There is one other purpose toward which a sewer is available--a
purpose, too, which I do not remember to have seen specified in the
Metropolitan Reports.
“The first, and perhaps most important purpose of sewers, as respects
health,” says the Report of Messrs. Walker, Cubitt, and Brunel
(1848), “is, _as under-drains to the surrounding earth_. They answer
this purpose so effectually and quietly, and have done it so long,
that their importance in this respect is overlooked. In the Sanitary
Commissioners’ Reports we do not find it once noticed, and the
recommendation of the substitution of stone or earthenware pipes for
the larger brick sewers, seems to show, that any provision for the
_under-drainage_ was thought unnecessary, although such a provision is
in our opinion most important.
“Under the artificial ground, the collection of ages, which in the
City of London, as in most ancient towns, forms the upper surface, is
a considerable thickness of clean gravel, and under the gravel is the
London clay. The present houses are founded chiefly on the artificial
or ‘made ground,’ while the sewers are made through the gravel; and
it is known practically, that however charged with water the gravel
of a district may be, the springs for a considerable distance round
are drawn down by making a sewer, and the wells that had water within
a few feet of the surface have again to be sunk below the bottom of
the sewer to reach the water. Every interstice between the stones of
the gravel acts as an under-drain to conduct the water to the sewer,
through the sides of which it finds its way, even if mortar be used in
the construction.
“Hence the salubrity of a gravel foundation, if the water be drawn
out of it by sewers or other means, as is the case with the City and
with Westminster. A proof of this principle was afforded by the result
of a reference to physicians and engineers in 1838, to inquire into
the state of drainage and smells in and near Buckingham Palace, as to
which there had been complaints, though none so heavy as Mr. Phillips
now makes, when he says, ‘that the drainage of Buckingham Palace is
extremely defective, and that its precincts are reeking with filth and
pestilential odours from the absence of proper sewerage!’”
The Report then shows the pains that were taken to ensure dryness in
the Palace. Pits were dug in the garden 14 feet below the surface, and
3-1/2 feet below high-water mark in the river, and they were found dry
to the bottom. The kitchens and yard of the palace are, however, only
18 inches above Trinity high-water mark in the Thames, and therefore
18 inches below a very high tide. The physician, Sir James Clarke, and
the engineers, Messrs. Simpson and Walker, in a separate Report, spoke
in terms of commendation of the drainage of the Palace in 1838, as
promotive of dryness. Since that time a connecting chain has been made
from the Palace drains into the canal in St. James’s-park, to prevent
the wet from rising as formerly during heavy rains. “The Palace,” it
is stated in the Report of the three engineers, “should not be classed
with the low part of Pimlico, where the drainage is, we believe, very
defective, and to which, for anything we know to the contrary, the
character given by Mr. Phillips may be applicable.”
Unfortunately, however, for this array of opinions of high authority,
and despite the advantages of a gravel bed for the substratum of the
palatial sewerage, the drainage and sewerage about Buckingham Palace
is more frequently than that of any other public place under repair,
and is always requiring attention. It was only a few days ago, before
the court left Windsor Castle for London, that men were employed night
and day, on the drains and cesspoolage channels, to make, as one of
them described it to me--and such working-men’s descriptions are often
forcible--“the place _decent_. I was hardly ever,” he added, “in such a
set of stinks as I’ve been in the sewers and underground parts of the
palace.”