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on two given days of the week that receptacle was required to be set out at the edge of the street opposite to the area door: four mule teams or army transportation were to pass through every street on the days designated, and into proper vessels in the wagon the house receptacles were to be emptied.
Each wagon was to have with it a cask of chloride of lime, and the receptacle having been emptied was to be examined.
If found clean and sweet it was to be set back; if not, it was to be cleansed and disinfected with chloride of lime by those having the wagon in charge.
Nothing of any description whatever was to be thrown into the streets or on outlands.
Any infraction of these orders was to be punished by imprisonment in the parish prison.
It may be said, it was impossible to enforce such orders.
On the contrary, it was perfectly possible when one was in earnest.
To show that it could be done, let me give two instances:--
The day of the first publication of the order, a secession trader, after having made some disparaging remarks upon the order, said: “We will see whether if anybody throws anything into the street he is to be put into the parish prison,” and thereupon took from his desk a quarter sheet of white paper, stepped to his door and called out to a policeman as he threw it into the street, “You see me do this.”
The policeman informed me, and I sent for the man. He admitted throwing the paper into the street, but claimed it was his privilege.
I told him the streets were made to pass through, and while he took his privilege I would take mine and pass him through the streets into the parish prison to stay three months. There was no more wilful throwing of things into the street.
Another was the case of one of the fashionable ladies of New Orleans, who had a very dirty area.
Such a thing as underground drainage for water closets was not known in that city.
The excrement was deposited in a deep square box. When that box got full it was drawn out and another one put in its place.
Not unfrequently the one drawn out was allowed to stand for months in the area, exposed to the sun. That was the condition in part of this high-toned woman's “back yard,” as we call it in New England.
My inspector called upon her.
“Did you receive an order?”
“Yes.”
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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