edited by David Mackmin
Thirty years ago the first “Mainly for Students” article appeared in Estates Gazette. Derek Chapman with John Clayton established the tone of the column and Derek was actively involved as editor until his sad death in 1975, and those early articles frequently reflected the style of our old friend “Gleaner”. Those who had the pleasure of being lectured by Derek at the College of Estate Management in Kensington will recall the concise way in which he was able to convey the most complex issue, invariably highlighted with a story that permanently fixed the facts in everyone’s mind. Those who have followed Derek as editors have continued to aim for the same simplicity of language and conciseness of explanation.
By 1975 the column was in the process of alteration, accelerated by the forces of change to be found in the property market. At the same time the student readership was changing, with full-time degree students exceeding the dwindling band of correspondence and part-time students. Market forces and economic pressures had created a boom, a slump and a mini-boom. Property investment had emerged as the third arm of institutional investment policy; property development and funding were reaching maturity in complexity; sophistication and professionalism were to be found in agency; and there was growing pressure on the professionals in their roles as property advisers and managers.
If this were not enough, government was also legislating for change and the courts continued through precedent to affect all areas of surveying and estate agency. As a reflection of all this, and of the change in editorship, it was decided that the column should now maintain a balance between legal issues and other matters of a general interest to readers, as well as responding to general relevant student inquiries.
This policy was carried through by Sandi Murdoch and Martin Avis of Reading University until Martin was seconded to Ghana in 1975, thus precipitating me from contributor to editor.
Editing the column has its joys and tribulations. On the downside is the fortnightly deadline, the non-appearance of a promised contribution, the horror on a Saturday morning of noting that the titles “English Bond” and “Flemish Bond” have been transposed and knowing that the whole profession will be on the phone on Monday and that nothing can be done for a week. The upside is noting the frequency with which the column is referred to by students and researchers and of hearing it quoted by practitioners in public lectures. Throughout, the editorial responsibility remains the same — to be non-political, to be non-biased (well almost), to be concise, to be correct, to be current, to be interesting, to be relevant and to remember that learning can be fun.
Sandi Murdoch has already handed over her responsibilities to Leslie Blake at the South Bank and after 13 years it is time for new thoughts and for me to hand over my role to Philip Askham of Sheffield Polytechnic; meanwhile, back in 1958 the column had this to say on …
The beast in the bottle
If you will not reject out of hand what may seem too flippant a request … I should be grateful if you could give me the name and particulars of a court case to do with a snail found in a bottle of lemonade. I remember meeting it in one of the many law subjects I used to fail regularly, but cannot recollect what legal point was involved … PS. I admit that I am asking this to settle an argument which I have little hope of winning.
Actually it was ginger beer, though had it been lemonade or essence of senna pods the decision would have been no different. The case is Donoghue v Stevenson, 1932, and the principal characters were a manufacturer of mineral waters, a retailer, a nebulous character called “A” (who in a spicier case would have been called “X”) and a lady. The plot, though simple in its essentials, relied on a dramatic twist which, while it did not have the reporters rushing out to plead for a special edition, justified its more leisurely appearance in Estates Gazette soon after.
In outline, the manufacturer sold a bottle of ginger beer, no doubt one of a thousand, to the retailer. As the evidence made clear, the bottle, conversely, was opaque; if it had been of transparent glass the grisly contents might well have been exposed to view and rejected at source or at some stopping place along the route from factory-hand to mouth. The retailer resold it to “A”, who gave the ginger beer to the plaintiff for consumption. While in the course of drinking it, the plaintiff discovered that it contained the residue of a decomposed snail (whether it was the edible escargot or the garden snail, Helix aspersa, apparently did not signify). In consequence of this discovery the plaintiff fell ill, and successfully celebrated her recovery by suing the leading man, ie the manufacturer, for negligence.
The case is immortalised in the Law of Tort, department of negligence, and illustrates that unless he is prepared to be sued for negligence, a supplier of products which he delivers in such form as he intends the user to receive them, with no reasonable possibility of examination in between, owes a duty to the user to take care that he does not suffer damage as a result of some defect in the product. The rule is not limited to the addition of gastropods to beverages; it has been held to apply to a sidecar negligently attached to a motor-bike, to underwear infected with dermatitis, and to a hair dye that led to infection of the scalp.
Silage
An “urban student with a rural bias” who lately absented himself from the rigours of a holiday camp to help with the silage making on a nearby farm asks for “an explanation in everyday language of the conversion of the green crop into silage”.
Silage can only be made from first-class material, as the process does not add anything to the nutrients in the original crop, and the success of the operation depends on the rapid formation of preservative acids. The conversion of the crop is extremely complex, but can be roughly divided into two stages: (1) respiration and the development of heat; (2) the action of enzymes, bacteria and fungi which break down plant constituents and produce organic acids.
(1) When the crop is taken to the pit the material is still living, and as long as the cells remain alive and there is air present, it will absorb oxygen and give off carbon dioxide, at the same time producing heat. The greater the amount of air entangled in the crop, the longer will this continue and the greater will be the heat produced. The heating is controlled by rolling the crop to squeeze out the contained air, first allowing it to heat to 100 deg F and then preventing the temperature rising further by consolidation.
