The Stinks of Melbourne.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3454, 8 March 1890, Page 2

The Stinks of Melbourne.

Mr J. 11. Borrows, manager of a Melbourne bank, recently delivered a lecture. before the members of tho "Banker's Institute" on 'The Barbarisms of Barbarous Melbourne," and the following extracts convey his ideas on sanitary matters there: r; . " You pass sewer after sewer, through Richmond, Toorak, and Hawthorn* with picturesque beauty and disgusting filth unequally yoked together; through Collingwood, with ■ its foul fellmongories and tanneries, its sewers and larrikins, on to Studley Park.. . . . An outgoing steamer is just starting for its destination, and is .swinging round in what is called" the 'basin.' And as, with mighty ihud, the screw goes round, so does the stink, stirred up from tho bottom of the river. Yon hasten away with quickening stops, past noble steamers and dingy dredges on to the .'little •_,: dock' a3 it-is called,and'tkere behold and smell' a fifty-years-bldx cesspool—ajiibilee of filth—a veritable Gehenna of stinks, '. ,■. '•. That " mystery of darkness, that abomination of desolation, that'loathsome plague, that overwhelming barbarism —tho nightort, making night hideous with its revolting presence. How many a hot and sultry summer night . bavo I thrown open my window, panting for heaven's pure air, and have swallowed—a m'ghtcart. Or, hastening to some other window, hoping thero to End consolation, j liavo found a Blench, ' Like the poor,' we have out stinks ever with us,fas we go about by day, and when we lio down at night. Ever present, foul and noisome, filthy and poisonouß, disgusting and barbarous beyond words. .Out gutters and drains, our river aiid nightcart, 'are a discredit to our boasted civilisation, the more, so as it is quite unnecessary to enduro them. Alodern civilisation has long since found remedies for such ills, if we were only willing to adopt them, Meiboiirno may be well to the frbnt'A in somo respects, but in her drainage T and other respects sho is half a century behind tho age. The way in which, not only in Melbourne, - but in its wide-spreading suburbs, houses are being crowded together without any regard to decent drainage or sanitary conditions, is equally barbarous aad disgusting, Even tbo most healthy 1 spots around'are thus being turned ' into wretched, dismal, fever haunts, and abodes of disease and misery, i'n i country, where, during the summer ■ 1 months,: tho woalhor ii) frequently 1 sultry and oppressive beyond human 1 ondurance, the poor man fiiidß himself shut in, cabined, and confined. 1 within a spaco as limited as a dog's kennel, with no breathing spaeo 1 around him—no front garden, and no ' back yard—and in many cases as 1 many as three foul closets within 10 . [ or 15 feet; of his kitchen or bedroom \ 1 window, and in somo cases I havo\i| ' noticed as many as ten of these within 1 100 : feet or less of his bedroom ' dows—and the prospect of ton'moreajjt ' tliem very shortly. In our defective 1 drainage aud defective house building : we are veritably piling up wealth of [ woe, a limitless legacy- of misery for . future generations to endure. As you stand and look around you, you are quita prepared to hear-that tho father of the family is just dead and buried, in the prime of strength and ' manhood; or of mothers leaving their helpless little ones at tho beck of the 1 relentless demon typhoid; or little children sickening of diptheria, or 1 some such dread disease, and passing ' away—out of the stink, away from., ; the slimy filth—into a healthier and ' happier world."