condition of school-houses.

18. Circular to manufacturers with reference to the pollu

tion of streams.

19. Two circulars of questions to correspondents with reference to the pollution of streams.

20. Circular of questions to medical practitioners with reference to a special investigation on scarlet fever.

21. Circular of questions to superintendents of schools with reference to the same investigation.

22. Circular asking for copies of reports from public

institutions.

23. Circular of questions to medical correspondents for information as to the health of towns.

24. Circular of questions to medical correspondents for information as to the health of Boston.

25. Circular of questions to medical correspondents with reference to the use of running streams as sewers, etc. 26. Reprint of the Organic Act in circular form. 27. Reprint of the Pollution of Rivers Act, 1878. 28. Blank for water-supply returus.

29. Circular note to accompany copy of Annual Report

of Board.

Thus it will be seen that the duties and work of this State Board in many respects resemble those performed by our Local Government Board. The Massachusetts Board, like ours, exercises a general supervision over health affairs throughout the state, its power to interfere in urban districts, where there

are properly constituted health boards, being, as is

the case with our Board, very limited. The Massachusetts Board, like our Board, gives advice and counsel, undertakes investigations general and special, and issues an annual report and supplement. The powers of the Massachusetts Board appear to be somewhat greater than our Board. The main difference, however, is that in this country a permanent staff of inspectors is kept, whereas in Massachusetts a doctor, chemist, engineer, expert of any kind is commissioned as required for each specific work undertaken. It might be thought that this would

prove a more costly practice than employing perma

nent inspectors, but this is not the case. contrary, the Massachusetts State Board is a singuOn the larly economical one. During the latter half of 1879 the expenses of the health department amounted to but 4435.95 dollars, and of this but 1650.30 was paid for examinations and investigations. And dollars these sums may fairly be taken as representing the ordinary half-yearly expenditure.

THE REGISTRAR-GENERAL'S

QUARTERLY RETURN.

issued, which relates to the last three months of THE Registrar-General's quarterly return, lately 1880, possesses more than usual interest; it not only supplies the means for analysing the statistics for the year 1880, but it also completes the figures for the fourth decade of civil registration, 1871-80.

The mean temperature of the last three months of 1880 scarcely differed from the average for the corresponding period in 109 years; October was generally cold, and November of average temperature, while December was unseasonably mild. The measured rainfall was nearly double the average amount; and the average. Such were the meteorological conditions the recorded hours of bright sunshine were below of the quarter under notice.

Under the influence of the depressed marriagerate in recent years the birth-rate in England and Wales last quarter did not exceed 32.3 per 1,000, which was 2.5 below the average rate in the ten preceding corresponding quarters. In twenty of the largest English towns, the birth-rate averaged 34-4 per 1,000, against 36.2 and 36.4 in the fourth quarters of 1878 and 1879. Among these twenty towns the rate ranged upwards to 36.5 and 37.7 in Liverpool and Wolverhampton. In fifty other large town districts the rate averaged 32.8, the lowest rates being 21.7 and 22.5 in Cheltenham and Bath, and the highest 41.6 and 43.1 in West Bromwich and Wigan.

The decline of births last quarter was, as we shall presently see, more than balanced by a marked decrease of recorded deaths. The natural increase of

population by excess of births over deaths was, periods. Emigration, which had been steadily intherefore, higher than in recent corresponding creasing since the beginning of 1877, declined last quarter. The proportion of pauperism also showed a decline from that which prevailed in the last three months of 1880.

during last quarter did not exceed 19.6 per 1,000 of

The annual death-rate in England and Wales

the estimated population, and was 2.1 below the Registrar-General tells us, since civil registration average rate for the quarter. Only once, the

was established in 1837 has so low a death-rate been recorded in the last three months of the year; this occurred in 1845 when the annual death-rate in the December quarter did not exceed 19.1 per 1,000. and among females only 18.6 per 1,000 estimated to The mortality among males was at the rate of 20.7, be living of each sex. In equal numbers living the corresponding with the relative proportion in recent deaths of males were as 111 to 100 deaths of females,

corresponding quarters.

