INDEX 435
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF LOCAL DISTRICTS IN LONDON.
REFERENCE TO NAMES OF PARISHES AND DISTRICTS NUMBERED ON THE MAP.
1. Clerkenwell.
2. Holborn.
3. St. Giles'.
4. Strand.
5. St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
6. Whitechapel.
7. St. James', Westminster.
8. Westminster.
9. St. Saviour's, Southwark.
10. St. Olave's, Southwark.
11. St. George the Martyr, Southwark.]
The Sanitary Evolution of London
CHAPTER I
THE health of the people of a country stands foremost in the rank of
national considerations. Upon their health depends their physical
strength and energy, upon it their mental vigour, their individual
happiness, and, in a great degree, their moral character. Upon it,
moreover, depends the productivity of their labour, and the material
prosperity and commercial success of their country. Ultimately, upon it
depends the very existence of the nation and of the Empire.
The United Kingdom can claim no exemption from this general principle;
rather, indeed, is it one which, in the present period of our history,
affects us more vitally than it has ever done before, and in a more
crucial manner than it does many other nations.
The more imperative is it, therefore, that every effort should be made
to raise the health of our people to the highest attainable level, and
to maintain it at the loftiest possible standard.
The subject is so vast and complicated that it is impossible, within
reasonable limits, to treat more than a portion of it at a time.
London, the great metropolis, the capital of the Empire itself,
constitutes, by the number of its inhabitants, so large a portion of
the United Kingdom, that the health of its people is a very material
factor in that of the kingdom. It has a population greater than either
Scotland or Ireland, greater than any of our Colonies, except Canada
and Australasia, greater than that of many foreign States--"the
greatest aggregate of human beings that has ever existed in the history
of the world in the same area of space."
And, in a measure too, it is typical of other of our great cities.
A narrative of the sanitary history and conditions of life of the
people of London, therefore, would be a material contribution to the
consideration of the general subject in its national aspect, whilst it
cannot but be of special interest to those more immediately concerned
in the amelioration of the existing condition of the masses of the
people of the great capital.
Such a narrative is attempted in the following pages.
It is, in the main, based upon the experiences, and inferences, and
conclusions, of men who, more than any others, were in a position
closely to observe the circumstances in which the people lived, their
sanitary condition, and the causes leading thereto and influencing the
same.
It includes the principal measures from time to time passed by
the Legislature to create local governing authorities in sanitary
matters--the various measures designed and enacted to improve the
condition of the people--and the administration of those measures by
the local authorities charged with their administration.
It is a narrative, in fact, of the sanitary--and, therefore, to a great
extent of the social--evolution of this great city.
It is doubtful how long a time would have elapsed before the condition
of the people came into real prominence had it not been for the
oft-recurring invasions of the country by epidemic disease of the
most dreaded and fatal forms. Ever-present diseases, disastrous and
devastating though they were, did not strike the imagination or
appeal to the fears of the public as did the sudden onslaught of an
awe-inspiring disease such as cholera.
An epidemic of that dreaded disease swept over London in 1832, and
there were over 10,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths in the districts
then considered as metropolitan--the population of those districts
being close upon 1,500,000.
For the moment, the dread of it stimulated the people, and such
governing authorities as there were, to inspection, and cleansings,
and purifications, and to plans for vigorous sanitary reform; but the
instant the cholera departed the good resolutions died down, and the
plans disappeared likewise.
There were, however, some persons upon whom this visitation made more
abiding impression; and they, struck by the waste of human life, by
the frequent recurrence of epidemics which swept away thousands upon
thousands of victims, and distressed by the perpetual prevalence and
even more deadly destructiveness of various other diseases among the
people, bethought themselves of investigating the actual existing
facts, and the causes of them--so far at least as London, their own
city, was concerned.
And then slowly the curtain began to be raised on the appalling drama
of human life in London, and dimly to be revealed the circumstances
in which the great masses of the working and labouring classes of the
great metropolis lived, moved, and came to the inevitable end, and the
conditions and surroundings of their existence.
The slowness with which England as a nation awoke to the idea that the
public health was a matter of any concern whatever is most strange and
remarkable. It seems now so obvious a fact that one marvels that it did
not at all times secure for itself recognition and acknowledgment. But
men and women were growing up amidst the existing surroundings, foul
and unwholesome though those were, and some, at least, were visibly
living to old age; population was increasing at an unprecedented rate;
wealth was multiplying and accumulating; the nation was reaching
greater heights of power and fame. What, then, was there, what could
there be wrong with the existing state of affairs?
Real social evils, however, sooner or later, force themselves into
prominence. For long they may be ignored, or treated with indifference
by the governing classes; for long they may be endured by the victims
in suffering and silence; but ultimately they compel recognition, and
have to be investigated and grappled with, and, if possible, remedied.
The real beginning of such investigations was not until near the close
of the fourth decade of the nineteenth century. Information then for
the first time was collected, of necessity very limited in extent,
crude in form, and of moderate accuracy, but none the less illuminating
in its character--information from which one can piece together in a
hazy sort of way a general impression of the condition of the working
and poorer classes in London at that period.
Foremost among the diseases which worked unceasing and deadly havoc
among the people was fever. By its wide and constant prevalence and
great fatality, it was the first upon which attention became fixed.
The returns which were collected as regarded it related to twenty
metropolitan unions or parishes, and in them only to the pauper
population, some 77,000 in number. But they showed that in the single
year of 1838, out of those 77,000 persons, 14,000, or very nearly
one-fifth, had been attacked by fever, and nearly 1,300 had died.[1]
Being limited to the technically pauper population this information
related only to one section of the community; but it nevertheless
afforded the means of forming a rough estimate of the amount of fever
among the community as a whole.
And another fact also at once became apparent, namely, that certain
parts of London were more specially and persistently haunted or
infested by fever than others. In Whitechapel, Holborn, Lambeth, and
numerous other parishes or districts, fever of the very worst forms
was always prevalent--"typhus, and the fevers which proceed from the
malaria of filth." The sanitary condition of those districts was
fearful, every sanitary abomination being rampant therein, whilst
certain localities in them were so bad that "it would be utterly
impossible for any description to convey to the mind an adequate
conception of their state." And most marvellous and deplorable of all
was the fact that this fearful condition of things was allowed, not
merely to continue, but to flourish without any attempt being made to
remedy, or even to mitigate, some of the inevitable and most disastrous
consequences.
As regarded the districts in which the wealthier classes resided,
systematic efforts had been made on a considerable scale to widen the
streets, to remove obstructions to the circulation of free currents of
air, and to improve the drainage--an acknowledgment and appreciation of
the fact that these things did deleteriously affect people's health.
But nothing whatever had been attempted to improve the condition of
the districts inhabited by the poor. Those districts were not given a
thought to, though in them annually thousands and tens of thousands of
victims suffered or died from diseases which were preventable.
Reports such as these attracted some degree of attention, and awakened
a demand for further information, and in 1840 the House of Commons
appointed a Select Committee to inquire as to the health, not only of
London, but of the large towns throughout the country. Their report[2]
enlarged upon the evils previously in part portrayed, and emphasised
them.
"Your Committee," they wrote, "would pause, from the sad statements
they have been obliged to make, to observe that it is painful to
contemplate in the midst of what appears an opulent, spirited,
and flourishing community, such a vast multitude of our poorer
fellow-subjects, the instruments by whose hands these riches were
created, condemned for no fault of their own to the evils so
justly complained of, and placed in situations where it is almost
impracticable for them to preserve health or decency of deportment,
or to keep themselves and their children from moral and physical
contamination. To require them to be clean, sober, cheerful, contented
under such circumstances would be a vain and unreasonable expectation.
There is no building Act to enforce the dwellings of these workmen
being properly constructed; no drainage Act to enforce their being
properly drained; no general or local regulation to enforce the
commonest provisions for cleanliness and comfort."
Lurid as were the details thus made public of the condition in which
the vast masses of the people in London were living, neither Parliament
nor the Government took any action beyond ordering successive inquiries
by Poor Law Commissioners, or Committees of the House of Commons, or
Royal Commissions.
Before one of these Commissions[3] the following striking evidence was
given--evidence which it might reasonably be expected would have moved
any Government to immediate action:--
"Every day's experience convinces me," deposed the witness,[4] "that a
very large proportion of these evils is capable of being removed; that
if proper attention were paid to sanitary measures, the mortality of
these districts would be most materially diminished, perhaps in some
places one-third, and in others even a half.
* * * * *
"The poorer classes in these neglected localities and dwellings are
exposed to causes of disease and death which are peculiar to them; the
operation of these peculiar causes is steady, unceasing, sure; and the
result is the same as if twenty or thirty thousand of these people were
annually taken out of their wretched dwellings and put to death--the
actual fact being that they are allowed to remain in them and die. I am
now speaking of what silently but surely takes place every year in the
metropolis alone."
But the Government took no action--beyond a Building Act which did
little as regarded the housing of the people. No local bodies took
action, and years were to pass before either Government or Parliament
stirred in the matter.
In dealing historically with matters relating to London as a whole, it
is to be remembered that for a long time there had been practically
two Londons--that defined and described as the "City," and the rest of
London--that which had no recognised boundaries, no vestige of
corporate existence, and which can best be described by the word
"metropolis."
