Catalogue description Folios 571-580. To: The General Board of Health. From: James Brown, Town Clerk,...

Folios 571-580.

To: The General Board of Health.

From: James Brown, Town Clerk, Lymington [Hampshire].

Subject Matter: Letter referring to the recent proceedings taken for the effectual remedying of certain public nuisances within this borough, which has been declared by the medical authority as injurious to public health. Brown explains that since 1848 a Local Board was formed by whom Inspectors of Nuisances were duly appointed, and where many nuisances on private properties within this parish have been removed or abated. He adds that recently the Local Board have used their upmost exertions in abating a 'deleterious' public nuisance caused by the 'noxious effluvia' from open gratings over the common sewers on the streets, and from open ditches in the town and borough into which filth from the main common sewers are discharged. He gives a detailed explanation of why this nuisance has not been removed, due to the surveyors refusing to effect the required removal or abatement of the nuisances, and refers to the Local Board's powers under the Highway Act 1835, and he therefore asks for the powers of the General Board to be exercised to compel these surveyors to take the appropriate measures to abate this nuisance. He also gives details of the parishes population and the number of persons paying to the poor rate, together with a statement of the number of deaths over the last seven years, which shows that the average deaths have exceeded the numbers stated in section 8 of the Public Health Act 1848, with a great increase of mortality between 1847 and 1848. He further adds that the sewerage and drainage throughout the parish is very incomplete, and in certain parts of the town there is none at all. He encloses three medical reports from certain surgeons certifying the bad sanitary state of this parish.

[Folio 571 is a place guard: Lymington].