A WARNING.

Shannon News, 15 August 1922, Page 3

A WARNING.

(To the Editor.)

Sir.—ln reading an account of the last meeting of the Charitable. Aid Board at Palmerston North, I saw where tlie Mayor of Shannon stated that dirty 1 surroundings were largely responsible lor epidemics of diphtheria and that, five years ago, when. Shannon was made a borough, all the dirty backyards, etc., were cleaned up,, and that there was consequently very little diphtheria in Shannon since.

Well when I read thisH was simply astounded. 1 thought at first Mr Murdoch was. having a joke, and then again I though the subject, was toi tragic to be comic. However, if it \vas a joke, apparently the Charitable Aid Board didn’t take it. that way. However, they were badly astray if they took it as being the case, because it is quite the reverse, especially the part about, all the dirty backyards in Shannon being cleaned up, I will show that it. is not in accordance with fact, and I will, give only one case in point,

Only a few yards from one of the main streets of Shannon, in the back yard of a certain building there are three open cesspools. One of these is nearly covered with long grass. Itis about 20ft deep. I/mean that there is a clear drop of about 20ft from the top before reaching the slimy water and other unnameahle. mysteries at the bottom. This hole is about 4ft in diameter, and what, chance of rescue would any person have who fell into it.

A number of yo-ung children live and play and breathe the pestilential air round about and in the immediate vicinity of this death-dealing treble death-trap, in blissful ignorance of the terrible danger they run. It must have been by good luck or by some special intervention of Providence that one or more of these children before now have not met an awful death in the slimy horrors at tlie bottom of this modern Slough of Despond, to say nothing of the danger they run of catohing disease from its evil-smell-ing nondescript contents.

If Mr Murdoch is-not aware of the existence of this cesspool, perhaps it is because . . . (censored) . . . 1 am not, writing this lor a joke, but because it is true, and I am in deadly earnest. I wish I could get. some ct the members of the Charitable Aid Board to come and see, for themselves. I cannot make it plainer except l take some of the residents ol Shannon by the hand and lead them to it—if they cannot already smell it. Mr Murdoch walks past it every day with his head in the air, and it will not take a very exhaustive search or inquiry to locate this place by reason of the facts I have already stated. The first child that is drowned in this hole of doom, I will be at the inquest, and I will produce this issue of the Shannon News to prove that the councillors and the people, o± Shannon were warned of this terrible disease-spreading ueath-dealing plant, and that they took no steps to have it put, right.—l am, etc., HYGEIA.