The "City" was virtually the centre of London--the centre of its
wealth, its industry, its geographical extent--a precisely defined area
of some 720 acres, or about one square mile in extent, and originally
surrounded by walls. Its boundaries had been fixed at an early period
of our history, and had never been extended or enlarged. So densely was
it covered with houses at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and
so fully peopled, that there was practically no room for more, either
of houses or people; and from then to the middle of that century its
population was stationary--being close upon 128,000 at each of those
periods.
Apart altogether from political influences, there were in the "City"
powerful economic forces at work which profoundly affected the
condition and circumstances of the people, not only of the "City," but
of London.
These, which were by no means so evident at one time, became more and
more pronounced as time went on.
All through the earlier part of the nineteenth century England was
attaining to world pre-eminence by her commerce, her manufactures, and
her wealth. The end of the great war with France saw her with a firm
grip of all the commercial markets of the world. Her merchants pushed
their trade in every quarter of the globe--her ships enjoyed almost a
monopoly of the carrying trade of the world.
In this progress to greatness London took the foremost part, and
became the greatest port and trade emporium of the kingdom, a great
manufacturing city, and the financial centre of the world's trade.
It was upon this commerce that the prosperity and glory of London were
built: it was by this commerce that the great bulk of the people gained
their livelihood, and that a broad highway was opened to comfort,
to opulence, and power. And so the commercial spirit--the spirit of
acquiring and accumulating wealth--got ever greater possession of
London.
That spirit had long been a great motive power in London; it became
more and more so as the century wore on, until almost everything was
subordinated to it.
That indisputable fact must constantly be borne in mind as one reviews
the sanitary and social condition of the people of London at and
since that time. Other constant factors there were, also exercising
vast influence--the constant factors of human passions and human
failings--but widespread as were their effects, they were second to the
all-powerful, the all-impelling motive and unceasing desire--commercial
prosperity and success.
Synchronous with the rise in importance of the port of London, and
with its trade and business assuming ever huger volume and variety, a
noteworthy transformation took place.
The "City," by the very necessities of its enormous business, became
gradually more and more a city of offices and marts, of warehouses and
factories, of markets and exchanges, and houses long used as residences
were pulled down, and larger and loftier ones erected in their place
for business purposes.
In some places, moreover, ground was entirely cleared of houses for the
construction of docks, or for the erection of great railway termini.
How marked were the effects of these changes is evidenced by the fact
that from 17,190 inhabited houses in the "City" in 1801, the number had
sunk to 14,575 in 1851.
The explanation was the simple economic one, that land in the "City"
yielded a much larger income when let for business than for residential
purposes. Offices and warehouses were absolutely essential in the
"City" for business. What did it matter if people had to look for a
residence in some other place? London was large. They could easily find
room. And the process, without control of any sort or kind, and wholly
unimpeded by legislation or governmental regulation, went on quite
naturally--entailing though it did consequences of the very gravest
character, then quite unthought of, or, if thought of, ignored or
regarded as immaterial.
This then was, at that time, and still is, one of the great, if
not indeed the greatest of the economic forces at work which has
unceasingly dominated the housing of the people not only in the "City,"
but in the metropolis outside and surrounding the "City," and, in
dominating their housing, powerfully affected also their sanitary and
social condition.
The "City" was in the enjoyment of a powerful local governing
body--namely, the Lord Mayor and Corporation, or Common Council,
elected annually by the ratepayers; and numerous Acts of Parliament and
Royal Charters had conferred sundry municipal powers upon them.
For that important branch of civic requirements--the regulation of
the thoroughfares and the construction of houses and buildings--they
had certain powers. The vastly more important sphere of civic
welfare--namely, the matters affecting the sanitary condition of the
inhabitants--was delegated by the Corporation to a body called the
Commissioners of Sewers, annually elected by the Common Council out of
their own body, some ninety in number. And these Commissioners had,
in effect, authority in the City, directly or indirectly, over nearly
every one of the physical conditions which were likely to affect the
health or comfort of its inhabitants. They could also appoint a Medical
Officer of Health to inform and advise them upon public health matters,
and Inspectors to enforce the laws and regulations.
The "City" was thus in happy possession of a powerful local authority,
and a large system of local government. And it stood in stately
isolated grandeur, proud of, and satisfied with, its dignity, and
privileges, and wealth; glorying in its own importance and splendour;
content with its own system of government, and its powers for
administering its municipal affairs, and indifferent to the existence
of the greater London which had grown up around it, and which was ever
becoming greater.
Greater indeed. The population of the "City" in 1851 was 128,000; that
of the metropolis not far short of 2,500,000.
The number of inhabited houses in the "City" was hundreds short of
15,000. In the metropolis it was over 300,000.
The "City" was 720 acres in extent: what in 1855 was regarded as the
metropolis was about 75,000 acres in extent.
And here, with no visible boundary of separation between them, were
what were still "Parishes," but what were in reality great towns; not
merely merged or rapidly merging into each other, but already merged
into one great metropolis. Some of them even had a greater population
than the "City" itself. St. Pancras, for instance, with 167,000
persons; St. Marylebone with 157,000, and Lambeth with 139,000.
Of that greater London--or, in effect, of London itself--there is a
complicated and tangled story to tell.
Long before the middle of the nineteenth century had been reached, the
time had passed when the "City" could contain the trade, and commerce,
and manufactures, and business, which had grown up. They had overflowed
into London outside the walls, and just as in the "City" the great
economic forces produced certain definite changes in the circumstances
and sanitary condition of the people living therein, so, in the greater
London, the commercial spirit radiating gradually outwards, produced
precisely similar results, only on a far wider scale, and with more
potent effect.
Trade, and commerce, and wealth, and population, were increasing by
leaps and bounds; and like the rings which year by year are added to
the trunk of a tree, so year by year, decade by decade, London--the
metropolis--spread out, and grew, and grew. From something under one
million of inhabitants in 1801, the population increased to nearly two
and a half millions in 1851, partly by natural increase, due to the
number of those who were born being greater than of those who died,
partly by immigration from the country.
This was London, in the large sense of the title--London, the great
metropolis which had never received recognition by the law as one
great entity, and whose boundaries had never been fixed, either by
enactment, charter, or custom.[5]
Dependent as is the public health, or sanitary and social condition
of the people, upon the circumstances in which they find themselves
placed, and the economic forces which are constantly at work moulding
those circumstances, it is in as great a degree dependent on the system
of local government in existence at the time, upon the scope and
efficacy of the laws entrusted to the local authorities to administer,
and upon the administration of those laws by those authorities.
As for local government--unlike the "City"--this greater London was
without form and almost void. With the exception of the Poor Law
Authority--the Boards of Guardians--whose sphere of duty was distinctly
limited, there was, outside the boundaries of the "City," not even the
framework of a system of such government; and the confusion and chaos
became ever greater as years went on and London grew.
There was no authority so important as to have any extended area for
municipal purposes under its control and management except certain
bodies, five in number, entitled "Commissioners of Sewers," charged
with duties in connection with the sewerage of their districts.
In some parishes some of the affairs of the parish were managed by the
parishioners in open vestry assembled, at which assembly Churchwardens,
Overseers of the Poor, and Surveyors of Highways were appointed to
carry out certain limited classes of work. In others, the parishioners
elected a select vestry to do the work of the parish.
But for many of the vitally important municipal affairs there were no
authorities at all.
As the non-City and out-districts became more thickly peopled, and
streets and houses increased in number, the inconvenience of there
being practically no local government at all made itself felt.
In some cases, the owners of the estates which were being so rapidly
absorbed into London and being built upon, applied to Parliament for
powers to regulate those estates.
In other cases, persons with interests in a special locality associated
themselves together and obtained a private Act of Parliament giving
them authority, under the name of Commissioners or Trustees, to tax
and in a very limited way to govern a particular district or group
of streets forming part of a parish. Thus it happened that a large
number of petty bodies of all sorts and kinds came into existence.
Any district, however small, was suffered to obtain a local Act of
Parliament for the purpose of managing some of its affairs, and
this, too, without any reference to the interests of the immediate
neighbours, or of the metropolis as a whole. Most of the limited and
somewhat primitive powers possessed by them were derived from an
Act passed in 1817,[6] and related to the paving of streets and the
prevention of nuisances therein. Some of these bodies were authorised
to appoint surveyors or inspectors; also "scavengers, rakers, or
cleaners" to carry away filth from streets and houses, but the exercise
of such powers was, of course, purely optional. Indeed, there were
scarcely any two parishes in London governed alike.
What the exact number of these various petty authorities was is
unknown. Of paving boards alone, it is said that about the middle
of the last century there were no less than eighty-four in the
metropolis--nineteen of them being in one parish. The lighting of
the parish of Lambeth was under the charge of nine local trusts. The
affairs of St. Mary, Newington, were under the control of thirteen
Boards or trusts, in addition to two turnpike trusts.[7]
In Westminster:--
"The Court of Burgesses and the Vestry retained general jurisdiction
over the whole parish for certain purposes; but the numerous local Acts
so effectually subdivided the control and distributed it among boards,
commissioners, trustees, committees, and other independent bodies, that
uniformity, efficiency, and economy in local administration had become
impossible."[8]
There were authorities exclusively for paving; authorities for street
improvements; authorities for lighting; even authorities for a bridge
across the river. In the course of years, several hundred such bodies
had been created, without any relation one to the other, and without
any central controlling authority, good, bad, or indifferent, by as
many Acts of Parliament. They were mostly self-elected, or elected for
life, or both; and were wholly irresponsible to the ratepayers, or
indeed to any one else; nor were their proceedings in any way open to
the public. Many of them had large staffs of well paid officials; and
there were perpetual conflicts of jurisdiction between them, and an
absolute want of anything approaching to municipal administration.
