HAVE YOU A BATH? Or City Water?

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 274, 30 September 1905, Page 6

HAVE YOU A BATH? Or City Water?

THE Premier broke out in a fresh place the other day when, during the discussion about workers' dwellings, he remarked that everyone ought to have a bath. It is a particularly necessary luxury in Wellington, wnere the wilful wind garbs the wayfarer m grit and the average person will insist in sitting m a tramway-wait-ing hutch. But much more necessary to the community than to have a bath-room m every dwelling is the proper sanitation of every dwelling built, also recommended by the Premier. • • • Anyhow, what is the good of a bathroom to the suburbanite with a couple of 400-gallon tanks — empty part of the year — and with no proper outlet for soapy water? A bath under such conditions is a menace to health. Wellington has hundreds of houses that have no proper sanitary arrangements, and" it is a standing disgrace to a city that professes to be up to date that, while work that adds to' the convenience of the people but is not absolutely necessary is pushed on vigorously and rapidly, each year sees a larger number of houses erected and nothing being done to give them greater air space, a proper water supply, or sanitary conveniences. ♦ • • Island Bay, Kilbirnie, Kelburne, and other suburbs owe their comparative immunity from epidemic disease to Wellington wind, and not to Wellington water. The average suburban builder builds a house, and puts in water pipes that lead to the back yard. In fact, the back yard is the "drain" in most cases. The "jerry building" that Dr. Magill speaks about in his report is, of course, a very real evil in Wellington, as in other cities, with the exception that the builder in Wellington has a particularly free hand to do as he likes, to crowd dwellings into small spaces, and to drain into the back "garden." * * Houses built on a dead level, without any water supply or sanitation, are a temptation of Providence, and it would be a great feather in his cap if Mr. Seddon were able to insist 'that no more should be built unless adequate drainage was provided. No more should be built until the City Council saw the gravity of the situation, and hustled forward a service for which the waterless and dramless suburbanites pay equally with the city ratepayer. Naturally, insurance companies load suburban houses far from water supply, and so the suburban resident is between the devil and the deep sea It is to be hoped that the Premier will keep pegging away at the drainage question. It doesn't matter about the bath idea, for no one dare have a morning "shower" with a, silly little tank containing his sole water-sup-pJy-