We have as yet dealt only with the means of removing the liquid
refuse from the houses of the metropolis. This, as was pointed out
at the commencement of the present subject, consists principally of
the 19,000,000,000 gallons of water that are annually supplied to the
London residences by mechanical means. But there still remain the
5,000,000,000 gallons of surface or rain-water to be carried off from
the 1760 miles of streets, and the roofs and yards of the 300,000
houses which now form the British metropolis. If this immense volume of
liquid were not immediately removed from our thoroughfares as fast as
it fell, many of our streets would not only be transformed into canals
at certain periods of the year, but perhaps at all times (except during
drought) they would be, if not impassable, at least unpleasant and
unhealthy, from the puddles or small pools of stagnant water that would
be continually rotting them. Were such the case, the roads and streets
that we now pride ourselves so highly upon would have their foundations
soddened. “If the surface of a road be not kept clean so as to admit
of its becoming dry between showers of rain,” said Lord Congleton,
the great road authority, “it will be rapidly worn away.” Indeed the
immediate removal of rain-water, so as to prevent its percolating
through the surface of the road, and thereby impairing the foundation,
appears to be one of the main essentials of road-making.
The means of removing this surface water, especially from the streets
of a city where the rain falls at least every other day throughout the
year, and reaches an aggregate depth of 24 feet in the course of the
twelvemonth, is a matter of considerable moment. In Paris, and indeed
almost all of the French towns, a channel is formed in the middle of
each thoroughfare, and down this the water from the streets and houses
is continually coursing, to the imminent peril of all pedestrians, for
the wheels of every vehicle distribute, as it goes, a muddy shower on
either side of the way.
_We_, however, have not only removed the channels from the middle to
the sides of our streets, but instituted a distinct system of drainage
for the conveyance of the wet refuse of our houses to the sewers--so
that there are no longer (excepting in a very small portion of the
suburbs) open sewers, meandering through our highways; the consequence
is, the surface-water being carried off from our thoroughfares almost
as fast as it falls, our streets are generally dry and clean. That
there are exceptions to this rule, which are a glaring disgrace to us,
it must be candidly admitted; but we must at the same time allow, when
we think of the vast extent of the roadways of the metropolis (1760
miles!--nearly one-half the radius of the earth itself), the deluge
of water that annually descends upon every inch of the ground which
we call London (38,000,000,000 gallons!--a quantity which is almost
sufficient for the formation of an American lake), and the vast amount
of traffic, over the greater part of the capital--the 13,000 vehicles
that daily cross London Bridge, the 11,000 conveyances that traverse
Cheapside in the course of twelve hours, the 7700 that go through
Temple Bar, and the 6900 that ascend and descend Holborn Hill between
nine in the morning and nine at night, the 1500 omnibuses and the 3000
cabriolets that are continually hurrying from one part of the town to
another, and the 10,000 private carriage, job, and cart horses that
incessantly _perviate_ the metropolis--when we reflect, I say, on this
vast amount of traffic--this deluge of rain--and the wilderness of
streets, it cannot but be allowed that the cleansing and draining of
the London thoroughfares is most admirably conducted.
The mode of street drainage is by means of what is called a gully-hole
and a gully-drain.
_The Gully-hole_[63] is the opening from the surface of the street (and
is seen generally on each side of the way), into which all the fluid
refuse of the public thoroughfares runs on its course to the sewer.
_The Gully-drain_ is a drain generally of earthenware piping, curving
from the side of the street to an opening in the top or side of the
sewer, and is the means of communication between the sewer and the
gully-hole.
The gully-hole is indicated by an iron grate being fitted into the
surface of the side of a footpath, where the road slopes gradually
from its centre to the edge of the footpath, and down this grate the
water runs into the channel contrived for it in the construction of
the streets. These gully-grates, the observant pedestrian--if there
be a man in this hive of London who, without professional attraction
to the matter, regards for a few minutes the peculiarities of the
street (apart from the houses) which he is traversing--an observant
pedestrian, I say, would be struck at the constantly-recurring grates
in a given space in some streets, and their paucity in others. In
Drury-lane there is no gully-grate, as you walk down from Holborn to
where Drury-lane becomes Wych-street; whilst in some streets, not a
tenth of the length of Drury-lane, there may be three, four, five,
or six grates. The reason is this:--There is no sewer running down
Drury-lane; a contiguous sewer, however, runs down Great Wyld-street,
draining, where there are drains, the hundred courts and nooks of the
poor, between Drury-lane and Lincoln’s-inn-fields, as well as the more
open places leading down towards the proximity of Temple Bar. This
Great Wyld-street sewer, moreover, in its course to Fleet Bridge, is
made available for the drainage (very grievously deficient, according
to some of the reports of the Board of Health) of Clare-market. Grates
would of course be required in such a place as Drury-lane, only the
street is thought to be sufficiently on the descent to convey the
surface-water to the grate in Wych-street.
The parts in which the gully-grates will be found the most numerous are
where the main streets are most intersected by other main streets, or
by smaller off-streets, and indeed wherever the streets, of whatever
size, continually intersect each other, as they do off nearly all
the great street-thoroughfares in the City. Although the sewers may
not be according to the plan of the streets, the gully-grates must
nevertheless be found at the street intersections, whether the nearest
point to the sewer or not, or else the water would not be quickly
carried off, and would form a nuisance.
I am informed, on good authority, both as regards the City and
Metropolitan Commissions, that the average distance of the gully-grates
is thirty yards one from another, including both sides of the way.
