IN the summer of 1873 Dr John Milligan, the Medical Officer of Health for Keighley, prepared a report on the sanitary conditions in the town and surrounding villages. Even for the times it made disturbing and unsavoury reading.
In Oakworth he found that the sanitary arrangements for houses owned by John Haggas were deplorable. Haggas was a wealthy worsted spinner and manufacturer and owner of Oakworth Mill. Below Bridge Street in Mill Lane, he owned a row of sixteen cottages on the left and nine on the right, all of which had to share two privies.
A visit to William Wright’s butchers’ shop and slaughterhouse at Oakworth Hall revealed that behind the premises there was a manure heap. This was mingled with offal from the slaughterhouse that oozed down into an open drain. It was again owned by Haggas.
At the National School, next to the church in Oakworth, there were only two privies neither of which had been cleaned and the seat of that allocated to the boys was covered in excrement. In addition, the school yard was dirty, unpaved and undrained with pools of stagnant water in front of both privies.
At Lane Ends there was one small privy for five cottages that had a pit full of floating excrement.
A privy serving other cottages was located down a narrow passage and was built of course, undressed stone and had no seat, or door.
The situation in Oxenhope was in many respects worse, with open drains and gutters throughout the village. The privies were generally of poor construction, with too few for the number of houses.
In Shaw Lane he found a row of twelve houses with three filthy privies, the middle one had no seat but had “a branch of a tree laid crossways, upon which the unfortunate tenants must perch.”
Former outside privies at Bogthorn, Oakworth (Image: Robin Longbottom)
These arrangements were known as stang privies, from the dialect word for a pole, or long branch.
At the end of Shaw Lane, Mary Ogden’s four cottages had two little privies, both of which were doorless and had no seat other than a stang.
Whilst nine cottages at Leeming owned by William Kershaw, worsted spinner and manufacturer, had only two privies with no doors, or seats, and being in full view of people passing in the street.
At Hilltop in Riddlesden the twenty four inhabitants of three cottages shared one privy with a midden that ran down the field directly in front of them. John Milligan reported that this mode of “getting quit” of household waste and refuse was to be strongly condemned.
At Low Banks in the village was one dirty privy in a prominent position at the side of the road.
It emptied into a walled pit whilst slops and refuse from the houses was simply thrown in the street and eventually washed into a nearby stream.
Other villages such as Hainworth, Morton and Utley were no better with poorly constructed privies, open middens and ash pits. Needless to say, the stench from these facilities was often noxious and overpowering, particularly during a hot summer.
However, change for the better was on the horizon. The first fully integrated sewerage system had been designed by Joseph Bazalgette in London in 1859. It conveyed the sewage to sewage works where it was screened and cleansed.
The water closet with its high-water cistern, toilet bowl and none return U- bend was developed by Yorkshireman Thomas Crapper.
Whilst the tippler toilet, which utilised wastewater from the house to flush it, was designed by James Ducket, a Lancashire man. Both had come into general use by the end of the 19th century.
In Keighley piped sewerage systems and a sewage works were established by 1882 and in Oakworth by 1895, ones at other villages, including Oxenhope, soon followed.