(2) In the plant cells are enzymes which continue to act after the cells have died, breaking down plant constituents to simpler substances. Bacteria, however, are mainly responsible for changes in silage. They are always present, and their different requirements make it possible to control to some extent their rates of multiplication and by that the chemical changes in the crop. Bacteria act on the crop to produce lactic, acetic, propionic and butyric acids. The first three are the “pickling” agents which preserve the crop, but butyric acid leads to undesirably sour silage with its characteristic offensive smell. Lighter consolidation is needed to help the bacteria in making useful acids, as they need more heat.
Septic tanks
I feel that an article on rural drainage, septic tanks etc would be a useful subject for this series. Septic tank drainage is not properly understood by many estate agents.
A septic tank system purifies sewage by breaking it down and liquefying the solids into comparatively innocuous effluent which can be discharged into soakaways, drains or even ditches. The arrangement for a small household might be as follows:
(a) The septic tank. A chamber into which sewage is liquefied by the action of anaerobic bacteria (ie bacteria which live without oxygen). The chamber must be airtight and the sewage must be retained in it for 48 hours, in order that it may become septic (ie putrefied). The tank is usually long and narrow, with a depth of 4 ft to 7 ft from the overflow level to the average level of the floor. It is constructed of 9 in brickwork on a 6 in concrete base, cement-rendered internally, with a concrete roof into which a cast-iron manhole is set. For a household of five or six persons a tank capacity of 150-200 gallons (24-32 cu ft) would be adequate. The surface of the sewage forms a scum, and both inlet and outlet pipes are dipped pipes or tee junctions, carried below the surface scum and above the water level to facilitate cleansing.
(b) The filtration plant. From the septic tank the liquefied sewage runs to a filter bed, an unlined pit from 2 1/2 ft to 5 ft deep filled with furnace clinker, coke, slag or broken stone, graded from 2 in stuff at the top to 1/2 in in the middle, increasing to 2 in again at the bottom. The floor is made of pantiles or field drains laid on a concrete base to a central outlet.
The filter bed usually has a surface area of 1 sq yd for two persons, or 1 cu yd for about 45 gallons daily flow. Its object is to expose the effluent to the action of aerobic bacteria (which cannot live without oxygen), therefore the filter should not be flooded, but dosed intermittently. The beds are soon charged with innumerable bacteria which live on thin films of solid organic matter from the septic tank effluent; they oxidise the organic matter and nitrify the offensive ammonia compounds, changing them into nitrites and nitrates of ammonia, which are soluble and which will not putrefy further, so can be carried off safely by the effluent water into the soakaway pipes.
(c) Distributing chamber. The outlet from the filter bed discharges into a small distributing chamber from which two or more lines of 3 in field drains radiate, surrounded by hard core or clinker, and terminating in a sump. A length of 25 ft to 50 ft per person should be allowed, according to the nature of the soil.
For sale by the candle
A junior auctioneer asks for information about various “unorthodox” methods of bidding at auction sales, particularly the system of sale by inch of candle.
Sales by inch of candle were for a long time associated mainly with the auctioneering of goods imported by the East India Company, which was granted a Royal Charter in 1600 and flourished until 1858, when its powers were ceded to the Crown. Bidding opened as soon as a small piece of candle was lit, and continued as long as it burned. The lot was knocked down to the last person to bid before it went out.
As may be imagined, the climax was often confused. Samuel Pepys records in his diary for November 6 1660 that he attended “the sale of two ships by an inch of candle (the first time that ever I saw any of this kind), where I observed how they do invite one another, and at last how they all do cry, and we have much to do to tell who did cry last”. On September 3 1662 he is at it again, observing at the sale of three ships that it is “pleasant to see how backward men are at first to bid; and yet when the candle is going out, how they bawl and dispute afterwards who bid the most first. And here I observed one man cunninger than the rest that was sure to bid the last man, and to carry it; and inquiring the reason, he told me that just as the flame goes out the smoke descends, which is a thing I never observed before, and by that he do know the instant when to bid last, which is very pretty”.
Not to be confused with sales by the candle, another form of auction, found mainly in the north of England, was candlestick bidding. This was something of a speculation, for each bidder offered an increase on the last, perhaps one per cent, without knowing how the offer stood.
Equal uncertainty attended dumb biddings. The vendor put an undisclosed reserve on the lot being sold, and the amount was written on a piece of paper placed under a candlestick beside the auctioneer. If the reserve was not reached, the biddings were agreed to be void.
Dutch auctions are far from unknown today. They originated in Holland, probably in connection with the sales of fish. The auctioneer puts a high figure on each lot, and the bids are gradually reduced until one of the bidders agrees to buy at that particular price.
An interesting type of auction was at one time adopted where a landowner wished to redeem the land tax on his property and raised the money by selling off some of the estate. Let us say that he had been paying £100 a year in land tax, and that to be quit of it he required £2,500. The auctioneer would announce that Lord Tomnoddy needed £2,500 and was willing to part with no more than 50 acres for that money. “Who will give two and a half thousand pounds for the 50 acres as shown on the plan? You, sir. And who will give two and a half for 45 acres?” Gradually the acreage was reduced, the purchaser being the one who would accept the smallest area for the capital sum required.