Their number does not depend upon population, but simply on the local
characteristics of the highways; for of course the rain falls into all
the streets in proportion to their size, whether populous or half-empty
localities. As, however, the more distant roads have not such an
approximation of grates, and the law which requires their formation
is by no means--and perhaps, without unnecessary interference, cannot
be--very definite, I am informed that it may fairly be represented,
that, of the 1760 miles of London public ways, more than two-thirds,
“or” remarked one informant, “say 1200 miles, are grated on _each_ side
of the street or road, at distances of sixty yards.” This would give
59 gully-holes in every one of the 1200 miles of street said to be so
supplied. Hence the total number throughout the metropolis will be
70,800.
_The gully-drain_, which is the street-drain, always presents now
a sloping curve, describing, more or less, part of a circle. This
drain starts, so to speak, from the side of the street, while its
course to the sewer, in order to economize space, is made by any most
appropriate curve, to include the reception of as great a quantity of
wet street-refuse as possible; for if the gully-drains were formed in
a direct, or even a not-very-indirect line, from the street sides to
the sewers, they would not only be more costly, more numerous, but
would, in fact, as I was told, “choke the under-ground” of London,
for now the subterranean capital is so complicated with gas, water,
and drain-pipes, that such a system as will allow room for each is
indispensable. The new system is, moreover, more economical. In the
City the gully-drains are nearly all of nine-inch diameter in tubular
pipeage. In the metropolitan jurisdiction they are the same, but not to
the same extent, some being only six inches.
Fifty, or even thirty years ago, the old street channels for gully
drainage were costly constructions, for they were made so as to suit
sewers which were cleansed by the street being taken “up,” and the
offensive deposit, thick and even indurated as it often was in those
days, drawn to the surface. Some few were three and even four feet
square; some two feet six inches wide, and three or four feet high;
all of brick. I am assured that of the extent or cost of these old
contrivances no accounts have been preserved, but that they were more
than twice as costly as the present method.
In all the reports I have seen, metropolitan or city--the statements
of the flushermen being to the same purport--there are complaints as
to the uses to which the gully-holes are put in many parts, every kind
of refuse admissible through the bars of the grate being stealthily
emptied down them. The paviours, if they have an opportunity, sweep
their surplus grout into the gullies, and so do the scavagers with
their refuse occasionally, though this is generally done in the
less-frequented parts, to get rid of the “slop,” which is valueless.
In a report, published in 1851, Mr. Haywood points out the prevalence
of the practice of using the gully-gratings as dustbins! A sewer under
Billingsgate accumulated in a few months many cart-loads, composed
almost wholly of fish-shells; and 114 cart-loads of fish-shells,
cinders, and rubbish were removed from the sewers in the vicinity
of Middlesex-street (Petticoat-lane); these had accumulated in
about twelve months. “Reconstructing the gullies,” he says, “so as
to intercept improper substances (which has been recently done at
Billingsgate), might prevent this material reaching the sewers, but
it would still have to be removed from the gullies, and would thus
still cause perpetual expense. Indeed, I feel convinced that nothing
but making public example by convicting and punishing some offenders,
under clause 69 of ‘The City of London Sewers’ Act,’ will stop the
practice, so universal in the poorer localities, of using the gullies
as dustbins.”
_The Gully-holes are now trapped_--with very few exceptions, one report
states, while another report intimates that gully-trapping has no
exception at all. The trap is resorted to so that the effluvium from
a gully-drain may not infect the air of the public ways; but among
engineers and medical sanitary inquirers, there is much difference
of opinion as to whether the system of trapping is desirable or not.
The general opinion seems to be, however, that all gullies should be
trapped.
Of the City gully-traps, Mr. Haywood, in a report for the year 1851,
says, as regards the period of their introduction:--
“About seventeen years ago your then surveyor (Mr. Kelsey) applied the
first traps to sewer gullies, and from that date to the present the
trapping of gullies has been adopted as a principle, and the city of
London is still, I believe, the only metropolitan area in which the
gullies are all trapped. The traps first constructed have since been
(as all first inventions or adaptations ever have or will be) improved
upon, and are rapidly being displaced by those of more improved
construction.
“Now, of the incompatible conditions required of gully-traps, of the
difficulty of obtaining such mechanical appliances so effective and
perfect as can _theoretically_ be devised, but yet of the extreme
desirability of obtaining them as perfect as modern science could
produce, your honourable court has, at least, for as long as I have
had the honour of holding office under you, been fully alive to; no
prejudice has opposed impediment to the introduction of novelties; your
court has been always open to inventors, and, at the present time,
there are sixteen different traps or modes of trapping gullies under
trial within your jurisdiction.
“Nor has the provision of the means of excluding effluvium from the
atmosphere been your only care; but the cleanliness of the sewers, and
the prevention of accumulation of decomposing refuse, both by regulated
cleansings, and by constructing the sewage upon the most improved
principles, have also been your aim and that of your officers; and I
do not hesitate to assert, that the offensiveness of the escape from
the gullies has been of late years much diminished by the care bestowed
upon the condition of the sewers.
“374 gullies have been retrapped in the City upon improved principles
during the last year.”
The gully-traps are on the principle of self-acting valves, but it is
stated in several reports, that these valves often remain permanently
open, partly from the street refuse (especially if mixed with the
débris from new or removed buildings) not being sufficiently liquified
to pass through them, and partly from the hinges getting rusted, and so
becoming fixed.