USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > Concord > History of Concord, New Hampshire, from the original grant in seventeen hundred and twenty-five to the opening of the twentieth century, Volume I > Part 59
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547
BOARD OF HEALTH.
where tenement houses had been recently erected by the Concord Development Company.
Penacook, in 1887, West Concord, in 1892, and East Concord, in 1895, were constituted sewerage precincts by city ordinances that authorized loans on the credit of the city for constructing the system in those precincts; with provision that certain specified sums should be annually raised upon the taxable property therein, for paying the bonds as they should mature. Nor were the people of those pre- cinets slow to improve the opportunities thus afforded them.
The continued and growing importance of the department was signified, in 1893, by creating the office of City Engineer,-the first incumbent being Will B. Howe,-and requiring that one of the duties of the engineer should be to act as clerk of the committee on sewers and drains. On the 31st of December, 1900, it fell to that officer to report that a total of nearly thirty-two miles of sewer lines permeated the city precinct-a fact denoting the interesting average of one mile of extension a year since the system of sewerage had its beginning in Concord a generation before.
For the six years ending with 1886, the Board of Health consisted of John Connell, city marshal, and two physicians ; Alfred E. Emery for six years and George Cook for four years, with Sumner Marden and Herbert C. Cummings sharing the last two. This board kept a watchful and intelligent eye upon existing hygienic condi- tions, including water supply and sewerage, and, from time to time, suggested improvements. In 1887, the city government resolved upon a new departure in sanitation. A comprehensive and progres- sive ordinance "relating to the public health " was passed on the last day of March, prescribing that the city council should, before the 15th of April of that year, "by joint ballot, elect three health officers,"-one for three years, one for two, and one for one year,- "to be styled the Board of Health of the city of Concord; " with the further provision, that "annually thereafter " a person should be elected " for a term of three years to take the place of the member whose term expires." At least one of the members was to be a physician. The board thus chosen was, within ten days, to organize, and make a nomination of a Sanitary Officer, subject to the action of the city council in convention. This officer was to devote his entire time, from the 1st of May to the 31st of October, to the performance of the duties of his office,-receiving two dollars and fifty cents a day therefor,-and should, during the rest of the year, investigate all complaints relating to nuisances, and do other service under the direction of the Board of Health, with compensation of fifty cents per hour; provided, however, that his charge for services in any one day
548
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
should not exceed the sum of two dollars and fifty cents. The mem- bers of the board were each to be annually compensated in the sum of twenty-five dollars.
The first Board of Health chosen under this ordinance consisted of Granville P. Conn, Edward N. Pearson, and Herbert C. Cummings. The first sanitary officer was Howard M. Cook, who served till 1889. Thence to 1900 there were two other incumbents of the office,- Henry A. Rowell and Charles E. Palmer,-with a yearly compensa- tion increasing to eight hundred dollars.
The board and its sanitary officer went to work with energy and common-sense discretion. A house-to-house inspection was syste- matically conducted for six months ; revealing, among other things, the somewhat startling fact that there were three hundred eighty- eight dwelling-houses which were using " surface drains, cesspools, old wells, or stable cellars for the purposes of sewerage." "It seems strange," said the sanitary officer in his report, " that any one own- ing a house on the line of a street sewer should continue to violate the law, and incur the liability of disease and death by the use of surface drains and cesspools. . . There are two hundred eighty- five houses that are using these, and some of them are on what are termed the best streets in the city." Efforts were also made to bring about the discontinuance of unwholesome wells and springs as sources of water supply; and, by timely warnings, to save Lake Penacook itself from pollution. The board, in its first report, de- clared "the house-to-house inspection " to be "but the taking of bearings for more effective work later." In fact, it was to be a prominent duty of the sanitary officer during the coming thirteen years, sometimes reaching, as in 1900, five hundred cases, and cover- ing nearly as many localities. Within its wide range the last-men- tioned inspection embraced private and tenement dwelling-houses, stores, stables, meat and fish markets, schoolhouses, business blocks, alleyways, Penacook lake, and the reservoir. But all along, especi- ally in the later years, this inspection had to yield somewhat to other more pressing duties. To attend to hundreds of complaints against nuisances, to serve notices for their abatement, and to watch for the compliance of those notified ; to enforce the laws, ordinances, rules, and regulations relative to sewers and drains ; and-most important of all-to supervise cases of contagious disease, involving ยท disinfection, and, frequently, quarantine, were some of the engross- ing duties of the health department and its executive officer. Thus, in 1895, the sanitary officer examined more than five hundred nui- sances complained of, and caused the abatement of most of them ; personally inspected one hundred four sewers as to "connection
549
HEALTH REGULATIONS.