In the several counties of England the death-rate among persons last quarter ranged from 13.8 and 14.3 in Surrey and Dorsetshire, to 23.7 and 24.2 in Nottinghamshire and Lancashire.

The urban and rural rates of mortality show their usual wide divergence. The rate in the principal urban population was equal to 21.0, while in the remaining or rural population it did not exceed 17.6.

page, line 9, for 4.25, read 42.5.

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Sheffield and Portsmouth, to 24.7 in Sunderland, 25.7 in Salford, and 26.3 in Liverpool. In fifty other town districts the average rate was only 20.4, the lowest rates being 13.8 in Dover and 14.2 in Newport (Mon.), and the highest 25.4 in Preston, 25.8 in Wigan, and 30.5 in Ashton-under-Lyne.

Infant mortality, measured by the proportion of deaths under one year to births registered, was equal to 144 per 1,000, which was 2 below the average rate in the ten preceding corresponding quarters. Infant death-rates in counties ranged from 86 in Rutlandshire, 95 in Herefordshire, and 102 in Berkshire, to 177 and 180 respectively in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. In the twenty large towns infant mortality averaged 152 per 1,000; the lowest proportions were 132 and 138 in Portsmouth and Plymouth, and the highest 198 and 199 in Leicester and Salford. In fifty other towns the proportion ranged from 55 and 107 in Colchester and Chatham, to 210 in Northampton, 214 in Dudley, and 241 in Ashtonunder-Lyne.

Among persons aged between 1 and 60 years, the rate of mortality was equal to 11.1 per 1,000 estimated to be living at these ages, which was 1.4 below the average. This rate was but 10.8 in Portsmouth, while it ranged upwards to 16.9 and 17.9 in Sunderland and Liverpool. Among persons aged upwards of 60 years, the death-rate was equal to 67.6 per 1,000 and was 5.8 below the average; in the twenty towns it averaged 74.1, and ranged from 55.4 and 65.0 in Norwich and Bradford, to 86.2 and 92.1 in Oldham and Wolverhampton. The death-rate last quarter was below the average at all ages, among infants, adults, and elderly persons.

Zymotic fatality was also considerably below the average. The annual rate of mortality from the principal diseases of this class, which was equal to 3.35 per 1,000 in the ten preceding corresponding quarters, did not exceed 2.74 last quarter. In the several English counties the rates from these diseases ranged from 1.02 in Rutlandshire, and 1.13 in Herefordshire, to 4.00 in Northamptonshire and 4.54 in Durham. In the twenty large towns the zymotic rate averaged 3.0, and ranged from 1.6 and 2.0 in Plymouth and Birmingham, to 5.8 and 6.8 in Salford and Sunderland. Scarlet fever was, as is usual during the last three months of the year, the most fatal zymotic disease last quarter. It showed especial fatality in Cumberland, South Wales, and Durham. Among the twenty towns the highest death-rates from this disease occurred in Oldham, Norwich, and Sunderland; and among the fifty other towns the disease caused an excessive death-rate in Colchester and Swansea. The deaths referred to fever (principally enteric), although they exceeded the number returned in the corresponding quarter of 1879, were considerably below the corrected average for the ten preceding quarters. The highest county death-rates from enteric fever were recorded in Leicestershire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. The fever deathrate in the twenty large towns was below the average rate for the whole country, but showed a marked excess in Portsmouth, Leicester, and Salford. Among the fifty smaller towns, still higher death-rates occurred in Preston, Wigan, and Huddersfield. The fatality from measles was also generally below the average, although it showed an excess in South Wales, Wiltshire, and Northamptonshire; excessive local fatality of this disease occurred in Salford, Exeter, Merthyr Tydfil, Trowbridge, Easington, Pontypridd, and Neath. Death-rates from whoopingcough and diphtheria were also below the average,

