WHAT IS A NUISANCE?

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 44, 20 August 1908, Page 7

WHAT IS A NUISANCE?

I SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS. VARIOUS COMPLAINTS. There is no peace just now for the nuisance. Anybody who knows about anything which is an offence to the nose, eyes, and ears is hastening to request the editor to allot space for details of the eyesore, earsore, or nosesoro. Wellington's old friend, the big poultry ran in Te Aro, is giving a number of pens plenty of exercise, and other grievances are causing the shedding of much ink. Mr. Doyle, Chief City Inspector, is puzzled by the outbreak of I protests against things alleged to be [ noxious. "What has happened to the i people?" he asks. "For along time there iis hardly a murmur from anybody. Then one starts, and the others follow." The inspectors, he says, are constantly going the rounds of the city, doing their best to get the bylaws respected. Their experience was that the complaints were usually much exaggerated. FISHY PREMISES. "Disgusted" appeals pathetically to the editor thus : — "Could you inform me if there are any, meajtis whereby we can get a nuisance removed — namely, a fish cleaning and curing f actory, within a few feet of two rooms of a dwelling in Courtenay-place? We have to keep our doors and windows closed to keep out the smell. It is quite bad enough to have to live in Courtenay-place, but when we have to shut out the fresh air ifc is hard times. On Sundays and Monday mornings it is almost unbearable. Even the clothes dried in the yard smell .fishy." Mr. Doyle's reply is that the last complaint received by him in reference to these premises was on 27th April, and the place has been inspected more than once since that date. A man would be sent there again this afternoon to sco whether the "Disgusted's" allegations were well founded. "Wo have trouble with all the fish shops," continued Mr. Doyle. "We have complaints about aH of them. Even fresh fieh may give off an unpleasant smell while being cleaned, and we have no power to stop the cleaning or curing of fish in the city, though this practice may bring about a nuisance, temporarily. We take care to see that premises are not left in an objectionable condition, but the bylaws do not permit us to protect people against the smell ; it js one of the disadvantages of city life. DOGS, CAYS, ETC. Another correspondent, "Tortured," presents some dtrong opinions about nuisances. "I will try to tell you what I think is a nuisance," he begins, in an endeavour to answer the query put in The Post a couple of days ago. "I think that any kind of noise in the night that hinders a person from sleeping is a nuisance, and I mean not only geese and ducks squakingj but dogs and cats, etc., who make the night a perfect pandemonium to some people. Of course healthy people can sleep through it all, but they don't consider their neighbours who are not so fortunate. I sincerely sympathise with the person who signed himself 'Insomnia,' for I myself am a martyr to that awful malady, and it was brought on years ago through not being able to sleep for barking dogs next door. Don't we often hear of people committing suicide through insomnia? And I don't wonder. Some people keep a dog to satisfy the whim of a spoilt boy, but they don't consider the nuisance thats dog is to their neighbours." "Tortured" then comments upon the plagues of cats, and the contemplation of the various sights and sounds and smells which have disturbed his peace leads him to ejaculate bitterly : "Talk about this being God's Own Country ! I think it is fast becoming the devil's own country instead." "Oft in the Stilly Night" has some playful suggestions : "The ducks and geese and fowls of that much-lamented poultry-yard," he declares, "are singers of music 'sweet, too sweet to pass away,' compared with the pianists, the corneters, the base violinists, the singers who thump upon us, and screech j upon us and roar upon us by day and by night. The man who puts steel into your body is a murderer, but he or she who puts iron into your soul is above prosecution, and may be held to be eminently respectable. This is the era of specialisation, and the population should be drafted out according to the way in which the sections have specialised themselves. The amateur musical practitioners should have a suburb to themselves for mutual torture, the dog and cat owners another, the poultry fanciers another, and respectable people should have a reservation about ton , miles away ; f rom, J&fc-.ffi&SSJj,": -. > >