It has been roughly stated--roughly because there are no reliable
figures--that there were about three hundred such bodies in
London--"jostling, jarring, unscientific, cumbrous, and costly"--the
very nature of many of them being "as little known to the rest of the
community as that of the powers of darkness."
Add to these numerous, clashing, and incompetent authorities, various
great public companies or corporations--the water companies, and gas
companies, and dock companies, each with its own special rights--which
were far more favourably and generously regarded by Parliament than
were the rights of the public, and one has fairly enumerated the local
governing bodies then existing in London.
In fact, in no parish of the great metropolis of London was there a
local authority possessed of powers to deal in its own area with the
multitudinous affairs affecting the health and well-being of the people.
Nor was there in the metropolis any central authority--no single body,
representative or even otherwise--to attend to the great branches of
municipal administration which affected and concerned the metropolis
as a whole, and which could only be dealt with efficiently by the
metropolis being treated as a whole.
The consequences to the inhabitants of London of the absence of any
efficient form of local government were dire in character, terrible
in extent, and unceasing in operation. The higher grades of society
suffered in some degree, as disease, begotten in filth and nurtured in
poverty, often invaded with disastrous consequences the homes of the
well-to-do; but it was by the great mass of the industrial classes and
the poorer people that the terrible burden of insanitation had to be
borne, and upon them that it fell with the deadliest effect.
The non-existence of a central authority, or of any capable local
authorities whose function it would have been to protect them from the
causes of disease, had resulted in an insanitary condition which year
after year entailed the waste of thousands upon thousands of lives.
And the people, in the cruel circumstances of their position, were
absolutely powerless to help themselves, and had no possible means of
escape from the ever-present, all-surrounding danger.
The first absolute necessity of any sanitation whatever is the getting
rid by deportation or destruction of all the filth daily made or left
by man or beast, for such filth or refuse breeds all manner of disease,
from the mildest up to the very worst types and sorts, and promptly
becomes not only noxious to health, but fatal to life. The more rapidly
and thoroughly, therefore, this riddance is effected, the better is it
in every way for the general health of the public.
So far as the metropolis was concerned, this necessity had for
generation after generation been very lightly regarded; and when at
last it so forced itself upon public notice that it could no longer be
ignored, the measures taken were wholly inadequate and ineffective.
What system there was in London as to the disposal of sewage throughout
the earlier half of last century was based upon a Statute dating so far
back as Henry VIII.'s reign, amended by another in William and Mary's
reign. Under these Statutes certain bodies had been constituted by
the Crown as Commissioners of Sewers for certain portions of London,
and charged with the duty of providing sewers and drains in their
respective districts, and maintaining the same in proper working order.
But what might have been good enough for London in the sixteenth or
seventeenth centuries was certainly not adequate in the nineteenth,
when London had extended her borders in every direction, and her
population had reached almost two and a half millions. Successive
Parliaments had not troubled themselves about such a matter; and this
neglect, which now appears almost incredible, was typical of the
habitual attitude of the governing classes to the sanitary requirements
of the masses of the population of the metropolis.
In the eighteen hundred and forties, five such bodies of Commissioners
were in existence in London, each with a separate portion of the
metropolis under its charge and exercising an independent sway in its
own district; and when we collect the best testimony of that time as
to their work and that of their predecessors, we have the clearest
demonstration of their glaring incapacity, and of the utter inadequacy
and inefficiency of the sewerage in their respective districts.
Many miles of sewers had, it is true, in process of time been
constructed, and did exist, but much of the work had been so misdone
that the cure was little better than the disease.
A river is always a great temptation to persons to get rid of things
they want to get rid of, particularly when the things are nasty and
otherwise not easily disposed of. Londoners only followed the general
practice when they constructed their sewers so that they discharged
their contents direct into the Thames. The majority of these sewers
emptied themselves only at the time of low water; for as the tide rose
the outlets of the sewers were closed, and the sewage was dammed back
and became stagnant. When the tide had receded sufficiently to afford
a vent for the pent-up sewage, it flowed out and deposited itself
along the banks of the river, evolving gases of a foul and offensive
character. And then the sewage was not only carried up the river by
the rising tide, but it was brought back again into the heart of the
metropolis, there to mix with each day's fresh supply of sewage; the
result being that "the portion of the river within the metropolitan
district became scarcely less impure and offensive than the foulest of
the sewers themselves."
This was bad enough, but there were miles of sewers which, through
defects of construction or disrepair, did not even carry off the sewage
from the houses and streets to the river, but had become "similar to
elongated cesspools," and, as such, actual sources and creators of
disease.
Incredible almost were the stupidities perpetrated by these
Commissioners in regard to the construction of the sewers. At even
so late a date as 1845 no survey had been made of the metropolis for
the purposes of drainage; there was a different level in each of the
districts, and no attempt was made to conform the works of the several
districts to one general plan. Large sewers were made to discharge into
smaller sewers. Some were higher than the cesspools which they were
supposed to drain, whilst others had been so constructed that to be of
any use the sewage would have had to flow uphill!
It might reasonably have been expected that in the nineteenth century,
at least, the twenty parishes which formed the district of the
Westminster Commissioners of Sewers would have been equal to producing
an enlightened and capable body as Commissioners, but the Westminster
Court of Sewers was certainly not such. Even their own chief surveyor,
in 1847, stigmatised it as a body "totally incompetent to manage the
great and important works committed to their care and control."
Upon it were builders, surveyors, architects, and district surveyors--a
class of persons whose opinions "might certainly be biassed with
relation to particular lines of drains and sewers."
Of another of the courts--namely, the Finsbury Court of Sewers--one of
the Commission had been outlawed; another was a bankrupt.
It was stated at the time that "jobbery and favouritism and
incompetence were rampant," and that the system was "radically wrong
and rotten to the core." Certain it is that these bodies failed
completely to cope with the requirements of the time. London was
spreading out in all directions, and the increase of houses and
population was very rapid. Practically no effort, however--certainly
no adequate effort--was made by the various bodies of Commissioners to
provide these new and growing districts with the means of getting rid
of their sewage. And then, inasmuch as the sewage had somehow or other
to be got rid of, and some substitute for sewers devised, the surface
drains, and millstreams, and ditches were appropriated to use and
converted into open sewers or "stagnant ponds of pestilential sewage."
London was "seamed with open ditches."
According to contemporary reports there were in Lambeth numerous open
ditches of the most horrible description. Bermondsey was intersected
by ditches of a similar character, and abounded with fever nests.
Rotherhithe was the same. Hackney Brook, formerly "a pure stream," had
become "a foul open sewer."[9] In St. Saviour's Union the sewers were
in a dreadful condition ... "the receptacle of all kinds of refuse,
such as putrid fish, dead dogs, cats, &c. Greenwich was not drained or
sewered."
What certainly was conclusively demonstrated was that the existence
of several bodies of Commissioners, each with a district to itself,
presented an insuperable obstacle to any general system of sewerage for
greater London; and that one capable central authority was the first
essential of an adequate and efficient system for London as a whole.
Thus, then, in this first essential of all sanitation--one might say
of civilisation--no adequate provision was made by Parliament for the
safety of the metropolis; whilst as to other essentials of sanitation,
there were no laws for the prevention of the perpetration of every
sanitary iniquity; and such authorities as there were failed absolutely
to use even the few powers they possessed.
The defective and inefficient sewerage of the metropolis precluded the
possibility of any proper system of house drainage, for there being few
sewers there were few drains, and consequently instead of drains from
the houses to the sewers there were cesspools under almost every house.
At the census of 1841 there were over 270,000 houses in the metropolis.
It was known, then, that most houses had a cesspool under them, and
that a large number had two, three, or four under them. Some of them
were so huge that the only name considered adequate to describe them
was "cess-lake." In many districts even the houses in which the better
classes lived had neither drain nor sewer--nothing but cesspools;
and many of the very best portions of the West End were "literally
honeycombed" with them. And so jealous was the law as regarded the
rights of private property that so late as 1845 owners were not to be
interfered with as regarded even their cesspools, no matter how great
the nuisance might be to their neighbours, no matter how dangerous
to the community at large. Indeed, the Commissioners of Sewers had
no power to compel landlords or house-owners to make drains into the
sewers, and of their own motion the landlords would take no action.
In the lower part of Westminster the Commissioners of Sewers had
actually carried sewers along some of the streets, but they found "very
little desire on the part of the landlords" to use them. "So long as
the owners get their rent they do not care about drainage.... The
landlords will not move; their property pays them very well; they will
not put themselves to any expense; they are satisfied with it as it
stands."
Strange level of satisfaction! when one reads the following evidence
given two years later before the Metropolitan Sewers Commission:--
"There are hundreds, I may say thousands, of houses in this metropolis
which have _no drainage whatever_, and the greater part of them have
stinking, overflowing cesspools. And there are also hundreds of
streets, courts, and alleys, that have no sewers; and how the drainage
and filth is cleared away, and how the poor miserable inhabitants live
in such places it is hard to tell.