although local outbreaks of the latter disease occurred at Surbiton, Bedford, Luton, Altrincham, and Dalton. Small-pox showed a further marked increase of fatality in London, where 160 of the 208 deaths from this disease during the quarter were registered; 26 of the 48 deaths from small-pox occurring out of London were recorded in Lancashire, including 15 in Bury, and 7 in Barton-upon-Irwell. The causes of 5,337, or 4.2 per cent. of the deaths registered in England and Wales last quarter, were not certified either by a registered medical practitioner or by a coroner. The proportion of uncertified deaths was slightly higher than in the preceding quarter, and ranged from 1.3 in the metropolis, to 6.3 in Derbyshire, 8.0 in Cornwall, 8.5 in Durham and Westmorland, 10.1 in South Wales, and II.I in North Wales. Among the nineteen large provincial towns, the proportion ranged from 0.5 in Portsmouth, and 1.3 both in Plymouth and Nottingham, to 6.2 and 7.0 in Wolverhampton and Sunderland. The percentage of uncertified deaths showed a considerable increase last quarter in Sunderland, Sheffield, and Salford.

During the year 1880 the birth-rate in England and Wales was equal to 34.6 per 1,000, and showed a further decline from the steadily declining rates in the four preceding years, and was lower than the rate in any year since 1861, when the rate was equally low. The death-rate was equal to 20.7 per 1,000, and excepting the low rate in 1877, was lower than in any year since 1856, when it was 20.5. Last year completed the decade 1871-80, and we must defer an analysis and comparison of the statistics of the four decades 1841-80 for another occasion.

OPEN GRATINGS FOR SEWER

VENTILATION.

By JOHN S. HODGSON, C.E.

IN the report of the discussion upon Dr. Wade's paper on The Sanitary Condition of Wakefield during the last Ten Years', contained in the February number of the SANITARY RECORD, I find, at page 305, the following remarkable statement attributed to Mr. North, President of the Yorkshire Association of Medical Officers of Health :-'As to open grates, the main consideration was what were their effects on the health of the people. Of course when they became so offensive that people cried out for their removal, they should be removed without delay.' Few persons will be found disposed to cavil at the sentiment expressed in the first sentence, containing, as it does, a sanitary truism applicable to many things besides open sewer ventilating grates. But, assuming Mr. North to be correctly reported in this extract, I trust he will pardon me for thus publicly dissenting from the conclusion at which he arrives in its concluding portion, seeing that I am by no means alone in maintaining that a diminution in the number of surface ventilating openings is utterly antagonistic to that health which he is so earnest in wishing to guard. In holding this opinion I am well aware of the fact that the introduction of the open ventilating system has been followed, in many towns, by an outcry on the part of the inhabitants; but in every case with which I am acquainted, this manifestation has been based upon a neglect of fundamental considerations, either in the original application of the system, or in its subsequent management, if not in both these respects. Open gratings have in some

instances been placed upon antiquated sewers whose original construction was faulty in the extreme, admitting of an excessive amount of deposit, such as is certainly not contemplated in laying down modern works of this class. Under such circumstances, it becomes impossible to maintain that degree of interior purity in sewers which I regard as being not only an indispensable concomitant to the open system of ventilation, but also as otherwise essential to the proper management and beneficial effect of sewerage works. The same remark applies also to sewers which, while they are satisfactory in themselves, and even provided with adequate flushing arrangements, are neglected by the Local Authority in which they are vested, the result, in this event, being sometimes as disastrous as anything arising from primary and inherent defects.

