By Isle of Wight Observer
The quality of the waters around our shores for bathing is a hot topic today – but, as these extracts from a long article published in the Isle of Wight Observer on 17th July 1858 show, it’s hardly a new concern. As we often note in this column: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
THE GREAT RETROGRADE MOVEMENT.
Many of our readers will doubtless recollect that when Mr. Barrow gave his evidence upon the sanitary state of Ryde before Mr. Ranger, one of the Board of Health Inspectors, he described the watercourse from Stanmore to Weeks’ as “an elongated cesspool;” and a few months ago he extolled himself for having abolished numberless cesspits in the town, and he hoped the day was not far distant when every one of them would be abolished. Indeed, the mania of Mr. Barrow has hitherto took the form of a dire crusade against cesspits: – away with all impurity into the sea! Suddenly the mania takes the opposite form, and Mr. Barrow actually recommended on Tuesday last the construction of cesspits in the town, with man-holes, to be periodically cleansed, to intercept the sewage, and prevent its being carried into the sea, as recent experience had proved to the Commissioners that it would not mix with salt water, and was consequently spread off the shore to the detriment of sea bathing! Can absurdity further go? But what childish simplicity is it to excuse this retrograde movement upon the ground of “recent experience.” That the sea will not hold putrid substances is a fact as old as the hills, and has been noticed by us as long as we can remember.
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With a knowledge of these things, we protested against the proposed system of drainage before it was adopted by the town; when we were sneeringly asked by a “practical man” where we got our engineering knowledge from? We fearlessly assert that so-called “practical men” are the greatest bane that could be possible infused into any governing body; and that their mistakes are more numerous and fundamental that those arising from any other class, and the reason is that their prejudices are deeper set.
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But who is the “coming man” who is to rectify those enormous failures, with an empty exchequer?