Part 5

Now, here is a removable cause of death. These gases, which so many thousands of persons are daily inhaling, do not, it is true, in their diluted condition, suddenly extinguish life; but, though different in concentration, they are identically the same in nature with that confined sewer-gas which, on a recent occasion, at Pimlico, killed those who were exposed to it with the rapidity of a lightning stroke. In their diluted state, as they rise from so many cesspools, and taint the atmosphere of so many houses, they form a climate the most congenial for the multiplication of epidemic disorders, and operate beyond all known influences of their class in impairing the chances of life.

It may be taken as an axiom for the purposes of sanitary improvement, that every individual cesspool is hurtful to its vicinage; and it may hence be inferred how great an injury is done to the public health by their existence in such numbers, that parts of the City might be described as having a cesspool-city excavated beneath it.

I beg most earnestly to press on the consideration of your Hon. Court, the extreme importance of proceeding with all convenient speed to alter this very faulty construction, and to substitute for it an arrangement compatible with the health of the population.

While addressing you on this subject, and while congratulating your Hon. Court on the fact, that public attention is so much directed to a matter in which your exertions are certain to effect large and salutary reform, I cannot refrain from expressing a wish, that more accurate knowledge prevailed among the public as to the history and jurisdiction of the nuisance in question. It seems constantly to be forgotten, that your responsibility in the matter dates but from last January. The cesspool-nuisance has been the slow growth of other less enlightened ages, not in the City merely, but in the whole metropolis, and in all other towns in England. The extreme injury which it inflicts on the health of the population, and the vital necessity of abating that injury, are points which only began to claim attention in this country about ten years ago; and which have since but very slowly been forcing their way (chiefly through the indomitable zeal and perseverance of Mr. Chadwick) into that share of notice which they deserve. House-drainage with effective water-supply, are the remedies which can alone avail; and it is only during the present year that authority to enforce these measures has been vested by the Legislature in any public bodies whatsoever.

Before the month of January last, when your increased jurisdiction was established, it appears to me that, for the existence of cesspools in the City, you had no more responsibility than for the original site of the metropolis, or for the architecture of Westminster Abbey.

During the last ten months, however, the care of effective house-drainage has rested solely and entirely with your Hon. Court; for two of those ten months, I thought it desirable, on account of the epidemic, that no considerable disturbance of the soil should take place in the construction of new works; in the remaining eight months, two miles of new sewer were formed, and 900 houses were drained for the first time.

If the house-drainage of the City had depended for its completion, even since that time, solely on the labours of this Commission, no doubt it would have proceeded at a far quicker pace. How effectively your Hon. Court had prepared for the best application of your increased powers, is sufficiently evinced in the 45 miles of sewerage, ramifying through all the districts of your jurisdiction, ready at every point to receive the streams of private drainage, and leaving to the owners of house-property (with few exceptions) no excuse for their non-performance of these necessary works. I believe the extent of public sewerage within the City to be quite unparalleled, and to furnish facilities of the rarest kind for the abolition of cesspools, and for the establishment of an improved system of house drainage. But, Gentlemen, while you have exerted yourselves to the utmost in the application of your increased authority, and have directed your staff of officers, from first to last, to proceed with all possible despatch in enforcing sanitary improvement in the matter now under consideration, the intentions of your Court and the industry of its officers have been in a great measure frustrated by the passive resistance of landlords. Delays and subterfuges have been had recourse to by the owners of house-property, in order to avoid compliance with the injunctions of the Commission; and the temporary interruption of works, which occurred in August and September, prevented these evasions from being dealt with as otherwise they would have been.

Now, however, the course is again open. For some weeks your Hon. Court has directed that all works of drainage and sewerage shall proceed; many are already in progress; and I can see no reason why, within a year from the present time, the number of cesspools and of undrained houses within the City of London should not be reduced to a very small proportion.

Everything, however, in this respect will depend on the spirit of thoroughness with which the Act of Parliament is enforced; and I would strongly recommend, in all cases of non-drainage or other non-compliance with the terms of notice, that no indulgence whatever should be conceded to landlords beyond the time specified in the notification of the Court; that no difference should be recognised between a ‘notice’ and ‘a peremptory notice;’ that all notices should be ‘peremptory;’ and that, a certain period for performance having been allowed to the landlord, on the very day of that period’s expiration, the work, if undone, should be given over for completion by the workmen of the Commissioners of Sewers, in accordance with the 61st clause of the Act of Parliament. In favour of the adoption of this principle, I can adduce no stronger argument than my conviction, that its non-adoption would insure a sacrifice of human life, in exact proportion to the procrastination allowed; and that, too, in a matter where henceforth your responsibility is undivided and your power absolute.

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In order to give efficiency to whatever improvements of house-drainage may be instituted, the present system of water-supply will require to undergo very extensive modifications; for at present in the poorer tenements, even where some show of house-drainage is made, the arrangements are constantly rendered inoperative from insufficiency or absence of water. To this matter, however, I shall presently revert.

Another most important desideratum in connexion with the sewerage of the City is that, if possible, some more perfect system of trapping should be devised, or that, in some way or other, the sewers should be ventilated effectively and inoffensively. At present there are frequent complaints of offensive exhalation from gratings in the open ways of the City; and it will be obvious to your Hon. Court, that all which I have urged on the subject of cesspool-exhalations must apply equally to those which are emitted from sewers. The impediments to effective trapping are almost insuperable; but I believe that when the water-supply of the City is very largely increased, washing the drains amply and incessantly, the evil complained of will undergo a sensible diminution.

This subject is adverted to, with more detail, in the next year’s Report.--See page 104.