made and work completed ; " visited eleven hundred forty-nine per- sons smitten with contagious sickness ; placarded two hundred thirty- six houses ; fumigated two hundred ninety-six rooms and two school- houses ; burned fifty-three pieces of infected bedding; and attended fifteen funerals of victims of contagious disease.
After years of urgent suggestion, the wishes of the department were gratified in 1900, by legislation tending to abate the dangerous nuisance of defective plumbing. The sanitary officer became the inspector of plumbing ; and provision was also made against the sin of ignorance therein by establishing a board of examiners to test the fitness of applicants for license to follow that pursuit. And it was the testimony of Officer Palmer in course of the first year's trial that the plumbers were accepting the new conditions " in a very fine spirit," realizing that the new laws were "working no hardship on them as a class." But another improvement, though persistently urged, was not secured. This was the providing of a hospital where diseases of a contagious character could be effectively treated. In 1895 there was some prospect that the scheme might prove success- ful ; plans of a building were drawn, estimates of cost secured, and a suitable site granted the city, for a nominal sum, by the trustees of the Margaret Pillsbury Hospital.1 But nothing practical resulted; and the pest house on the Plains remained a sorry apology for the desired institution.
In 1895 the Board of Health was, by state law, given the "charge of granting permits for the burial of the dead." Hitherto, since 1878, the city clerk had had, as registrar, exclusive charge of the depart- ment of Vital Statistics pertaining to births, deaths, and marriages- making annual reports to the city. Thenceforth, the records of vital statistics began to be given more frequent publicity by the board in the columns of newspapers, and to be sent in exchange to many cities of the United States and Canada.
The death rate during the two decades was moderate; hardly averaging 15 to 1,000 of the population, with a decreasing tendency in later years. At the close of the year 1900 the sanitary officer reported: "The general health of the city is good, and compares favorably with that of former years, also with that of other cities and towns in the state."
During the period from 1880 to 1900 the Fire Department felt the common impulse of improvement as it continued in its path of honor- able and responsible duty. Its chief engineers in those years were : James N. Lauder, 1880, '81; John M. Hill, 1882, '83, '84, '85; Daniel B. Newhall, 1886, '87 ; Charles E. Blanchard, 1888, '89 (died
1 The establishment of this institution is fully treated in the Medical chapter.
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HISTORY OF CONCORD.
in office) ; Charles A. Davis, 1889, '90, '91, '92, '93, '94; William C. Green, 1895, '96, '97, '98, '99, 1900.
In the year 1883 the department had three steam fire engines. Of these two belonged to the precinct-the " Kearsarge," that had seen continuous service for more than sixteen years, and the new "Gov. Hill, "exchanged for the old which had become practically unservicea- ble after having been in commission for more than twenty-one years. The third belonged to Penacook, having been purchased the year before for the company, whose name "Pioneer " it took. The "Gov. Hill " was assigned to Eagle Hose Company, and held as a relief. While the department was better supplied with water than ever before by the recent laying of the second, or eighteen-inch, main of the water-works; while it was kept fully equipped, thoroughly dis- ciplined, and ever ready for duty-its services, fortunately, were but little needed for the four consecutive years, 1884, '85, '86, and '87. These were years of remarkable immunity from fire. In 1884 the losses by fire in the entire city were only sixteen hundred sixty dollars-with insurance of the same amount; in 1885 three fifths of the fire loss was twelve thousand dol- lars on the "Birchdale " property, four miles from the city proper; in 1886 the losses within a mile and a half of Main street reached only two hundred thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents- Engine House at Penacook. with ten thousand, however, in outly- ing districts, including West Concord and Penacook; in 1887 no seri- ous fires occurred, though the losses aggregated somewhat more than the year before. But, as already suggested, no laxity in the fire ser- vice was induced in the department by such infrequency of conflagra- tion. The corps stood ready for such severer duty as would occa- sionally fall to it in future years: as, when, in 1888, it fought the flames that devoured the High School building and the Unitarian church; and as, when, afterwards, with improved and improving con- ditions, it always made the best of the imperiled situation, and helped 'to keep at a remarkably low average the fire loss of the city.
