Foul air in houses : a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, July 4th, 1884 / by Professor Corfield.

  • Corfield (Professor)
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Foul air in houses : a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, July 4th, 1884 / by Professor Corfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    was found that the discharge was really made into a space between two arches, so that it formed a sort of cess¬ pool ; and in that wray actually underneath this school¬ room, where the children had been sitting over their lessons for hours every day, there was simply an open cesspool, connected with the drain. Foul smells, also, get into houses from bad forms of closet arrangements. I have not time to go into this subject at any length ; but I will merely mention to you, that the “ pan-closet,” which is perhaps more used than any other, is one of the worst forms of sanitary arrangements that has ever been devised. This, which is called the “ D ” trap, from being like the letter D [showing specimen], is the trap very commonly used in connection with the pan-closet; you may have everything else as right as you like, but if you have a pan-closet in a house, it is certain to be a nuisance, especially if there is a D trap connected with it. This trap, as you can see from its shape, is nothing more or less than a small leaden cesspool, and the water that passes through it cannot possibly clean out the contents from every part of it, and consequently they de¬ compose there and give out foul air, which escapes into the house. Let me here show you one or two other things in connection with this matter. This [showing specimen] is an instance in which foul air has eaten holes in the top of the trap, and it is another instance of an improper sanitary arrangement, which is very common, namely, the connection of waste pipes with the traps of water-closets. One of these came from the housemaid’s sink, and there is one, it is not at all unlikely, which came from the cistern. Of course those pipes, which are so connected with the trap of the closet, afford a means for the foul air to escape into the sinks or cisterns, or baths, or wherever those waste pipes come from. Before I leave this subject of the pan¬ closet, I must mention one thing in connection with it, which makes it so exceedingly objectionable in itself, and that is, that underneath the seat there is a large iron box, called the container, in which the pan, as it is called, is