Miasmas and Evil Airs

For when the morning breezes blow toward the town at sunrise, if they bring with them mist from marshes and, mingled with the mist, the poisonous breath of creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of the inhabitants, they will make the site unhealthy. 

Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius on miasma, 1st Century AD

In the 1840s and 50s, the orthodox theory of disease argued that infections and diseases were transmitted through odours in the air. Miasma theory attributed the cause of diseases to the presence of a miasma, a poisonous vapour in which particles of decaying matter were suspended, producing a foul smell. The theory originated in the Middle Ages and endured for several centuries. 

In 1847 Colonial Surgeon Dr L. Ferguson presented a report on Perth’s swamps and their link to disease. He asserted that the wetlands presented a risk to the health of the town’s residents and recommended that they be completely drained.

In 1869 an Inspector of Nuisances was employed in Perth and Fremantle. The Inspector would walk the streets sniffing out any malodorous problems, issuing fines for unclean cess pits, offal and animal carcasses, and anything that created an olfactory nuisance. The qualification for the job was a good nose. 

I did not think that it required a very expansive intellect to grasp the duties of the nuisance inspector…The main consideration was a good sharp nose rather than a towering intellect.

Hunt 1980

By the mid 1870s, diseases in Perth were linked to inadequate drainage and unsanitary conditions. The Council Special Committee of 1873 recommended; "...continuing the line of the drain from Lake Henderson to the Island Lake, in order to secure the best flow of water possible, being conducted in the city for sanitary, as well as for domestic purposes (Hunt, 1980)." However this recommendation was not acted upon.

In 1874 the Colonial Surgeon Dr S.C. Shaw wrote “in Perth there is plenty of water…but sometimes it is of an opalescent or muddy colour, nauseous taste and putrescent smell” (Hunt 1980).

Perth became known as an “ill smelling place.” The army medical surgeon commented in 1878 that “the inhabitants of Perth were literally living on a dunghill and drinking water polluted by sewerage.”  

Many Perth residences had unbricked cess pits situated only a few metres from drinking water wells. Diseases that had been blamed on mists and “airs” emanating from the swamps were, in fact, caused by the seepage of sewerage into wells. In 1885 one cesspit in Murray Street was shared by 23 residents. Between Hay Street and Murray Streets, one earth closet and adjoining cesspit accommodated 80 workmen (Hunt 1980).

In 1880 and 1881 the death rates from typhoid and enteric fever increased. In Fremantle two deaths were registered for every three births.

“Fever and Diphtheria may be looked on as endemic diseases in Perth and Fremantle fostered by sewage contamination of air and water” 

(Dr Waylen 1883 cited in Hunt 1980).

Construction of Victoria Reservoir on Munday’s Brook began in February 1890 and was the beginning of a program of dam construction to supply potable water to Perth.