Kingston streets in the 1840s

 

The city forms an irregular quadrangle, and covers an area of nearly two square miles. The streets run north and south and are crossed by others at right angles; all are tolerably wide, and, in the upper part, generally open to the sea-breeze. A large square in the centre of the town, called the Parade, contains the large barracks, a handsome Wesleyan chapel, a theatre, and some tolerable dwelling-houses. The chief public buildings are, a Court House, and Church of England, Wesleyan, Presbyterian, Baptist, Independent, Roman Catholic, and Jewish places of worship.

. . .   

   

Some of the private houses are well constructed and abundantly provided with verandahs, windows, and jealousies, for the free admission of the refreshing sea-breeze, by which the extreme heat of the city is materially mitigated, but the merchants' stores are mostly dark and ill-ventilated; and the shops in the main street resemble those of an inferior English town; not a decent inn or hotel exists; there is no paving or macadamizing, no drainage, no gas-lights (as in most of our colonial cities), and scarcely any side-way.

During the heavy rains in May and October, the water finds its way, by broken and irregular channels, into the gullies on the east and west sides of the town, but much of it pours down the steep streets, forcing along a broad muddy stream a foot or more in depth. As none, even of the leading thoroughfares are paved, nor provided with any artificial

channels for the water, and the soil is generally loose and sandy, their surface has become ploughed up with deep ruts and broken hollows; while, from the quantity of gravel, stones, and bricks strewn about, they present more the appearance of river courses than of streets in an inhabitated city. The amount of vegetable refuse and other rubbish brought down and lodged at the bottom of the harbour is usually considerable; and as there is no sewerage, the poorer classes avail themselves of the current caused by the periodic rains to cast the accumulated filth of their dwellings and yards into the streets; all this noxious matter accumulates and sinks into the porous ground of the lower part of the town, where there is no declivity. The cross streets are, in some respects, still worse, being oten flanked by delapidated buildings, and littered over with rubbish, which renders driving by day perilous to carriage springs; while walking by night through these unlit pitfalls, is manifestly to hazard broken limbs. Nor is it only by inanimate objects that the senses of sight and smell are offended: lean, mangy hogs are to be seen at all times rolling about in the noisome puddles, while others are wandering here and there, grubbing up the rubbish for food, bestrewing the surface with their ordure. Besides the swine and goats, constantly moving about, Kingston has always been noted for its number of half-starved dogs. It is no uncommon thing to see the carcass of one of these unfortunate brutes lying in the middle of a street, with a troop of the vulture crows, which are ever wheeling about the city, tearing it to pieces, while the air all around is tainted with the most baneful effluvia.

 

R. M. Martin, The British Colonies (13 vols. London), Vol. 4, 'Africa and the West Indies' (1853), 76,77.