In

The absence of any well defined and systematically performed routine of flushing is the most obvious, as it is also the most common shape which this neglect assumes, but there are other points, tending to the same result, which Sanitary Authorities generally are only too apt to make light of. There are, for example, many towns which, having been sewered at a time when there seemed to be little, if any, prospect of practical legislation on rivers' pollution, adopted a combined system of rain-water and sewage removal, instead of being careful, as they now would, to limit the total volume of fouled liquid to a minimum by the greatest possible exclusion of surface water. these cases the rain falling upon the wide areas of streets and roads is necessarily admitted to the sewers, carrying with it, unless judiciously restrained, a large amount of heavy and insoluble material which no well regulated sewerage system should receive. It may, of course, be objected that the gullies in the street channels are, or ought to be, so constructed as to intercept the objectionable matters referred to, and this is, indeed, generally the case, but, as a matter of fact, the value of this provision is too frequently nullified by the want of sufficient attention to gully cleansing, sludge-boxes and catchpits being, more often than not, allowed to lapse into a chronic state of overflow. The same qualification holds good even with regard to yard-gullies, which are frequently of such a type as to render their effectual cleansing an unnecessarily difficult, if not, indeed, insuperably repulsive operation. Thus it comes that large numbers of sewers are the constant receptacles of substances which should be dealt with on the surface, instead of being allowed to interfere with the proper flow of liquids in underground channels, a circumstance which occasions one of the greatest difficulties arising in sewer management, and enormously increases the necessity for powerful and frequent flushing. It will, moreover, be apparent that sewers of a capacity equal to the reception of the rain falling in heavy thunderstorms (which must, of necessity, be the case in the combined system) require, even when well managed in other respects, an exceptional amount of flushing in dry weather, when the natural velocity and scouring power of the sewage are so much lessened by the excessive reduction in the depth of stream.

All these circumstances point to the imperative necessity for the regular and frequent flushing of public sewers to an extent varying inversely with the efficiency of their design and construction, and the care devoted to their maintenance in respect of the details above alluded to. In no case, however, can flushing be entirely dispensed with, unless with corresponding danger to the health of the locality

affected, and this, too, altogether apart from the mere annoyance caused by offensive smells from the ventilating gratings. These gratings form, in fact, the best and most reliable index of the state of the sewers with which they communicate. The fact of smells arising from them must be taken as an infallible testimony to the existence of a wrong and dangerous state of things, and to the necessity for investigation in the first place, and for improved sewer management thereafter. To adopt any other conclusion, and to act upon it by closing the offending apertures, is to emulate the feat popularly ascribed to the ostrich, which, by thrusting its head into the sand, hopes not only to ignore but to elude the possibility of danger from its pursuers.

Closely connected with the nuisance often found to arise from the adoption of the open surface grating system is the state of the private drainage of the town, even where the design, construction, and management of the public sewers may be unexceptionable, if, indeed, a place conforming in all these particulars to the latter description can be found. Private drains are, as is well known, the weak point of most sewerage systems, owing to the much smaller degree of importance which is, unfortunately, almost universally attached to this category of work by Sanitary Authorities and others. As a consequence of this, many house-drains so far fail to comply with the canon of 'constant movement' laid down for all sewage, that filth lodges and decomposes within them until such time as it is propelled into the sewer, in a putrid and horribly offensive condition, by such adventitious means as a heavy rain or the recurrence of 'washing day'. To expect that sewers receiving sewage of this character shall not smell offensively is as hopeless as it is to look for sweetness in a dungheap. But although the smell which escapes from sewer gratings under such conditions is, with all its unpleasantness, less inimical to health than the presence of such foul matter in confined drains, I am far from urging this as a palliative for the retention of drains of this defective character. On the contrary, these should be lifted and relaid wherever found to exist and, where necessary, provided with flushing arrangements, self-acting or otherwise, as the circumstances of each case may require.

With reference to the open grates themselves, it must be remembered that they are frequently applied to sewers in insufficient numbers, so as to throw too much work upon any given opening, instead of effecting a constant and imperceptible interchange between the air of the sewers and the external atmosphere. This I find to be especially the case in sewers laid down during the first twenty years after the passing of the Public Health Act of 1848, in many of which ventilation confined to the 'dead-ends more or less effectually thr These are now practically removal having, however, of revealing the necessit general aëration of the management in the dire indicated.

Messrs. Atkins & Co., of

completed the second order for 4,000 p............. for the Cape. The filters are of the same pattern as those sent out on previous occasions to Ashantee, Abyssinia, and other parts of Africa, by Messrs. Atkins & Co., and which were highly approved of by Sir Garnet Wolseley.

and fitted with improved disinfecting appliances, with coal and coke furnace of wrought-iron; sliding furnace and ash-pit doors; improved arrangement with sliding valves for consuming tainted air in furnace; arrangement for evolving sulphurous acid gas if desired; pyrometer; iron-grated floor on rolled girders; two improved composite non-conducting doors and frames, with hinges, bolts, etc., complete with all minor improvements; chimney shafts and metal radiator flues, etc.