"In pursuance of my duties, from time to time, I have visited very
many places where filth was lying scattered about the rooms, vaults,
cellars, areas, and yards, so thick, and so deep, that it was hardly
possible to move for it. I have also seen in such places human
beings living and sleeping in sunk rooms with filth from overflowing
cesspools exuding through and running down the walls and over the
floors.... The effects of the stench, effluvia, and poisonous gases
constantly evolving from these foul accumulations were apparent in the
haggard, wan, and swarthy countenances, and enfeebled limbs, of the
poor creatures whom I found residing over and amongst these dens of
pollution and wretchedness."[10]
And this witness was unable to refrain from passing a verdict upon what
he had seen:--
"To allow such a state of things to exist is a blot upon this
scientific and enlightened age, an age, too, teeming with so much
wealth, refinement, and benevolence. Morality, and the whole economy of
domestic existence, is outraged and deranged by so much suffering and
misery. Let not, therefore, the morality, the health, the comfort of
thousands of our fellow creatures in this metropolis be in the hands
of those who care not about these things, but let good and wholesome
laws be enacted to compel houses to be kept in a cleanly and healthy
condition."
There were, it was said, "a formidable host of difficulties" as
regarded the execution of improved works of house drainage.
There was the opposition of the proprietors on the ground of expense;
there were the provisions of the Act of Parliament,[11] which were
so intricate as to be almost unintelligible and unworkable; there
was the want of a proper outfall for the sewage; and the want of a
supply of water to wash away the filth--a possible explanation for the
existing state of abomination, but certainly not a justification for
the prolonged inaction of successive Parliaments and Governments in
allowing affairs to reach so frightful a pass, and for dooming the
people to a condition of things which it was entirely beyond their
power to remedy even as regarded the single house they inhabited.
Just as everything connected with sewerage and drainage was so placidly
neglected, and so fearfully bad, so also was it as regarded another
matter of even more vital necessity, namely, the supply of water to the
inhabitants of London for drinking, or for domestic, trade, or sanitary
purposes.
"Water is essential as an article of food. Water is necessary to
personal cleanliness. Water is essential to external cleansing, whether
of houses, streets, closets, or sewers."
Manifestly, the supply of water was not a matter which the individual
in a large community such as London could in any way make provision
for by his own independent effort. And yet there was no public body in
London, central or local, representative or otherwise, charged with the
duty of securing to the people even the minimum quantity necessary for
life.
Early in the seventeenth century the New River Company was formed
for the supply of water to London. And as years went on Parliament
evidently considered it fulfilled its obligations in this respect by
making over to sundry private companies the right of supplying to the
citizens of London this vital requirement, or, as it has been termed,
this "life-blood of cities"; and Parliament had done this without
even taking any guarantee or security for a proper distribution to
the people, or for the purity of the water, or the sufficiency of its
supply.
Practically, a generous Parliament had bestowed as a free gift upon
these Water Companies the valuable monopoly, so far as London was
concerned, of this necessity of life.
Although by the middle of the nineteenth century there was no portion
of the metropolis into which the mains and pipes of some of the
companies had not been carried, yet, as the companies were under no
compulsion to supply it to all houses, large numbers of houses, and
particularly those of the poorer classes, received no supply. Indeed,
in many parts of London there were whole streets in which not a single
house had water laid on to the premises.
In the district supplied by the New River Company, containing about
900,000 persons, about one-third of the population were unsupplied; and
in the very much smaller area of the Southwark Company's district about
30,000 persons had no supply.
Even in 1850 it was computed that 80,000 houses in London, inhabited by
640,000 persons, were unsupplied with water.
A very large proportion of the people could only obtain water from
stand-pipes erected in the courts or places, and that only at
intermittent periods, and for a very short time in the day; sometimes,
indeed, only on alternate days, and not at all on Sunday.
"To these pipes," wrote a contemporary, "the inhabitants have to
run, leaving their occupation, and collecting their share of this
indispensable commodity in vessels of whatever kind might be at hand.
The water is then kept in the close, ill-ventilated tenements they
occupy until it is required for use."[12]
The quality of the water which was supplied by the companies left
much to be desired. That supplied by the New River Company was, as a
rule, fairly good in quality; but that supplied by the other companies
was very much the reverse. Financial profit being their first and
principal consideration, they got it from where it was obtainable at
least capital outlay or cost, regardless of purity or impurity; and
almost without exception took it from the Thames--"the great sewer of
London"--took it, too, from precisely the places where the river was
foulest and most contaminated by sewage and other filth; and as there
were no filtering beds in which it could have been to some extent
purified before its distribution to householders, its composition can
best be imagined.
Looking at the great river even now in its purified state, as it
sweeps under Westminster Bridge, any one would shudder at the idea of
being compelled to drink its water in its muddy and unfiltered state,
and of one's health and life being dependent on the supply from such a
source. How infinitely more repugnant it must have been when the river
was "the great sewer" of the metropolis.
The great shortage of company-supplied water compelled large numbers
of people to have recourse to the pumps which still existed in
considerable numbers in many parts of London, the water from which was
drawn from shallow wells.
The water of these "slaughter wells," as they have been termed, appears
to have combined all the worst features of water, and to have contained
all the ingredients most dangerous to health.
"If," wrote a Medical Officer of Health some years later, "the soil
through which the rain passes be composed of the refuse of centuries,
if it be riddled with cesspools and the remains of cesspools, with
leaky gas-pipes and porous sewers, if it has been the depository of the
dead for generation after generation, the soil so polluted cannot yield
water of any degree of purity."[13]
As all these "ifs" were grim actualities, the water of such wells was
revolting in its impurity and deadly in its composition.
Of Clerkenwell it was indeed stated positively that "the shallow-well
water of the parish received the drainage water of Highgate cemetery,
of numerous burial grounds, and of the innumerable cesspools in the
district."
On the south side of the river the water in most of the shallow wells
was tidal--from the Thames, which is a sufficient description of the
quality thereof--and where people did not live close enough to the
river to draw water from it for their daily wants, they took it from
these tidal wells. Vile as it was, it had to be used in default of any
better.
Where such wells were not available, the water for all household
consumption was taken from tidal ditches which were to all intents
and purposes only open sewers. A contemporary report gives a graphic
picture of this form of supply[14]:--
"In Jacob's Island (in Bermondsey) may be seen at any time of the day
women dipping water, with pails attached by ropes to the backs of the
houses, from a foul, foetid ditch, its banks coated with a compound of
mud and filth, and with offal and carrion--the water to be used for
every purpose, culinary ones not excepted."
An adequate supply of wholesome water has for very long been recognised
as of primary sanitary importance to all populations, but with a
densely crowded town population the need of care as to the quality of
the supplies is peculiarly urgent. And yet, through the indifference
of successive Governments, the people of the great metropolis of
London were most inadequately supplied with water, and what water was
supplied to the great mass of them, or was available for them, was of
the foulest and most dangerous description. The inadequacy of supply
not alone put a constant premium upon dirt and uncleanliness, both in
house and person, but it intensified the evils of the existing sewers
and drains, as without water efficient drainage was impossible. And the
horrible impurity of the water affected disastrously and continuously
the health of the great mass of the people.
Many dire lessons, costing thousands upon thousands of lives, were
needed before it was borne in on the Government of the country that the
arrangements regarding the supply of water for the people of London
required radical amendment.
Much of the health of a city depends upon the width of its
thoroughfares, the free circulation of air in its streets and around
its buildings, and the sound and sanitary construction of its houses.
In every one of these respects all the central parts of London were
remarkably defective. The great metropolis had grown, and had been
permitted to grow, mostly at haphazard. Large parks and open spaces
there were in the richer and more well-to-do parts, and some handsome
thoroughfares; but "there were districts in London through which
no great thoroughfares passed, and which were wholly occupied by a
dense population composed of the lowest class of persons, who, being
entirely secluded from the observation and influence of better educated
neighbours, exhibited a state of moral degradation deeply to be
deplored."[15]
Parliament had taken some interest as to the width of the streets, and
had shown some anxiety for improvements in them. Hence, much local
and general legislation was from time to time directed to control the
erection of buildings beyond the regular lines of buildings. Thus the
Metropolitan Paving Act, 1817, contained stringent provisions as to
projections which might obstruct the circulation of air and light, or
be inconvenient or incommodious to passengers along carriage or foot
ways in certain parts of the metropolis.
In 1828 the Act for Consolidating the Metropolis Turnpike Trusts, also,
contained certain restrictive provisions, but these were rendered
futile by the construction put upon its terms by the magistrates.
Again, in 1844, further enactments were made by the Metropolitan
Building Act to restrain projections from buildings; but after a short
administration of its provisions it was found that shops built on the
gardens in front of the houses, or on the forecourts of areas, did
not come within the terms of the Act. And so the Act, in that very
important respect, was useless.
The action of Parliament had been mainly prompted by the necessity for
increased facilities of communication, and by the desire to safeguard
house property from destruction by fire; whilst the most important
of all aspects of the housing of the people--namely, the sanitary
aspect--received no consideration, and was completely ignored as a
thing of no consequence.
But whatever the motive of action by Parliament, the ensuing
legislation was in the main inoperative or ineffective. The resolution
of landowners to secure the highest prices for their property, and the
determination of builders, once they got possession of any land, to
utilise every inch of it for building, and so to make the utmost money
they could out of it, defeated the somewhat loosely drawn enactments.
