The Globe. MONDAY, MAY 28, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 912, 28 May 1877, Page 2

The Globe. MONDAY, MAY 28, 1877.

It is satisfactory to notice that at last the City Council are making a determined stand in the matter of private streets. Hitherto streets, or rather Mind alleys, have been taken over with surprising facility, and scarcely any enquiry as to their fitness._ The consequence is that the city is now intersected with a number of narrow rights-of-way dignified by the name of streets. Apart from the question of the injury to the public health by the crowding of houses into a narrow space, we would point out that very often these places become resorts of bad characters of all kinds. The experience of other cities, notably MelTjourne, has been found to be thoroughly opposed to the allowing of the growing up in the centre of the city°a number of blind alleys and courts. It is therefore matter for congratulation that the Council are now declining to take over any streets which are not of a certain width, and completed as to footpaths, &c. They will thus put a stop to a most objectionable practice whichhas grown lip of the proprietors of sections cutting them up into lots and running narrow and ill-drained streets through them. The result of this has been that fever and other diseases have been rife in streets of this character. We need only point to such streets as JLyttelton street, George street, and other streets of a similar character, to prove the truth of what we have advanced. To allow such to increase is to plant in our midst hot-beds of disease, and we trust the Council will determinedly set its face against any inaction of the very necessary eon.,ditions it has laid down in this matter. ___________