Shropshire Routes to Roots

Infection through time: The Sanitary Condition of Shrewsbury - Part 2

The Sanitary Condition of Shrewsbury - a letter [Shrewsbury Journal]

Now at the earliest moment of a nuisance. The health of the people is of the first consideration, and if drinking impure water renders the public liable to disease, then it becomes the imperative duty of the local authorities to see that no time is lost in remedying so crying an evil, and we doubt not that Mr BLUNT'S letter will call forth, form other scientific men, some means by which, if we cannot artificially render the water from our contaminated wells pure, we may at any rate partially remedy its impurity by filtration, or at least mitigate the evils which arise from using it in its present state, until the seweraging of the town has been fully and efficiently carried out. We readily admit that there is a difficulty in dealing with this important question, but certainly it is not of so serious a character as is generally imagined. Government, it is true, has pretty plainly said that our streams and rivers are not to be polluted by sewage and cesspool reuse, and some steps must be taken to get rid of it, otherwise then by permitting it to percolate into our wells and contaminate the noble stream around us. It is quite clear then that the town authorities cannot stand still any longer, and now that the subject has been very properly started by Mr BLUNT, they may be enabled, expensive though the process may at first be, and practically speaking it is reduced into one of cost - to devise some plan of utilisation which, in the long run will render valuable to the agriculturalist that which is a positive nuisance in our town at the present time.

[Shrewsbury Journal]