Means of evading the legislative provisions were promptly discovered,
and, in despite of legislation, builders, architects, and surveyors
of the metropolis were unrestrained in their encroachments upon areas
and forecourts--at times even were successful in breaking the existing
lines of buildings in metropolitan streets or roads by encroachments
which were only discovered too late to be prevented.
Nor was there anything to prevent houses being built on uncovered
spaces at the backs of existing buildings, thus taking up whatever
air-space had been left between the previous buildings. Hence, great
blocks of ground absolutely covered with buildings, back to back, side
to side, any way so long as a building could by any ingenuity be fitted
in. Hence the culs-de-sac, the small and stifling courts and alleys.
Nor were there any regulations forbidding certain kinds of buildings
which would be injurious to the health of their inhabitants. Hence
the mean and flimsy and insanitary houses which were being erected in
the outer circle of the metropolis, and which wrought havoc with the
health and lives of the people. Hence, too, the erection, on areas and
forecourts, of buildings which narrowed the streets, diminished the
air-spaces and means of ventilation, and destroyed the appearance of
the localities.
And once up they had come to stay; for years were to pass before
the Legislature created any effective means for securing their
amelioration, and for generations they were permitted to exercise
their evil and deadly sway over the people, and to scatter broadcast
throughout the community the seeds of disease and death.
The then existing actual state of the case was summed up by Dr.
Southwood Smith in his evidence before the Select Committee of the
House of Commons in 1840:--
"At present no more regard is paid in the construction of houses to the
health of the inhabitants than is paid to the health of pigs in making
sties for them. In point of fact there is not so much attention paid to
it."
Legislation against some of the evils which had already reached huge
proportions, and which, as London grew, were spreading and developing,
was not alone ineffective, but earlier legislation, in one notorious
Act, had been the direct incentive to, and cause of evils. This was the
Act which imposed a tax upon windows.[16] In effect this Act said to
the builder, "Plan your houses with as few openings as possible. Let
every house be ill-ventilated by shutting out the light and air, and as
a reward for your ingenuity you shall be subject to a less amount of
taxation."[17]
The builder acted upon this counsel, and the tax operated as a premium
upon the omission from a building of every window which could by any
device be spared; with the result that passages, closets, cellars,
and roofs--the very places where mephitic vapours were most apt to
lodge--were left almost entirely without ventilation.[18]
In effect, the window duties compelled multitudes to live and breathe
in darkened rooms and poisoned air, and with a rapidly increasing
population the evils resulting therefrom were being steadily
intensified.
Admirable was the comment passed upon the tax in 1843:--
"Health is the capital of the working man, and nothing can justify a
tax affecting the health of the people, and especially of the labouring
community, whose bodily health and strength constitute their wealth,
and, oftentimes, their only possession. It is a tax upon light and air,
a tax more vicious in principle and more injurious in its practical
consequences than a tax upon food."
Not until 1851 was the tax abandoned, but its evil consequences,
wrought in stone and embodied in bricks and mortar, endured many a
long year after.
The existing laws or regulations as to building were wholly inadequate
to secure healthy houses. And there was no public authority with
power to compel attention to the internal condition of houses so as
to prevent their continuance in such a filthy and unwholesome state
as to endanger the health of the public. There was no power to compel
house owners to make drains and carry them to the common sewer where
it existed. No persons were appointed to carry into effect such
communication. No persons were authorised to make inspection and to
report upon these matters.
The poor, or, indeed, the working classes generally, were powerless
to alter or amend the construction of the dwellings in which they
were compelled to reside, still less to alter their surroundings.
Any improvement in the condition of their dwellings could only be by
voluntary action on the part of the landlords, or of interference
by Government to compel that measure of justice to the poor, and of
economy to the ratepayers.
Parliament failed to interfere with any effect; and as to the landlords
or house-owners, their interest ran all the other way.
Few persons of large capital built houses as a speculation, or had
anything to do with them. Many, however, who were desirous of making
the highest possible interest on their money acquired either freehold
or leasehold land, and built cheap and ill-constructed houses upon it
without the least regard to the health of the future inmates.
And the small landlords were often the most unscrupulous with regard to
the condition of the houses they let, and exacted the highest rents.
Inasmuch as this freedom as regarded house construction had been going
on almost from time immemorial, it was not only the newly-built houses
which were bad. Earlier built houses had rapidly fallen into disrepair
and semi-ruin, and were steadily going from bad to worse, and becoming
ever less and less suitable for human dwellings.
The following description[19] of parts of St. Giles' and Spitalfields
shows what, under a state of freedom as to building, had been attained
to in 1840, and is typical of what so extensively prevailed in the
central parts of London:--
"Those districts are composed almost entirely of small courts, very
small and very narrow, the access to them being only under gateways;
in many cases they have been larger courts originally, and afterwards
built in again with houses back to back, without any outlet behind, and
only consisting of two rooms, and almost a ladder for a staircase; and
those houses are occupied by an immense number of inhabitants; they are
all as dark as possible, and as filthy as it is possible for any place
to be, arising from want of air and light."
Here is another description--that of "Christopher Court," a cul-de-sac
in Whitechapel--given, in 1848, by Dr. Allison, one of the surgeons of
the Union:--
"This was one of the dirtiest places which human beings ever
visited--the horrible stench which polluted the place seemed to be
closed in hermetically among the people; not a breath of fresh air
reached them--all was abominable."
It is needless to multiply instances. There is a dreadful unanimity
of testimony from all parts of London as to the miserable character
and condition of the houses in which in the middle of the nineteenth
century the industrial and the lower classes were forced to live;
the deficiency or total absence of drainage, the universal filth and
abomination of every kind, the fearful overcrowding, the ravages
of every type of disease, and the absolute misery in which masses
struggled for existence.
The density of houses upon an area has long been recognised as one of
the great contributing causes to the ill-health of a community, but
when coupled with the overcrowding of human beings in those houses, the
combined results are always disastrous in the extreme.
Overcrowding had been a long-standing evil in London; had existed far
back in history.
As London had grown, the evil had grown; and about the middle of the
last century it was immeasurably greater than ever before, and its
disastrous consequences were on a vastly larger scale.
The great economic forces which resulted, in certain districts of
London, in the destruction of houses and great clearances of ground,
had largely reduced the available accommodation for dwellings, and the
expelled inhabitants, chained to the locality by the fact of their
livelihood being dependent upon their residence being close by, were
forced to invade the yet remaining places in the neighbourhood suited
to their means. As the circle of possible habitations contracted,
while the numbers seeking accommodation therein increased, a larger
population was crowded into an ever-diminishing number of houses.
It was also a most unfortunate but apparently inevitable consequence
that once a beginning was made to improve some of the streets and
thoroughfares of London, and to substitute in any district a better
class of houses and shops for those actually existing, the improvements
necessarily involved increased overcrowding in that particular locality
and in those adjoining it. But so it was.
Thus, in the eighteen hundred and forties a new street--New Oxford
Street--was formed. It was driven through "a hive of human beings,
a locality overflowing with human life." Evidence given before the
Commission in 1847 described the results:--
"The effect has been to lessen the population of my neighbourhood by
about 5,000 people, and therefore to improve it at the expense of other
parts of London. Some have gone to the streets leading to Drury Lane,
some to St. Luke's, Whitechapel, but more to St. Marylebone and St.
Pancras. The vestries of St. Marylebone and St. Pancras disliked this
very much. Places in the two latter parishes which were before bad
enough are now intolerable, owing to the number of poor who formerly
lived in St. Giles'."
And a year or so later, from across the river, came the complaint from
Lambeth that "owing to the number of houses pulled down in Westminster
and other places, there had been a great influx of Irish and other
labourers which necessarily caused a great overcrowding of the
miserable domiciles already overfull."
This Lambeth complaint is specially interesting, as it refers to
another great cause of overcrowding--the constant immigration into
London of labourers and poor people in search of work or food.
Owing to the ever increasing and urgent demand for house accommodation
for the working and poorer classes, it became a very remunerative
proceeding for the occupier of a house to sub-let it in portions to
separate families or individuals, and the practice gradually extended
to and absorbed streets hitherto belonging to the better class. The
owner of a property let his whole house to a tenant; this tenant,
seeing an easy way of making money, sub-let the rooms in it in twos or
threes, or even separately, at a very profitable rate to individual
tenants. Nor did the sub-letting end here, for these tenants let off
even the sides or corners of their room or rooms to individuals or
families who were unable to bear the expense of a whole room. And so
the house sank at once into being a "tenement house"--that prolific
source of the very worst evils, sanitary, physical, and moral, to those
who inhabited them.
Even the underground kitchens and cellars, which were never intended
for human habitation, were let to tenants, and thus turned to financial
profit.[20] It mattered not that they were without air or ventilation,
or even light; it mattered not that they were damp, or sometimes even
inundated with the overflow of cesspools; it mattered not that they
were inhabited contrary to the provisions of Section 53 of the Building
Act of 1844, for that section was of no operative effect whatever. It
is true that "Overseers" were to report to the "Official Referees," who
were to give notice to and inform the owners and occupiers of such
dwellings as to the consequences of disobeying the Statute, and the
"District Surveyor" was to carry out the directions of the Referees.
