Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1884 — Miseries of London Life. [ARTICLE]

Miseries of London Life.

Coleridge long ago recognized the existence of no fewer tlian sixty distinctly different stenches at Cologne, and it was perhaps the multiplicity of malodorous emanations in the city of the Dom that incited the original Jean Marie Farina to devise the delicious perfume which bears his name. London, however, is a city which far surpasses Cologne, if not in the number, at least in the intensify and the noxiousness to health of its evil smells. We have the smoke always with us, to begin with, which, as London continues to grow, and sea-coal is burnt in open fire-places, most stupidly constructed, must necessarily increase in volume and in poisonous attributes every year. We have still, to judge from its color, a river which is terribly polluted, and in which, below bridge, few fish can live; and where there is pollution of water unpleasant odors must necessarily follow. The main drainage is, no doubt, a magnificent engineering work, but our house drainage is still lamentably imperfect, and our dust bins are so many hot-l>e<Ls of disease, the perils of which are aggravated by the tardiness of dust contractors, the extortions of dustmen, and the apparently incorrigible laziness of servants. Our greatness as a commercial and manufacturing metropolis demands that we should carry on within our borders such industries as the boiliug and burning of bones, the making of glue, size, white lead, ieather, varnish, tallow and chemical manures; and it would be interesting to ascertain how many millions of feet of carburetted hydrogen and carbonic acid gas there are liberated every year from the furnace of our gas-works and the “fermenting squares” of our breweries. There is not a railway station in London that is not a focus of more or less pestilent smell. There is not a mews behind an aristocratic square or street that is not a hot-house of unhealthy odors. —London Times.