Nor did the city government begrudge the expense of supporting the department, and of supplying it with whatever was deemed requisite to its highest efficiency. It not only built, in 1888, an engine house in Ward 3 ; but within the precinct, on Jackson street,
551
FIRE DEPARTMENT.
raised a wooden tower sixty-five feet high, in which was placed for the electric fire alarm a metal bell weighing three thousand seven hundred forty pounds; while the tower of the central station was increased in height and furnished with a bell of the same weight and for the same purpose. New alarm boxes and three gongs were pro- vided-the latter located respectively at the Northern and Concord railroad shops, and the establishment of the Abbot-Downing Com- pany. The two-circuit alarm was changed to one of four circuits- known as North, South, East, and West, and requiring four miles of new wire and twenty-five poles. In 1896 a storage battery plant with appurtenances was purchased. While no ideas of false economy were allowed to curtail the usefulness of the electric auxiliaries of the fire system, the essentials thereof, such as improved hose and apparatus, were liberally supplied. In 1890 the "Eagle " was obtained as the fourth steamer of the Concord system. Five years later the "Holloway Chemical Engine,"-quietly answering the " still alarm," but surely extinguishing the flame-was introduced.
An ordinance passed in 1885, in revision of the ordinance of 1867, prescribed that the fire department should consist of a chief engineer, six assistants, and engine men, hose men, and hook and ladder men, appointed by the board of mayor and aldermen, with the following assignment into companies: Steamer Kearsarge and hose, sixteen men including an engineer ; hose companies Nos. 1, 2, and 3, twelve men each ; hook and ladder company No. 1, twenty men ; steamer Pioneer, not less than twenty nor more than forty men; engine companies Nos. 2 and 3, not less than twenty nor more than thirty men each. Provision was also made for the appointment of a steward and assistant for the central fire station. The department continued under this organization until December, 1894, when another ordinance repealed that of 1885, and provided that the de- partment should consist of a chief engineer, two assistants within the precinct, and one engineer each from Wards 1, 2, and 3; two steamer and hose companies of thirteen men each, including driver; one relief steamer of two men; two hose companies of eleven men each, including driver; a chemical engine company of two men; a hook and ladder company of twenty-one men, including driver ; steamer Pioneer, of not less than twenty nor more than forty men ; and hand engine companies Nos. 2 and 3, of not less than twenty nor more than thirty men each. The engineers and other members were to be appointed by the mayor and aldermen, with unlimited term of service ; applicants for membership having been nominated by the chief engineer. Under this ordinance the former annual pay of the chief engineer was increased from two hundred dollars to nine
552
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
hundred fifty and house rent-that officer giving his entire time to his official duties. Compensation was allowed to others as fol- lows: To the assistant engineers within the precinct, one hundred twenty-five dollars each, and to those in Penaeook, West Concord, and East Concord respectively-in the order named-twenty-five, twenty, and fifteen dollars; to the permanent force at the central fire station, seven hundred twenty-eight dollars each; to drivers at Good Will and Alert hose houses, six hundred dollars each, per annum, paid monthly ; to engineers of steamers, one hundred fifteen dollars each ; members of steamer, hose, and hook and ladder companies, within the precinct, eighty dollars per annum, except foremen and assistants, who were to receive ninety and eighty-five dollars respec- tively ; to engine companies Nos. 2 and 3, outside the precinct, two hundred forty dollars cach, and to Pioneer steamer company, No. 3, five hundred dollars-said sums to be divided among the members as each company should direct. By 1900 the appropriation for the department trebled the seven thousand dollars of 1880.