But nothing was ever done--Overseers, District Surveyors, and Referees,
all neglected their duties.
Overcrowding was usually at its worst in one-room tenements, and in an
immense number of cases in the metropolis one room served for a family
of the working or of the labouring classes. It was their bedroom, their
kitchen, their wash-house, their sitting-room, their eating-room,
and, when they did not follow any occupation elsewhere, it was their
workroom and their shop. In this one room they were born, and lived,
and slept, and died amidst the other inmates.
And still worse, in innumerable cases, more than one family lived in
one room.
When this one room was in a badly drained, damp, ill-constructed,
and unventilated house, reeking with a polluted atmosphere, and that
house was in a narrow and hemmed-in, unventilated "court" or "place"
or "alley"--as an immense number of them were--the maximum of evil
consequences was attained.
The evils of overcrowding cannot be summed up in a phrase, nor be
realised by the description, however graphic, of instance upon
instance. The consequences to the individual living in an overcrowded
room or dwelling were always disastrous, and, through the disastrous
consequences to great masses of individuals, the whole community was
affected in varying degree.
Physically, mentally, and morally, the overcrowded people suffered. Not
a disease, not a human ill which flesh is heir to, but was nurtured and
rendered more potent in the human hothouse of the overcrowded room; and
the ensuing ill-health and diseases not alone doubled the death rate,
but increased from ten to twenty-fold, at least, the number of victims
of disease of one sort or another--diseases dealing rapid death, or
slowly but surely sapping human strength and vitality.
In the report of the London Fever Hospital for 1845 a certain
overcrowded room in the neighbourhood was described--a room which was
filled to excess every night, sometimes from 90 to 100 men being in it;
a room 33 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 7 feet high. From that one room
alone no fewer than 130 persons affected with fever were received into
the hospital in the course of the year.[21]
One, whose very close experience of the conditions of life and
circumstances of the poorer classes of London at the time of the
cholera epidemic of 1848-9 entitled him to speak with special authority
on the subject, thus summed up his views and conclusions:--
"The members of the medical profession, in the presence of these
physical evils, when they are, as so often happens, concentrated, find
their science all but powerless; the minister of religion turns from
these densely crowded and foul localities almost without hope; whilst
the administrators of the law, especially the chaplains and governors
of prisons, see that crime of every complexion is most rife where
material degradation is most profound."[22]
And he quoted from the report of the Governors of the Houses of
Correction at Coldbath Fields and Westminster the following passage:--
"The crowning cause of crime in the metropolis is, in my opinion, to
be found in the shocking state of the habitations of the poor, their
confined and foetid localities, and the consequent necessity for
consigning children to the streets for requisite air and exercise.
These causes combine to produce a state of frightful demoralisation.
The absence of cleanliness, of decency, of all decorum--the disregard
of any needful separation of the sexes--the polluting language and the
scenes of profligacy hourly occurring, all tend to foster idleness and
vicious abandonment. Here I beg emphatically to record my conviction
that this constitutes the _monster mischief_."
And then he himself adds:--
"If to considerations like these regarding the moral and religious
aspect of this great question, be added those suggested by the
indescribable physical sufferings inflicted on the labouring classes
by the existing state of the public health in the metropolis, the
conviction must of necessity follow, that the time is come when efforts
in some degree commensurate with these great and pervading evils can no
longer with safety be deferred."[23]
This opinion was expressed three years after the Royal Commissioners of
1847 had said in their report:--
"There appears to be no available (legal) means for the immediate
prevention of overcrowding; all we can do is to point it out as a
source of evil to be dealt with hereafter."
One gets a clue to the unceasing insanitary condition of the greater
part of London and to the inhuman conduct of so many tenement
house-owners when one realises that there was no legal punishment
whatever for the perpetration and perpetuation of the insanitary
abominations, no matter how noxious or dangerous they were, nor how
rapidly or directly they led to disease or death. An order to abate
a nuisance (which usually was not obeyed) appears to have been the
only penalty, and it was only obtainable at great trouble and after
great delays; and, even if obtained and the nuisance abated, there
was nothing to prevent the offender at once starting the nuisance
again. Offences of the most heinous description--amounting morally to
deliberate murder--were perpetrated with absolute impunity. Houses
which were scarcely ever free from fever cases were allowed to continue
year after year levying their heavy death tax from the unfortunate
inhabitants.
In Whitechapel one house, inhabited by twelve or fourteen families, was
mentioned as scarcely free from fever cases for as many years.
"It is also a fearful fact that in almost every instance where patients
die from fever, or are removed to the hospital or workhouse, their
rooms are let as soon as possible to new tenants, and no precautions
used, or warning given; and in some houses, perfect hotbeds of fever
probably, where a patient dies or is removed, the first new-comer is
put into the sick man's bed."
Sanitary improvement was almost a hopeless task. There was a dead
weight of opposition to it in the ignorance and recklessness and
indifference of the poorer classes, the very hopelessness of being
able to improve their condition. And there was an active and bitter
opposition from those house-owners or lessees who for their own
financial profit exploited the poorer classes.
"There is one house in Spitalfields," said Dr. Lynch, "which has been
the constant habitation of fever for fifteen years. I have enforced
upon the landlord the necessity of cleansing and lime-washing it, but
it has never been done!!... There are many landlords with whom nothing
but immediate interest has any effect."[24]
The favourite principle that an Englishman's house was his castle
was used as a defence against any suggestion that the malpractices
committed therein should be curbed.
Others argued, "I am entitled to do what I like with my own."
"We everywhere find people ready to declare in respect to every
evil: There is not any law that could compel its removal, the place
complained of being private property."
All sorts of far-fetched and strained arguments were devised by them in
the efforts to evade responsibility for the infamous condition of their
property, and to defend and justify inaction.
Fortunately some voices began to be raised as to the persons upon whom
both equitably and morally the responsibility lay of improving the
condition of things.
"I would suggest," said a voice in 1837, "the idea of the landlords of
many of the wretched filthy tenements being held responsible for their
being tenantable, healthy, and cleanly."
And the Commissioners in 1844 reported:--
"There are some points on which the public safety demands the exercise
of a power on the part of a public authority to compel attention to
the internal condition of houses so as to prevent their continuance in
such a filthy and unwholesome state as to endanger the health of the
public."
And they recommended that:--
"On complaint of the parish, medical, or other authorised officer, that
any house or premises are in such a filthy and unwholesome state as to
endanger the health of the public, the local authority have power to
require the landlord to cleanse it properly without delay."
But ideas or recommendations were alike ignored by the Government and
Parliament, and several years were to pass before any legislation
was attempted which would make owners responsible for their misdeeds
in matters affecting the public health, and would subject them to
penalties for their misconduct.
There were many other causes contributing largely to the insanitary
condition of the people of the metropolis, prominent, if not most
deleterious, amongst them being the widely-prevalent practice of
interring the dead in the already overcrowded churchyards or burial
grounds in the midst of the most densely populated districts of
London--a practice resulting in "the slaughter of the living by the
dead."
Burial grounds long since utilised to their utmost for the disposal of
the dead were utilised over and over again for graves which could only
be dug in the débris of human remains, until the soil reeked with human
decomposition; the surrounding atmosphere was polluted by the horrible
process, and they became monstrous foci of infection.
How extensive this evil was may be realised from figures given by Mr.
Chadwick in a report to the Government:--
"In the metropolis, on spaces of ground which do not exceed 203 acres,
closely surrounded by the abodes of the living, layer upon layer, each
consisting of a population numerically equivalent to a large army of
20,000 adults, and nearly 30,000 youths and children, is every year
imperfectly interred. Within the period of the existence of the
present generation upwards of a million of dead must have been interred
in those same spaces."
And he asserted that:--
"The emanations from human remains are of a nature to produce fatal
disease, and to depress the general health of whoever is exposed to
them; and interments in the vaults of churches, or in graveyards
surrounded by inhabited houses, contribute to the mass of atmospheric
and other impurities by which the general health and average duration
of life of the inhabitants is diminished."
Too horribly gruesome and revolting are the descriptions of these
graveyards--places where the dead were, so to speak, shovelled in as
the filth of the streets is into scavengers' carts, and which "gave
forth the mephitical effluvia of death"; such a one as that in Russell
Court, off Drury Lane, where the whole ground, which by constant
burials had been raised several feet, was "a mass of corruption"
which polluted the air the living had to breathe, and poisoned the
well water which in default of other they often had to drink. Or
those in Rotherhithe, where "the interments were so numerous that the
half-decomposed organic matter was often thrown up to make way for
fresh graves, exposing sights disgusting, and emitting foul effluvia."
The master hand of Dickens has given a more vivid picture of one of
these places than any to be found in Parliamentary Blue Books:--
"A hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant
diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and
sisters who have not departed.... Into a beastly scrap of ground, which
a Turk would reject as a savage abomination, and a Caffre would shudder
at, they bring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian
burial. With houses looking on on every side, save where a reeking
little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate--with every
villainy of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element
of death in action close on life--here they lower our dear brother down
a foot or two; here sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption;
an avenging ghost at many a sick bedside; a shameful testimony to
future ages, how civilisation and barbarism walked this boastful island
together."