Dr. Scott's Improved Portable Disinfecting Chest (see next page) is intended to be used for Cottage Hospitals, or in private houses, where a full-sized chamber is unnecessary. It is fitted with improved gas-heating apparatus, pyrometer, basket-work trays for clothes, and hinged cover. The dimensions of No. o are 2 feet by 3 feet by 4 feet inside measure. The chest can also be supplied with a charcoal heater where gas is not available. It is a most serviceable apparatus: it will disinfect clothing and destroy vermin, and may be used in the ward or in a bedroom to prevent the spread of infection caused by the removal of infected clothing or bedding.

The Nottingham Self-regulating Disinfecting Apparatus' (see next page) consists of an iron chamber, or chambers, of different sizes, according to requirements-completely enclosed in a wooden case, with five inches of felt packing between, for retaining the heat-into which the articles to be disinfected are placed, and through which a strong current of hot air passes, at a temperature of from 245 to 255 deg. Fahr. Draw-out slides are fixed at the top, for fastening beds to, and slides are attached to the sides, for carrying cross-bars, over which clothes, sheets, blankets,etc., can be hung, or the large baskets provided with each apparatus can be placed. Inlet and outlet flues are attached to the chambers, for the passage of the hot air. The inlet has its connection at the bottom, and is covered inside the chamber with perforated iron plates, arranged in such a manner that the supply of air is equally distributed through all

Goddard & Massey's The 'Nottingham Self-regulating Disinfecting Apparatus'. A. Furnace (cast-iron truncated double concentric). a. Atmospheric ring burner; a'a'a', gas supply pipe.

B. Inlet flue, the exposed parts covered with wood and packing; the inner walls of wrought-iron. 6. Automatic regulator. b, b. Thermometer marking the temperature of entering current (or maximum of chamber).

c. Hot chamber, a cubical wrought-iron box, cased with packing and wood. g. Inlet aperture, with perforated plate. h. Outlet aperture. i, i. Arrangements for suspending or supporting articles to be disinfected.

D. Outlet flue, the exposed parts covered with wood and packing, the inner walls of wrought-iron. j. Thermometer measuring temperature of out-going current (the minimum of chamber).

fixed in the centre, which gives the minimum temperature. A safety apparatus is also fixed in the outlet flue, in case of articles which are being disinfected taking fire, through having a match concealed in them, the temperature here being then the highest. It consists of a fusible link, which melts at 300 deg. Fahr., the breaking of which closes the outlet and inlet flues, and, by another self-acting movement, shuts off the supply of gas and rings a bell.

The furnace for heating the air consists of a double-cased cast

EIGHTEEN YEARS' EXPERIENCE OF THE BOARDINGOUT SYSTEM.

BY WM. D'ESTERRE PARKER, ESQ. AT a meeting of the Board of Guardians of the Cork Union held on Thursday, 5th August 1880, T. H. Gallwey, Esq., in the chair, the following Report of the Boarding-out Committee was read, and unanimously adopted.

The annual inspection of the boarded-out children presents an opportunity of furnishing the Board with Committee, in the first instance, departiculars concerning them.

The

sire to mention that the pecuniary cost of this mode of rearing the pauper child is less than the cost in the workhouse. For instance, the average cost of each child in the workhouse is 35. 6d. a week, or by the year, £9.

The following is the scale for those boarded out: Infants under two years of age, 13s. 4d. a month, or £8 a year; children over two years and under five years, 11s. 6d. a month, or £6 145. a year; children over five years, and up to thirteen years, 12s. 2d., or £7 6s. a year. These several sums include clothing and school fees. The supervision of the children, which is an allimportant element in the entire system of boarding out, is carried out in a thoroughly satisfactory manner,through the agency of the several relieving officers, assisted by the local clergymen of the several parishes where the children are located, and wherever practicable the assistance of those ladies who take an interest in the welfare of the ch