In 1895 the Veterans' Auxiliary Company was enrolled in the department. It was composed of tried and true firemen, who still loved the department in which they had served their city well, and who now gladly placed themselves in liability further to serve it therein should occasion demand. It was well that at least they should thus stand together in brotherly sympathy. It was well, moreover, that they should remind a younger generation, through exhibitions of strength and skill in manning the brakes and handling the hose of their antique machine named the " Veteran," how once the fight with fire was won-and all this with not a little awakening of the public interest in a most important branch of municipal administration.
The Firemen's Relief Association, formed in the autumn of 1883, and destined to be permanent, was a natural manifestation of benev- olent sympathy and interest, both on the part of the firemen them- selves and of the community. The movement commended itself to the generosity of the public, and the fund of seven hundred dollars with which it started received liberal accretion.
The city ordinances provided sometimes for a general annual parade, and always for frequent company reviews. The annual parade was an interesting occasion, on which the department dis- played its full strength of men, machines, and apparatus, marched in gay procession, and, at the appointed place, made skilful trial of hand-engines, in the earlier days, and of the steamers, in the later, to the delight of thronging spectators. Refreshments-sometimes a formal dinner-closed the exercises. Firemen's balls never lost the
553
HIGHWAY COMMISSION.
favor of the firemen or the public. How they were regarded has been told thus by a veteran fireman : 1 " Who among the living mem- bers of the old Gov. Hill and Kearsarge steamer companies will ever forget the social pleasures and enjoyments of their firemen's life? The firemen's ball, the event of the winter, patronized by the best citizens and an honor to the department, was a pleasure for all, and ever spoken of with pride."
It remains only to be added in conclusion of this topic, that the history of fires-from the first recorded one, kindled by lightning in 1797, to the last in 1900, helped in its quenching by the same subtle agent-and of the means devised for their prevention and extinguish- ment, affords an almost unparalleled illustration of true progress.2
Until November, 1887, the streets and highways continued in charge of a highway commissioner, with an annual salary of six hun- dred dollars; this commissioner also being mayor, with a salary of five hundred dollars, to which it had been raised in 1868. During the first year of Mayor Robertson's administration the offices were separated. The salary of the mayor was made one thousand dollars per annum ; that of the highway commissioner twelve hundred dol- lars-seven years later raised to fourteen hundred. James H. Rowell, who had been employed by Mayor Woodman as superintendent of streets, without fixed salary, became commissioner of highways. He held the office in 1887, '88; Daniel K. Abbott in 1889, '90 ; Alfred Clark from 1891 to 1898, inclusive ; Henry H. Johnson in 1899, 1900. In course of Mayor Woodman's connection with the office, the one highway district embracing the whole territory of the city was for convenience divided into sub-districts, each of which was placed in charge of some person resident therein. The central dis- trict, mainly comprised within the compact part of the city, was in the special charge of the superintendent of streets. This arrange- ment, with modifications, continued some years.
In 1880 the appropriation for roads and bridges was twenty thou- sand dollars ; in 1890, thirty-three thousand-including two thousand for sidewalks and crossings, two thousand five hundred for paving streets, and one thousand for repairing and re-coating concrete side- walks; in 1900, thirty-five thousand for repairs, permanent work, sidewalks, and crossings, and all other necessary expenses. To pro- mote macadamizing the streets, a stationary stone crusher, with engine, was obtained in 1881, under a special appropriation of twenty-five hundred dollars, and proved permanently serviceable, though rein- forced in 1897 by a portable one at an expense of fourteen hundred
1 David L. Neal, in Concord Monitor, 1892.
2 See Detached Facts as to Fire Department, in note at close of chapter.
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HISTORY OF CONCORD.
sixty-two dollars. A steam road roller of fifteen tons weight was procured in 1895 for twenty-seven hundred fifty dollars, and set in operation in June of that year upon State street, which was "picked up " and rolled from Thompson street to Franklin-more than a thousand loads of crushed stone having been used in the work. Crushers, rollers, and sprinklers were the most expensive items in the inventory of property belonging to the Concord highway department in the later years.