Interments in the vaults of the churches--then a common practice--were
also a fruitful source of sickness and death. It mattered not whether
or not the bodies were hermetically closed in leaden coffins, for
"sooner or later every corpse buried in the vault of a church spreads
the products of decomposition through the air which is breathed,
as readily as if it had never been enclosed"; thus adding to the
contamination of the atmosphere.
The death-roll from this horrible condition of things cannot be gauged,
but those most conversant with the matter were firmly convinced that it
was the direct cause of fevers, and of all kinds of sickness among the
people.
Pollution of the atmosphere which people had to breathe, and upon the
purity of which the public health in varying degree depended, was
caused also by various businesses and processes of manufacture grouped
together under the name of "noxious trades," such as bone-boilers,
india-rubber manufacturers, gut-scrapers, manure manufacturers,
slaughterers of cattle, and many others.
In 1849[25] a description had been given of a street in Shoreditch
which shows to what extent this evil had attained:--
"It is impossible to believe, passing through this main street, that
so great a number of pigsties, bone-boileries, dog-and-cat's meat
manufactories, and tallow-melting establishments, on a large scale
... should exist in a densely-crowded and closely-built locality. The
noxious trades and occupations which so greatly abound here exerted a
most deleterious influence upon the health of the inhabitants."
Parliament, in 1844, had enacted with regard to several of these that
it should not be lawful for any person to establish any such business
at a less distance than 40 feet from the public way, or than 50 feet
from any dwelling-house; and that it should not be lawful to erect a
dwelling-house within 50 feet of such businesses.
But these legislative restraints were utterly inadequate as any sort of
check upon the evil; for, even if a nuisance were abated, there was no
law to prevent its repetition, and so the evil promptly re-appeared.
The stenches did not limit their sphere of action by feet, but
distributed their abominations over large areas; and the manufacturers
cared not what nuisances they subjected people to, nor how far the
horrid smells were wafted by the winds, so long as they themselves
could carry on a profitable business. And the intentions of Parliament
were wholly frustrated by the District Surveyors, who were charged with
the enforcement of the Act, and who wholly failed in their duty.
As for slaughter houses, until 1851 any person could start one who
pleased, and practically where he pleased, subject only to the shadowy
restriction of the common law as to doing anything which might be
considered a nuisance.
And so these numerous and various abominations, mixed with the impurity
of the atmosphere caused by the masses of smoke emitted from the
chimneys of factories and private houses, and with the sickening smell
from the Thames, spread sickness and death throughout great portions
of the metropolis, and were one of the great causes of its insanitary
condition.
CHAPTER I, PART II
Previous to the fifth decade of the last century it was only very
rarely that the prevalence of disease, or any subject connected with
the health of the community, received recognition by Parliament.
In 1840 the Medical Society of London, in a petition to Parliament,
called attention to the increase of smallpox, and to its preventability
by vaccination, and to the imperfect means of vaccination throughout
the country.
The mortality from this--"one of the greatest pests that ever afflicted
humanity"[26]--was very great. In one city in the south of England no
less than 500 persons had died of it in one year. In London in 1839
upwards of 1,000 had died of it.
And Parliament, after an unusual amount of discussion, passed an
Act[27] for extending the practice of vaccination, and enacted that
Boards of Guardians might contract with their Medical Officers or other
medical practitioners "for the vaccination of all persons resident in
their Union or Parish."
And at the same time "inoculation" or "otherwise producing smallpox"
was made penal--to the extent of one month's imprisonment.
In 1846 there was a sudden display of Parliamentary energy in health
matters.
The total want of baths and wash-houses for the poorer classes of the
people in the towns was brought under the notice of the Legislature,
and, as it was deemed "desirable for the health, comfort, and welfare
of the inhabitants of towns, &c., to encourage the establishment
therein of baths, wash-houses, and open bathing places," an Act was
passed giving power to the Parochial Authorities to establish such
institutions and to borrow money for the purpose.[28]
Their provision would have tended to an increased degree of cleanliness
among the people, and consequently an improved sanitary condition, but
it was long before many of these institutions were established, the
local authorities being slow in availing themselves of the facilities
thus offered, and this piece of legislation--like every other of the
sort--being purely permissive or facilitatory.
And in the same year Parliament so far awakened to the fact that
certain causes of disease were removable, that in a preamble to an
Act[29] it acknowledged that it was "highly expedient for the purposes
of preserving the health of Her Majesty's subjects that better
provision should be made for the removal of certain nuisances likely to
promote or increase disease."
The better provision made by the Act did not amount to much. There
were two forms of insanitary evil to be combated: one the chronic
insanitary condition of the masses of the people, the other the
invasion of the country by some exceptional or unusual epidemic disease.
As to the former, authority was given to certain public officers,
on receipt of a certificate of two medical men, to complain of the
existence of certain nuisances. The Justices before whom the case was
heard might order the abatement of the nuisance; and if the order were
not obeyed, the parties complaining might enter upon the necessary
cleansing of such dwelling, and the cost of the same might be imposed
on the owner or occupier.
In London, the power of complaint was vested in the officers of those
petty local bodies which have already been described, and, in their
default, in the Boards of Guardians.
Ludicrous, truly, was the idea that the countless thousands of
nuisances existing in London could be remedied, or even temporarily
abated, by so cumbrous, dilatory, and complicated a procedure as the
complaint of an individual backed by the certificate (which would
have to be paid for) of two doctors to the officer of a more or
less hostile and self-interested local body, who might or might not
bring the complaint before the Justices, whose decision, even if it
were in favour of the complainant, could only effect a reform so far
as the precise nuisance complained of was concerned, and that only
temporarily, for were the nuisance renewed the whole procedure would
have to be gone through again.
Yet this was the "better provision" propounded and enacted by
Parliament in 1846 for the regeneration of the sanitary condition of
the great masses of the people of London. Nor was it even intended to
be permanently available, for the Act was only to be in force for two
years.
The dreadful nemesis for such dense inappreciation by Parliament of
its obligations to the community was, unfortunately, soon to fall
heavily upon the unhappy people of the metropolis. Thousands of
miles away in Hindoostan, Asiatic cholera of a deadly type had been
playing havoc with the people of the country. Thence it was slowly
but steadily moving westward; so much so that the desirability of
making some preparations for defence against its invasion of England
became apparent; and in 1847 a Royal Commission was appointed to
"inquire whether any, and what, special means might be requisite for
the improvement of the health of the metropolis, with regard more
especially to the better house, street, and land drainage, ... the
better supply of water for domestic use, &c., &c., &c."
One important conclusion was at once forced upon the Commissioners,
namely, that the great and vital task of making adequate provision for
the sewerage of London could not be accomplished so long as it was
entrusted to several bodies, each with a district of its own.
"Everything," they said, "pointed to the necessity of operations being
superintended by one competent body"; and they declared that it was
expedient that a Commission for the entire drainage of the whole of the
metropolis should be appointed with a special view to such measures,
and with aid to carry them out.
This report was followed in the ensuing year (1848) by an Act of
Parliament[30] abolishing the various Commissions of Sewers (except
those of the City), and creating in their stead one executive body
whose members were to be appointed by the Crown.
Wide powers were given to this central body: among them that no house
was to be built or re-built without proper drains, and without proper
sanitary conveniences, and that if houses built before the passing of
the Act were not properly drained, the Commissioners might order the
work to be done.
The Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers were duly appointed, and they
divided the area over which they had jurisdiction into seven separate
sub-districts, with a Commission for each.
The creation of this body constitutes a great landmark in the sanitary
evolution of London, for it was the first recognition by Parliament of
the great principle of the unity of London; of the necessity--at least
so far as regarded one matter--for one central governing authority for
the numerous populations, and bodies, and districts which were becoming
welded together into one mighty town and one vast community.
It is true, the recognition extended only to this one matter, and that
the Central Board was to be a Board nominated by the Crown, and without
any vestige of representation upon it, but none the less it was a
forward step towards a sounder and wiser system of government than that
which had hitherto prevailed.
That the new body failed to prove equal to the task imposed upon it was
due as well to the constituent members thereof as to the imperfections
of the machinery devised by the Act. Its failure, however, in no way
controverted the soundness of the great principle thus, for the first
time, recognised by Parliament.
The evidence given before the Royal Commissioners brought into view
the enormous area of filth and limitless insanitation in London: it
displayed some of the principal sources of the excessive amount of
disease and premature mortality; and to some extent it elucidated the
principles and demonstrated the practicability of large measures of
prevention. And it also disclosed the regrettable fact that since the
epidemic of cholera in 1832 there had been little or no improvement in
the sanitary condition of many parts of the metropolis--indeed, in most
parts of it the evils were wider spread and acuter in form, whilst,
owing to the increase of population, the numbers affected were vastly
larger.
All the while the Commissioners were sitting, the evil seeds of
insanitation were producing a tremendous crop, and events actually
occurring at the moment emphasised the crying need for some means
of grappling with the intolerable existing evils. The whole class
of zymotic diseases--diseases which constitute the true gauge of
the healthiness or unhealthiness of a community--received a rapid
and immense development.[31] From 9,600 deaths from such diseases
in 1846, the number increased to 14,000 in 1847; and in this latter
year the metropolis was visited by two epidemics which rendered the
mortality of the last quarter of the year higher than that of any other
quarter of any year since the new system of registration of deaths
had been commenced.[32] Typhus fever produced fourfold its ordinary
mortality--other diseases showed a similar increase--and towards
the end of November influenza broke out and spread so suddenly and
to such an extent that within five or six weeks it attacked no less
than 500,000 persons out of 2,100,000--the then population of London.
