There are two modes of purifying the sewers; the one consists in
removing the foul air, the other in removing the solid deposits. I
shall deal first with that mode of purification which consists in the
mechanical removal or chemical decomposition of the noxious gases
engendered within the sewers.
This is what is termed the Ventilation of the Sewers, and forms a
very important branch of the inquiry into the character and working
of the underground refuse-channels, for it relates to the risk of
explosions and the consequent risk of destruction to men’s lives;
while, if the sewer be ill-ventilated, the surrounding atmosphere is
often prejudicially affected by the escape of impure air from the
subterranean channels.
A survey as to the ventilation, &c., of the sewers was made by Mr.
Hawkins, Assistant-Surveyor, and Mr. Jenkins, Clerk of the Works.
Four examinations took place of sewers; of those in Bloomsbury;
those from Tottenham-court-road to Norfolk-street, Strand; from the
Guard-room in Buckingham Palace to the Horseferry-road, Millbank; and
in Grosvenor-square and the streets adjacent. There were difficulties
attending the experiment. From Castle-street to Museum-street there was
a drop of 4 feet in the levels, so that the examiners had to advance on
their hands and knees, and it was difficult to make observations. In
some places in Westminster also the water and silt were knee deep, and
the lamps (three were used) splashed all over. In Bloomsbury the sewers
gave no token of the presence of any gas, but in the other places its
presence was very perceptible, especially in a sewer on the west side
of Grosvenor-square, a very low one, in which the gas was ignited
within the wire shade of one of the lamps, but without producing any
effect beyond that of immediately extinguishing the light. There was
also during the route, in the neighbourhood of Sir Henry Meux’s brewery
and of an adjoining distillery in Vine-street, a considerable quantity
of steam in the sewer, but it had no material effect upon the light.
The examiners came to the conclusion that where there was any
liability to an explosion from the presence of carburetted hydrogen,
or other causes, the Improved Davy Lamp afforded an almost certain
protection.
The attention of the Commissioners seems to have been chiefly given
of late, as regards ventilation and indeed general improvement,
to the sewers on the Surrey side of the metropolis. Among these a
new sewer along Friar-street, running from the Blackfriars to the
Southwark-bridge-road, is one of the most noticeable.
Friar-street is one of the smaller off thoroughfares, the character
of which is, perhaps, little suspected by those who pass along the
open Blackfriars-road. As you turn out of that road to the left hand,
advancing from the bridge, almost opposite the Magdalen Hospital, is
Friar-street. On its left hand, as you proceed along it, are gas-works,
and the factories, or work places, of tradesmen in the soap-boiling,
tallow-melting, cat and other gut manufacturing, bone-boiling, and
other noisome callings. On the right hand are a series of short and
often neatly-built streets, but the majority of them have the look of
unmistakable squalor or poverty, though _not_ of the poverty of the
industrious. Across Flint-street, Green-street, and other ways, few of
them horse thoroughfares, hang, on a fair day, lines of washed clothes
to dry. Yellow-looking chemises and petticoats are affixed alongside
men’s trowsers and waistcoats; coarse-featured and brazen-looking
women, with necks and faces reddened, as if with brick-dust, from
exposure to the weather, stand at their doors and beckon to the passers
by. Perhaps in no part of the metropolis is there a more marked
manifestation of moral obsceneness on the one hand, and physical
obsceneness on the other. With the low prostitution of this locality
is mixed the low and the bold crime of the metropolis. Some of the
off-shoots from Friar-street communicate with places of as nefarious a
character. Hackett, whom his newspaper admirers seem to wish to elevate
into the fame of a second Jack Sheppard, resided in this quarter. The
gang who were last winter repulsed in their burglarious attack on Mr.
Holford’s villa in the Regent’s-park favoured the same locality, and
were arrested in their old haunts. Public-houses may be seen here and
there--houses, perhaps, not greatly discouraged by the police--which
are at once the rendezvous and the trap of offenders, for to and from
such resorts they can be readily traced. And all over this place of
moral degradation extends the stench of offensive manufactures and
ill-ventilated sewers. Certainly there is now an improvement, but it is
still bad enough.
