WOOD PAVING AND SANITATION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 277, 22 November 1899, Page 3

WOOD PAVING AND SANITATION.

THE IMPERIAL SPIRIT IN HARLEY

STREET,

The medical men of Marylebone are at loggerheads with- their Vestry folk on the matter of wood pavement. The Vestry with an eye to the ratepayers pocket has declared for the cheap, soft woods of Norway, and the doctors with a whole souled disregard of their own interests and a sudden enthusiasm for the Colonies are pleading for the hard woods of Australasia. The doctors declare that soft wood paving harbours disease germs, which in summer produce a. form of catarrhal sore throat and slight ophthalmia, which is known as "Piccadilly disease." At the last meeting of the Marylebone Vestry, Dr. Fletcher Little supported a petition signed by 120 Harley Street residents, 90 per cent, being medical men, praying that as the Vestry had decided to pave that street with soft pine blocks they should be first treated with carbolineum. He had had, he said, a dozen patients whose complaints were attributable to insanitary soft wood paving. The Vestry , agreed to adopt this course, but now that public attention has been drawn to the matter there can be little doubt that the Vestry will be forced to use hard wood blocks for any further repaying they may undertake, especially as it has been proved that the "economy" of soft wood paving amounts to paying say £2 for a thing that lasts a couple of years, instead of £3 on a thing that under ordinary condition will last three times as long. "Why should we spend thousands of jiounds with Norway and Sweden for soft and comparatively worthless pine when we might be patronising our own colonies and getting far better value." asked the Sanitary Committee Chairman. Why?