A journey into deepest, dankest, dirtiest Dunedin

Gentle Reader; from the "Colonist," first published by the "Otago Daily Times," comes this aspect of a growing Victorian city.  The population is growing but some things have lagged behind.  Among those things are the provision of running water going into houses and of sewers for what comes out of them.

A DARK PICTURE OF WORKING-MEN'S

DWELLINGS IN DUNEDIN CITY.

(From the Otago Daily Times.)

Some of our readers may possibly have noticed that no inconsiderable portion of the Resident Magistrate's time has of late been taken up in inquiring into the sanitary condition of the back slums of Dunedin. If any of our readers are curious to understand how, through a patient and unswerving observance of the conditions laid down by nature, disease may be manufactured in any quantity and of the most deadly quality, under the circumstances which might have been supposed most favorable to health, let him visit a few of the courts and alleys, and rights of way leading, for instance, down from George-street. We will, at all events, guarantee him a "sensation effect" of the highest character. He must, however, be good at a water jump, and even then we recommend him to equip himself with his stoutest and highest boots or he will scarcely penetrate into the interior. Perhaps his best base of operations will be Great King street; let him adventure boldly behind its thin screen of decent houses and he will find himself in a marsh covered with flax bushes, and irrigated by several streams as black as Styx; let him then choose any one of these waters, and push boldly into the interior. He has but to follow his nose, and most assuredly he will need no other guide. The extensive middens which surround every flaxbush on either side will afford him an interesting study if he is curious in vegetable and animal matter in an advanced state of decomposition. With unremitting energy the inhabitants of the neighborhood have converted every one of them into a magazine of disease, capable of decimating a moderately-sized village; and with the greatest foresight have plentifully provided these storehouses of typhus and scarlatina with cast raiment and old boots, which, though useless for the purpose of attire, are still admirable adapted for retaining the most suitable seeds of disease, which otherwise the wind and rain might disperse, and possibly drown. Our traveller will, if he perseveres, soon find himself among some rickety weatherboard constructions, perched in a forlorn manner on the drier portions of the swamp, round which groups of joyless children are wearily engaged in the manufacture of dirt pies. As they look listlessly up at the unwonted apparition of a stranger, he will have an opportunity of comparing the palor of their flabby faces with the chubby cheeks which possibly he has left at home, and he may convince himself of the complete success which has attended the precautions so judiciously employed to foster disease, and to prepare the intended patient for its reception. But he is not yet at his journey's end. The copious black stream he has been tracing to its sources, has, however, shrunk into a narrow ditch of a yellowish green and extremely fetid filth, which flows sluggishly over a quaking black morass into which a walking-stick may be thrust to the handle without finding bottom. He must now carefully pick his way on the crazy board bridges, or rather rafts, which conduct to the home of the Otago workingman. A moment's reflection will assure him that there are floating paths of this description leading to every inhabited house, otherwise the house would be simply inaccessible, though the paths are frequently hidden in black slush. The rafts will probably bear him, but he must be careful to put his foot well in the middle of each board. Let him advance a few steps further, he will find a garbage paved walk, with houses on either side; the streamlet still oozes along beside it, forming a pool opposite each doorway for the reception of its contributions to the yellow wave — a step more and he will be at the headwaters. Like the Nile they will be found in a marsh — unlike in this respect however, that the parent bogs bear neither reeds nor indeed any vegetables, but a loathsome green slime. The fountainhead is claimed by the inhabitants of a wooden hut, to be immediately under their bed-chamber, and the appearance of the inmates, especially of the dull-eyed, parchment skinned children, who have neither strength nor energy even to make dirt pies, fully justifies the assumption, but though a considerable portion of the streamlet does flow from the green pool on which their cottage floats, we should prefer, on chemical grounds, to consider the "convenience" which stands beside the floating hut as the true source.

The geographical inquiry having been thus satisfactorily disposed of, we should recommend the intrepid voyager to pause awhile in this charming spot, and here, if his stomach will allow him, meditate — surely there can be no fitter spot for the speculation — on the charms and advantages, sanitary and otherwise, of the laissez faire system. By it the owner of the property is enabled to extract a considerable revenue from land, which if it were situated in a country where a despotic centralisation enforced sanitary precautions, would probably be wholly unproductive. The man who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a benefactor to his country. It is true no grass will grow here now, but the time must come, when the present population will have died off, and new tenants will fail to come forward, and then where he found a barren swamp he will leave a fertile market garden admirably situated, with an unfathomable soil of the richest manure. The ineffectual attempts of magistrates and inspectors of nuisances to interfere with these arrangements, are a pleasant foil to the picture.

If our adventurer be still unexhausted by his toils, we can recommend several of the cuts in George-street to his attention. That which we explored presents to the casual observer the appearance of a lane, but is in reality a canal of semi-liquid night-soil; along the side of which may be noticed the raft bridge arrangement before described, which so forcibly carries back the mind to the lake dwellings of primitive Europe — so strikingly do the latest products of civilisation resemble the dawning efforts of human intelligence. Our savage progenitors, however, appear to have, for unknown reasons, preferred lakes to bogs, and are not known to have evinced any decided preference for bad smells.

What we have attempted to describe we have seen, and we have indeed perforce suppressed the most loathsome details. That foul water — green, yellow, and black — is our only safeguard. A few weeks' dry weather may at any time breed a pestilence, compared to which the present mortality, heavier though it be than that of any English city, will be as nothing. We have seen as yet but the "green tree," what will happen "in the dry" remains yet to be seen. All disease arising from such causes as those which we have indicated is to be prevented, therefore every death occasioned by them is, if not murder, at least culpable homicide. Fining the unfortunate inhabitants of these deadly swamps is worse than useless. They can pay no fines, and they go to jail, leaving their unfortunate wives and children to combat the malaria on an impoverished diet. Fining the owners is legal, and might do some good, but the owners can not always be reached. One is sorely tempted to wish for a few hours of a vigorous despotism, unshackled by any respect whatever for vested interests.  -Colonist, 16/9/1864.