The Globe. THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 809, 25 January 1877, Page 2

The Globe. THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 1877.

—■ ■■■■■ . ■»■" —■ .. i . ■ ■ —■ .i . . — mj% For, we are afraid to say how long, the citizens of Christchurch have longed for public baths. Candidates for seats in the City Council have dangled the promises of providing this luxury before expectant ratepayers with about as much substantiality as property carrots. At 'last the long-delayed boon has been obtained. The baths are erected, and the great unwashed may now on disbursement of sundry coppers bathe, and go on their way rejoicing and—clean. But, as appears to be the rule with our civic rulers, a dire mistake has been made. To quote the expressive lines in Tennyson's well-known poem, " Some one has blundered." Who it is, whether surveyor, works committee, or other lawfully constituted authority, we don't pretend to say ; but the fact remains that a most egregious blunder has been committed. It is not one of fault of construction ; far worse, it is one which will affect, and that moat injuriously, the health of every person who enters the delusion known as the Corporation Baths. Not only so, but by the action of the Council, auyone wanting a bath is utterly precluded from so doing, except in the place which the sapient wisdom of the City Council has selected. This we should not object. to if the Corporation baths were fit to be used. Boating on the river, at least with ladies, is to a great extent tabooed by the use of the College bathing place, but to compel bathers to go to a place where the risk of infection not to say the utter of the water is very great, is we thii-k far too bad. "We have been informed that all the unutterable from the Hospital are drained direct into the river, or if not direct, at least into a creek running into it. It is a well known and accepted fact in medical science that in no way is infection easier communicated than by the germs of disease coming in contact

with the skin, or by inhalation. Now when we consider the amount of germs contained in the washing water from the Hospital, irrespective of other fruitful sources of disease, all of which are continually passing down the river and through the piece of water selected by the Council, it becomes a moat serious matter. It is impossible for us to write of the filth —we can use no milder or more elegant term —issuing from the Hospital drains into the river. We can only leave it to our readers to imagine what must be the state of the water thus polluted, and ask whether this is the proper place for a body such as the City Council to have selected for the public baths. Not alone does the whole sewage of the Hospital now into the river, but the Antigua street drain—one of the most pestilential in the whole city—also discharges into it. We put it to the common sense of our readers whether, under these circumstances, the Council have selected a proper place. They cannot say they were not warned. When it was known that they had selected this spot, letters from correspondents appeared in the local papers pointing out the various objections to it, and dwelling mainly upon the points referred to by us. But, in the face of this, the Council has persisted in placing the baths where the whole of the sewage of <\ large institution—much of it of a highly infectious nature —must pass through. We regret that a more careful consideration was not given to this subject. Public baths are a necessity, particularly in a climate such as this, and it is therefore to be deplored that the Council have selected a site, which is not only utterly unsuited, but positively dangerous, from the probability of a spread of infectious diseases.