“There is nothing like an efficient system of drainage in Tranent and the other villages in the district. There is a piece of drain here and there, but it is very inefficient. There is not even a sufficient water-course in the main streets of Tranent; and it frequently happens, during and after a heavy fall of rain, that the carriage-road is covered with water, and that some of the lower class of houses are inundated. In a few parts of the town the water-course is covered with stones or flags. These occasionally fall in, and openings are made. These openings are generally left unrepaired, and are not filled up. People frequently get hurt by stepping into them when it is dark. I have myself met with an accident; and serious mischief would very frequently occur did people not pay particular attention to avoid them.”
_Dr. Sym_, in his report on the sanitary condition of the town of Ayr, states that—
“A good covered sewer traverses the principal streets of the new part of Ayr; but the old part of the burgh, and both Newton and Wallacetown have merely shallow open gutters along the sides of the causeway. These gutters receive all the liquid refuse from the closes and alleys which communicate with the street, and which are generally causewayed in such a way that one side is considerably higher than the other, so as to permit water to find its way to the opposite edge. This sort of drainage might suffice for all useful purposes in our dry sandy soil if we had an adequate establishment of scavengers; but the gutters in many of the streets, and in all the closes inhabited by the poor are so much neglected, that they are never free from the stinking residuum of foul water. In Newton and Wallacetown, the drainage is exceedingly imperfect; indeed, in most streets of the latter it may be said scarcely to exist, and as the surface is very flat, almost the whole of the liquid putrescence and filth which are thrown out from the houses is allowed to filter through the sand, or evaporate in the sun, leaving a most offensive paste at the sides of the streets, and in the passages through the houses. This is the more to be regretted, that the beautiful state of cleanliness of the new part of Ayr, shows with how little labour it might be obviated with the aid of our absorbent soil and free atmosphere. There are some streets, the main street of Newton in particular, which have such inequalities in the causewayed footpaths, and such want of escape by the gutters, that it is impossible to find one’s way through them in a dark night, without many a plunge into the filth. There is everywhere sufficient slope toward the river to render drainage perfectly effectual, if properly executed.”