out wherever we can. A still more curious thing is that the form of water-closet which we now condemn (the pan-closet) was the form of closet which supplanted the closet we are now using (the valvecloset). The valve-closet was invented long before the pan-closet. Bramah-valve closets fixed forty years ago often act tolerably well now, and at the present day they are only taken out because they are really actually worn out.

The valve-closet, which we often find upstairs in old houses instead of the pan-closet, has no large iron container under the seat, but it has a water-tight valve under the basin, and so requires a small valve-box; so that there is no great collection of foul air immediately under the basin of the closet. The valve-closet, however, has a disadvantage in that it requires an overflow-pipe; because the valve is water-tight, and if servants throw slops into it, or the supply-pipe to it leaks, the water goes on running and the basin fills, and, if there were no overflowpipe, it would overflow on to the floor; so that I believe that the pan-closet ousted the valve-closet because it was found that people could go on throwing in any amount of slops and using it in the roughest manner without getting their ceilings damaged. However, the valve-closets, as they were originally made, generally had overflow-pipes which went into part of the apparatus below. Occasionally I have found these overflow-pipes connected with soil-pipes or the trap of the closet below, but these were exceptional instances.

But it is a curious fact that the valve-closet, which was first invented and afterwards discarded, we now consider the best form; and the siphon-traps which we now use were invented first and then supplanted by D-traps, which are now being got rid of as fast

as we can.

The contents of the water-closet are discharged, as a rule, into a separate pipe, called the soil-pipe ; but sometimes into a rain-water pipe with an open head near the windows, or even inside the house. The soil-pipe is usually inside the house-probably because it ought to be outside! Even where waterclosets are against an external wall, the pipe is often carried down inside the house; which leads me to say that closets themselves, like sinks, ought not to be placed in the middle of the house. They are very frequently under the stairs, close to bedrooms, or in the middle of the house, sometimes ventilating into a shaft. It is of course inevitable in these cases that the pipe must either be carried inside throughout the whole length of the house, or must run nearly horizontally under the floors of bedrooms, &c. Under such circumstances it is often not properly ventilated; and if not ventilated at all, the foul air makes its way out through holes, which it is capable of perforating in lead pipes. I could show samples of lead pipes perfectly riddled with foul air that had collected in the pipe. We have a sample of such a pipe in this Museum: a long piece of lead soil pipe, taken up from under the floor of a bedroom (laid nearly level), perfectly riddled with

holes. It was only found out on account of the great nuisance which existed.

The soil-pipes are then frequently inside the house, and they are as a rule made of lead. They are very frequently not ventilated at the top, and the pieces are jointed together by merely being slipped into one another, with perhaps a little putty or red lead. Of course these joints are not sound joints. The soil-pipe goes down into the drain, and so the foul air gets into the house. The soil-pipe, whether inside or outside the house, ought to have sound joints. If a lead pipe, soldered joints; if an iron pipe, the joints ought to be made secure in a proper way, preferably by pouring Spence's metal into the sockets.

If any part of the soil-pipe must pass inside the house it should be of lead, and it can be made sound so long as it will last (and is not damaged by driving nails into it).

I remember an instance in which the soil-pipe passed down through the larder, and was concealed in the wall of the larder by plaster, so that no one ever saw it, and the people in the house could not account for the foul smell in the larder. While searching for the pipe I took hold of a nail on which some dish-cloths hung, and on pulling it out found that it had been driven into the soil-pipe and had a mass of filth sticking to the end of it. So you see the damage which may be caused in this way. Iron pipes should not be allowed to be inside the house. It is so very likely that the joints will not be made perfectly tight, so that it is more undesirable to have iron pipes inside the house than it is to have lead pipes.

Of course it is practicable to plug the pipe at the bottom and to fill it with water to ascertain if it is water-tight; but all that is only a device to retain a thing which ought to be altered.

Soil-pipes ought always to be ventilated by a pipe as large as the soil-pipe carried up above the roof.

If closets are in the middle of the house they ought to be done away with, and should be put against an outside wall. This might be done by sacrificing a bit of some room which can be spared, or by converting some small bedroom into a bathroom and closet, or still better, by making a sort of tower outside the house.

I said that D-traps were made of lead; well, all D-traps that I have known have been made of lead except one-which is in this Museum-which is unique. This is a specimen of a D-trap taken from underneath a closet of a large country house. It is made of zinc! It is a very large boat-shaped trap. It has a zinc tray over it, and its waste-pipe is also made of zinc. The waste-pipe of the housemaid's sink close by, which was also made of zinc, and the waste-pipe of the cistern, which was of lead, both discharged into the zinc D-trap.

The top of this trap has got large holes in it made by the foul air. I have told you that soil-pipes are generally made of iron or lead, but in this instance you see it was made of zinc. This zinc soil-pipe passed along under a passage in the house into an iron pipe built into the wall, which fitted into a 4-inch stoneware drain, which went along into the park into an unventilated cesspool, so that the air from the cesspool escaped into the D-trap and into the water-closet, which was not against the outside wall, and had no window.

The people of the house were very much astonished