A Report of the 21st September, 1848, shows that a new sewer,
1500 feet in length, had been “put in along Friar-street, with a
fall of 15 inches from the level of the sewer in Blackfriars-road
to Suffolk-street. The sewer,” states the Report, “with which it
communicates at its upper end in the Blackfriars-road contains nearly
2 feet in depth of soil; it in consequence has silted up to that
level with semi-fluid black filth, principally from the factories, of
the most poisonous and sickening description, forming an _elongated
cesspool_ 1500 feet in length, the filth at its lower end being upwards
of 3 feet in depth. Since the building of this sewer, the foul matter
so discharged into it has been in a state of decomposition, constantly
giving off pestilential and poisonous gases, which have spread into
and filled the adjoining sewers; thence they are being drawn into the
houses by the house-drains, and into the streets by the street-drains,
to such a fearful extent as to infect the whole atmosphere of the
neighbourhood, and so to cause the very offensive odour so generally
complained of there. Sulphuretted hydrogen is present in these sewers
in large quantities, as metals, silver and copper, are attacked and
blackened by it; and the smell from it is so sickening as to be almost
unbearable.”
On the question of how best to deal with sewers such as the
Friar-street, Messrs. John Roe and John Phillips (surveyors) and
Mr. Henry Austin (consulting engineer) have agreed in the following
opinion:--
“The most simple and convenient method would be by placing large strong
fires in shafts directly over the crown of the sewers. The expense of
each furnace, with the inclosure around it, will be about 20_l._ The
fires would be fed almost constantly, by which little smoke would be
generated. The heat to be produced from these fires would rarefy the
air so much as to create rapidly ascending currents in the shafts, and
strong draughts through the sewers, the foul air in which would then be
drawn to the fires and there consumed; and as it was being destroyed
fresh air would be drawn in at all the existing inlets of house and
street drains, pushing forward and supplying the place of the foul air.”
Concerning the explosions of, or deaths in, the sewers from the impure
gases, there is, I believe, no statistical account. The most remarkable
catastrophe of this kind was the death of five persons in a sewer in
Pimlico, in October, 1849; of these, three were regular sewer-men, and
the others were a policeman and Mr. Wells, a surgeon, who went into the
sewer in the hopes of giving assistance. Mr. Phillips, the then chief
surveyor of the Commission of Sewers, stated that the cause of these
deaths in the sewers was entirely an exceptional case, and the gas
which had caused the accident inquired into was not a sewer gas. “There
is often,” he said, “a great escape of gas from the mains, which found
its way into the sewers. The gas, however, which has done the mischief
in the present instance would not explode.”
Dr. Ure’s opinion was, that the deceased men died from asphixia, caused
by inhaling sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid gas in mixture with
prussic vapour, and that these noxious emanations were derived from the
refuse lime of gas-works thrown in with other rubbish to make up the
road above the sewer. Other scientific gentlemen attributed the five
deaths to the action of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, or, according to Dr.
Lyon Playfair, to be chemically correct, hydro-sulphate of ammonia. The
coroner (Mr. Bedford), in summing up, said that Mr. Phillips wished it
to be supposed that gas lime was the cause of the foul gas; and Dr.
Ure said that gas lime had to do with the calamity. But Dr. Miller,
Mr. Richard Phillips, Mr. Campbell, and Dr. Playfair, more especially
the latter, were perfectly sure that lime had nothing to do with it.
The verdict was the following:--“We find that Daniel Pert, Thomas Gee,
and John Attwood died from the inhalation of noxious gas generated in
a neglected and unventilated sewer in Kenilworth-street. And we find
that Henry Wells and John Walsh met their deaths from the same cause,
in their laudable endeavours to save the lives of the first three
sufferers. The jury unanimously consider the commissioners and officers
of the Metropolitan Sewers are much to blame for having neglected to
avail themselves of the unusual advantages offered, from the local
situation of the Grosvenor-canal, for the purpose of flushing the
sewers in this district.”