The mention of "sprinklers " suggests the fact that, as time went on, strect sprinkling grew into such favor as to require an annual expenditure greater than the ordinary total expenditure for roads and bridges in the early years of the city government. Down to and including the year 1892, the expense had been partly contributed by the subscription of citizens. That year the amount raised was twelve hundred sixty-three dollars. But the next year (1893) a taxable sprinkling precinct was established, and five sprinklers were added to the four already owned by the city. The nine, Com- missioner Clark declared, would do the work for which he deemed an appropriation of three thousand dollars sufficient. In 1894 the precinct was enlarged. In 1900, with appropriations, regular and special, amounting to somewhat more than four thousand dollars, and with ten sprinklers laying the dust and dispensing coolness over twenty miles of street, Commissioner Johnson reported : "The appro- priation has always been too small to do the work properly. . The expense of sprinkling Pleasant street from Liberty street to St. Paul's School has been met by private subscriptions on the part of Christian Scientists and the School. Two additional sprinklers must be purchased before the next season to do the work necessitated by the inclusion of this territory within the sprinkled district."
Upon the appointment of City Engineer Howe, in 1893, more attention was paid to the scientific surveying of streets and grading of sidewalks ; and this service was timely, for, as Commissioner Clark reported in 1894, the rapid growth of the city had resulted in a largely increased number of new residences, and a corresponding increase in the number of new streets. But in 1898, to check de- mands for new streets of doubtful public necessity, the mayor and aldermen declared, in amendment of their rules, that no petition for laying out a new highway should be considered unless accompanied either by a written agreement signed by responsible partics, that the said highway, if laid out, should be built at least fifty feet wide on a grade fixed by the city engineer, or by a certificate of the highway commissioner that it had been built of the width aforesaid, and graded to his satisfaction, and in either case without expense to the
555
EXTENSION OF PLEASANT STREET.
city, unless two thirds of the board should decide the same to be of great public necessity.
The extension of Pleasant street eastward to Railroad square, over Railroad street, with the widening of the latter, was a vexed question for the four years from 1886 to 1890. In September of the former year, the last of Mayor Woodman's administration, the mayor and aldermen voted to increase the width of Railroad street, as an exten- sion of Pleasant street, but subsequently rescinded the vote and dis- continued the extension.
The matter was more or less agitated until 1889, the first year of Mayor Stillman Humphrey's administration, when, on the 13th of August, the mayor and aldermen voted to widen that part of Pleasant street formerly known as Railroad street, by forty-five feet, making its width seventy-five feet. This addition of width, all upon the north side of the street, necessitated the removal of the greater part of the Elm House, one of Concord's oldest hostelries. It was owned by James S. Dutton, and occupied by Merrick & Martin, lessees. On the 20th of August, 1889, the city council, by resolution, appropri- ated ten thousand dollars, " for the purpose of defraying in part the expense of widening Pleasant street "; and authorized the mayor to draw from the treasury " a further sum of ten thousand dollars to be used for the purpose of making a tender of damages to landowners for the completion and widening of the said street."
The tender of damages awarded by the mayor and aldermen was not accepted, either by the lessees for their broken lease and the enforced discontinuance of their business, or by the owner, for the destruction of the house, or that part of it which stood in the way of the proposed widening of the street. Appeals were taken to the supreme court. That tribunal referred the matter to the county commissioners, directing them to give a hearing, and decide the dam- ages. The hearing was assigned for August, 1890. A settlement was effected with the owner (in the name of his wife), whereby he received seventeen thousand dollars instead of the fourteen thousand seventeen dollars awarded by the mayor and aldermen, he bearing the expense of removing the buildings. The county commissioners awarded damages to the lessees in the sum of twenty-eight hun- dred dollars. On the 18th of September, 1890, the city council, by resolution, appropriated thirty-eight hundred dollars "for paying additional damages " in the case. Finally, on the 9th of December, 1890, an ordinance was passed, authorizing the issuance of bonds to the amount of thirteen thousand eight hundred dollars, to cover the sums appropriated by the resolutions of August 13, 1889, and Sep- tember 18, 1890.
556
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
The eastward extension of the "Hopkinton road " having thus been effected, a westward one, of itself expenseless, was accomplished in 1898, by establishing the street line on the same road, from Fruit street, west, so that the highway from Railroad square to St. Paul's School may properly be designated as Pleasant street.
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