Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1886 — Miseries of London Life. [ARTICLE]

Miseries of London Life.

Coleridge long ego recognized the existence of no fewer than sixty distinctly different stenches at Cologne, and it mi 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 intensity and the noxiousness to health of its evl smells. We have the smoke always with ns, 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 vear. We have still, to judge from its oolor, 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-beds 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 boiling and burning of bones, the making of glue, size, white lead, leather, 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 oi more or less pestilent smell. There is not a mews behind an aristocratic square or street that is not a hot-house of unbealthv odors. —London Time «.