even days at a time. In his report on the Goux system used in Salford, the epidemiologist John Netten Radcliffe commented: "In every instance where a pail had been in use over two or three days, the capacity of absorption of the liquid dejections, claimed by the patentee for the absorbent material, had been exceeded; and whenever a pail had been four or five days a week in use, it was filled to the extent of two thirds or more of its cavity, with liquid dejections, in which the solid excrement was floating." The pail closet contained several important design considerations. In his 1915 essay to the American Public Health Association, author Richard Messer described some of the more commonly encountered problems: Popularity Following the successes seen in various northern towns, about 7,000 pail closets were introduced in 1871 in Leicester, where the implementation of water closets had been hindered by the refusal of the water company to provide adequate supplies. The use of pail closets reduced the demand placed upon the area's inadequate sewerage system, but the town suffered with difficulties in the collection and treatment of the night soil. Initially, night soil was collected by contractors, but after 1873 the local authority became responsible. The authority found dealing with the night soil an expensive and difficult business and, following legal proceedings against the corporation in 1878, transport of night soil was transferred from the railway system to canal barges. This, however, led to complaints that the canal was being polluted. In 1886, the authority found that the River Soar was badly polluted by sewage and so they built a sewage farm at Beaumont Leys. By the end of the 19th century, this and the construction of a new sewer system enabled all pail closets to be phased out and replaced by water closets. In Manchester, faced with phenomenal population growth, the council attempted to retain the pail closet system, but following the exposure of the dumping of of human faeces into the Medlock and Irwell rivers at their Holt Town sewage works, the council was forced to change their plans. Originally they had intended to build incinerators, but public objections to the dumping of waste into rivers forced the council instead to purchase Carrington Moss in 1886, and Chat Moss in 1895, which were both developed as refuse disposal sites. But by the 1930s neither site was still