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In further connexion with my present subject, I would also solicit attention to the fact that the sanitary purposes of drainage are but imperfectly achieved, where the outfall of sewerage is into a tidal river passing through the heart of a densely peopled metropolis. I should be stepping beyond my province, if I were to say much respecting the schemes now before the public for dealing with the difficulty to which I here refer, inasmuch as those schemes involve questions of engineering and machinery, on which I am incompetent to form an opinion. But I can have no hesitation in stating it as a matter greatly to be desired in the City of London, that the noble river which ebbs and flows beneath its dwellings should cease to be the drainpool of our vast metropolis; and that the immeasurable filth which now pollutes the stream should be intercepted in its course, and be conveyed to some distant destination, where instead of breeding sickness and mortality, it might become a source of agricultural increase and national wealth.

This subject is more particularly dwelt upon in the last Report; page 261.

I would venture, likewise, to express an opinion that the City of London is peculiarly interested in the accomplishment of this great public work, not only on general grounds relating to the conservancy of the river, but likewise and especially on sanitary grounds, by reason of the large bank-side population, subjects of the City, who now, instead of deriving advantage from their nearness to the stream, are constantly disgusted and injured by its misuse.

While the consideration of this most important measure is pending, I would invite attention to some circumstances, by which even the present evil is needlessly aggravated.

In the first place the sewers are of defective length, so that during the ebb of the tide their contents, as they escape, are suffered to flow in a stream of some length across the mud of the retreating river. The stream, together with the mud which it saturates, and the open mouth of the sewer, evolve copious and offensive exhalations, and I would recommend that measures be taken for abatement of the nuisance. This purpose, as concerns the sewer, would be fulfilled by the addition, in each instance, of a sufficient length of brick or cast-iron work, to prolong the canal beyond low water mark; but the great extent of mud which is left uncovered at each tide, and which during the present pollution of the river is a source of extreme nuisance and of disease, constitutes an evil for which no remedy can be found till the stream shall be narrowed and embanked.

Meanwhile, the complaints which reached the Committee of Health during the summer, together with the results of my own inspection, lead me to believe that the several small docks which lie along the City bank of the river from the Tower to the Temple, fulfil little really useful purpose; that they are to a great extent used as laystalls for their vicinage; that copious deposits and accumulations of filth take place in them; that they are a nuisance and injury, except to the very few who are interested in their maintenance; and that it would be of public advantage that they should be filled up.

WATER-SUPPLY.

II. I am sure that I do not exaggerate the sanitary importance of water, when I affirm that its unrestricted supply is the first essential of decency, of comfort, and of health; that no civilization of the poorer classes can exist without it; and that any limitation to its use in the metropolis is a barrier, which must maintain thousands in a state of the most unwholesome filth and degradation.

In the City of London the supply of water is but a fraction of what it should be. Thousands of the population have no supply of it to the houses where they dwell. For their possession of this first necessary of social life, such persons wholly depend on their power of attending at some fixed hour of the day, pail in hand, beside the nearest stand-cock; where, with their neighbours, they wait their turn--sometimes not without a struggle, during the tedious dribbling of a single small pipe. Sometimes there is a partial improvement on this plan; a group of houses will have a butt or cistern for the common use of some scores of inmates, who thus are saved the necessity of waiting at a standcock, but who still remain most insufficiently supplied with water. Next in the scale of improvement we find water-pipes laid on to the houses; but the water is turned on only for a few hours in the week, so that all who care to be adequately supplied with it must be provided with very spacious receptacles. Receptacles are sometimes provided: and in these, which are often of the most objectionable description, water is retained for the purposes of diet and washing, during a period which varies from twenty-four to seventy-two hours. One of the most important purposes of a water-supply seems almost wholly abandoned--that, namely, of having a large quantity daily devoted to cleanse and clear the house-drains and sewers; and in many cases where a waste-pipe has been conducted from the water-butt to the privy, the arrangement is one which gives to the drainage little advantage of water, while it communicates to the water a well-marked flavour of drainage.

I consider the system of intermittent water-supply to be radically bad; not only because it is a system of stint in what ought to be lavishly bestowed, but also because of the necessity which it creates that large and extensive receptacles should be provided, and because of the liability to contamination incurred by water which has to be retained often during a considerable period. In inspecting the courts and alleys of the City, one constantly sees butts, for the reception of water, either public, or in the open yards of the houses, or sometimes in their cellars; and these butts, dirty, mouldering, and coverless; receiving soot and all other impurities from the air; absorbing stench from the adjacent cesspool; inviting filth from insects, vermin, sparrows, cats, and children; their contents often augmented through a rain water-pipe by the washings of the roof, and every hour becoming fustier and more offensive. Nothing can be less like what water should be than the fluid obtained under such circumstances; and one hardly knows whether this arrangement can be considered preferable to the precarious chance of scuffling or dawdling at a standcock. It may be doubted, too, whether, even in a far better class of houses, the tenants’ water-supply can be pronounced good. The cisternage is better, and all arrangements connected with it are generally such as to protect it from the grosser impurities which defile the water-butts of the poor; but the long retention of water in leaden cisterns impairs its fitness for drinking; and the quantity which any moderate cistern will contain is very generally insufficient for the legitimate requirements of the house during the intervals of supply. Every one who is personally familiar with the working of this system of intermittent supply, can testify to its inconvenience; and though its evils press with immeasurably greater severity on the poor than on the rich, yet the latter are by no means without experience on the subject.

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The following are the chief conditions in respect of water supply, which peremptorily require to be fulfilled:--

1. That every house should be separately supplied with water, and that where the house is a lodging-house, or where the several floors are let as separate tenements, the supply of water should extend to each inhabited floor.

2. That every privy should have a supply of water, applicable as often as it may be required, and sufficient in volume to effect, at each application, a thorough flushing and purification of the discharge-pipe of the privy.