Altogether the excess of mortality in 1847 over 1845 was very close
upon 50,000 persons.
The attitude of Parliament and of successive Governments about this
period, as regarded the insanitary condition of the masses of the
inhabitants of London, is now almost incomprehensible. The plea of
ignorance cannot be urged in exculpation, for their own Blue Books and
official returns were there to inform them. Moreover, the existence of
similar evils throughout the country, where they were on a very much
smaller scale, was recognised both by the Government and Parliament.
Lord Morpeth, a member of the Cabinet, speaking in 1848 in the House of
Commons, said[33]:--
"It is far from any temporary evil, any transient visitant, against
which our legislation is now called upon to provide. It is the abiding
host of disease, the endemic and not the epidemic pestilence, the
permanent overhanging mist of infection, the annual slaughter doubling
in its ravages our bloodiest fields of conflict, that we are now
summoned to grapple with."
Yet they resolutely shut their eyes to the huge mass of misery and
fearful waste of life which was going on at their very doors, and all
around them. This was proved beyond controversy by their action in
1848. In that year the Government introduced into Parliament a measure
which was, in effect, a comprehensive sanitary code, and which, if
duly enforced, was capable of conferring vast benefit on the community
at large.
Describing the provisions of the Bill, Lord Morpeth said:--
"It will be imperative upon the local administrative bodies to hold
meetings for the transaction of business; to appoint a surveyor;
to appoint an inspector of nuisances; to make public sewers; to
substitute sufficient sewers in case old ones be discontinued; to
require owners or occupiers to provide house-drains; to cleanse and
water streets; to appoint or contract with scavengers to cleanse,
cover, or fill up offensive ditches; ... to provide sufficient supply
of water for drainage, public and private, and for domestic use.
"The permissive powers to be granted to the local administrative
bodies ... include the power to make house-drains upon default of
owner or occupier, to make bye-laws with respect to the removal of
filth, to whitewash and purify houses after notice ... to require that
certain furnaces be made to consume their own smoke ... to provide
places for public recreation, to purchase and maintain waterworks."
The Bill, which was duly passed and became an Act, in fact provided
means for coping with many of the sorest dangers, it curbed some of
the powers for evil which so many persons had such little scruple in
exercising; it provided methods for bringing to punishment at least
some of the evil-doers who hitherto had gone scot free; and it held out
some prospects of the diminution of the huge death rate and still huger
sick rate.
Though a somewhat similar Bill, introduced in 1847, and which was
withdrawn, had included the metropolis, this Act did not apply to the
metropolis. Its application was limited to the rest of England and
Wales. London--the capital of the kingdom--was, it was said, "reserved
for a separate Bill." "The separate Bill," however, did not make its
appearance. The subtle, all-pervading influence of vested rights was
too powerful for any such reform to be attempted.[34] And so, the
Government and Parliament, deliberately excluding the metropolis
from this beneficial legislation, left untouched the centre and main
emporium of disease, and left the people of London exposed on all sides
to the merciless onslaught of the direst diseases which can afflict
mankind.
Cholera, however, the only power able to awe the Government, was now
so close at hand that some special provision had to be devised for the
protection of the public health. Parliament, this time not excluding
the metropolis, re-enacted the trumpery "Nuisance Removal and Diseases
Prevention Act" of 1846, with some slight enlargements, and one
important addition, namely, authority for the appointment by the Privy
Council of a General Board of Health, which might issue directions and
regulations for the prevention of epidemic and contagious disease.
Upon this slender thread Londoners were left dependent for such
measures as might afford them some protection against the impending
epidemic. No other help was at hand. Nor was there much time for help
to be organised or preparations made, for cholera had reached Egypt and
Constantinople, and by June, 1848, had crept forward to St. Petersburg.
Isolated suspicious cases occurred in London in the summer of 1848,[35]
then an undoubted case in Southwark on the 22nd of September, and then
more undoubted cases, and the disease had secured a footing. As the
winter approached it died down and ceased, having carried off some 468
victims.
The Privy Council had appointed a General Board of Health, and early
in November the Board issued regulations directing the Guardians to
take the necessary measures for the cleansing of houses, the abatement
of nuisances, and generally for the removal of all matters injurious
to health. To direct is one thing, to get obeyed is another, and with
some few exceptions, these directions were disregarded. Partly, the
fault was Parliament's.
The Act, by naming various local authorities, had created a divided
power, and consequently a divided responsibility, which resulted in
inaction, neglect, delay, and loss of life; and though the General
Board of Health might require the Boards of Guardians and other local
bodies to put the regulations into force, they had no power to compel
them to do so, and in default of such power the General Board of Health
was almost helpless.
The cessation of the disease proved to be only temporary. Scarcely was
1849 entered on than the epidemic broke out again, steadily gathering
momentum as the summer went on.
In Bethnal Green there was an outbreak in the night--sudden and
panic-striking--"consternation and alarm were spread abroad--the
hurried passing and re-passing of messengers, and the wailing of
relatives, filled the streets with confusion and woe, and impressed all
with a deep sense of awful calamity."
And the epidemic spread and spread until in one week in September
(1849) the deaths from it amounted to 2,026.[36]
Were the full facts known, the mortality was doubtless far higher.
And then the epidemic began rapidly to abate, and by the end of the
year had ceased, having slain some 14,600 victims.[37]
Numerous and important were the lessons inculcated by this disastrous
epidemic. It afforded the most definite evidence that had yet been
obtained of the influence upon health of local conditions and
pre-disposing causes.
It showed that in the most violent and extensive outbreaks of the
pestilence its virulence was invariably confined to circumscribed
localities. It showed that the habitat of cholera and the habitat of
fever were one and the same.
Deaths from cholera took place in the very same streets, and houses,
and rooms, which had been again and again visited by fever; and rooms
were pointed out where some of the poor people had recovered from fever
in the spring to fall victims to cholera in the summer.
As it was tersely summed up by one of the most active and capable
medical officers of the Board of Health:--
"We find but one cause of so much sickness, suffering and death--the
prolific parent of all this diversified offspring--'filth.'
"It is in filth, in decomposing organic matter, that the main causes of
epidemic diseases are to be sought out--filthy alleys, filthy houses,
filthy air, filthy water, and filthy persons."
What the General Board of Health could do, it did, as was indeed to be
expected from such sanitary enthusiasts as Lord Ashley, Dr. Southwood
Smith, and Mr. Edwin Chadwick, but the local authorities were dilatory,
lukewarm, or actually hostile, and their proceedings, where anything
was done, were altogether inadequate for insuring those prompt,
comprehensive, and vigorous measures so urgently demanded in the
presence of a great and destructive epidemic such as malignant cholera.
The system of house-to-house visitation was essential for the discovery
and checking of the disease, but, wrote the Board, "nothing effective
was done or attempted in the metropolis. We repeatedly and earnestly
urged upon the Boards of Guardians the importance to the saving of life
of making immediate arrangements for special measures of prevention,
but our representations were made in vain.
"The local authorities could not be induced to carry into effect the
preventive measures we proposed."
Several unions and parishes, among whom were some of the most wealthy
and populous, positively refused to comply with the directions of the
Board.
In the case of Bethnal Green, just described, the Board issued a
"Special Order." But even under these urgent circumstances "the Board
of Guardians appointed no medical officer for five days, they provided
no nurses, they established no hospital, they opened no dispensary,
they appointed one inspector of nuisances instead of two, and they made
no provision for extensive and effectual lime-washing."
The explanation of the inaction and hostility of the local authorities
lay in the fact that the various measures prescribed by the Act
interfered with private interests, and especially with interests which
were largely represented on the Boards of Guardians. Among the members
of those boards there was often "an antagonistic power" at work which
prevented proper attention being paid to the sanitary condition of the
localities of the poor. In many instances, owners of small houses and
cottage property, to which class of dwellings the provisions of the
Act more particularly applied, were themselves members of such boards,
and when this was not the case, they exerted an influence not the less
powerful because it was indirect. This interest often conspired to
impede efficient sanitary measures.[38]
Local interests also operated, the apprehension being that if
active and really efficient measures were adopted the trade of the
neighbourhood would suffer.
In one instance--an instructive one--where the epidemic had
extensively prevailed among the poor, its existence was denied, and
house-visitation resisted, till, after considerable delay and loss of
life, a number of shopkeepers were attacked by the disease, and _then_,
all opposition ceased.
The evidence of the unfitness of the local authorities charged with
the administration of the Act for the duties imposed upon them was
overwhelming. The unfortunate position was accentuated and intensified
by the fact that the General Board of Health had no power either of
compelling the local authorities to do their duty or of itself acting
in default of their neglect; and the absence of this first essential of
effective administration hampered and crippled its action.
The Board summed up its experience of this great visitation of
1848-9:--
"The evidence shows that where combined sanitary arrangements have been
carried into effect the outbreak of the pestilence has been sometimes
averted; that where not prevented, its course has been gradually
arrested.
"That where material improvements have been made in the condition
of the dwellings of the labouring classes, there has been an entire
exemption from the disease, and where minor improvements were made, the
attacks have been less severe and less extensive.
"That with reference to the measure of prevention, the immunity from
the disease has been in proportion to the extent to which those
measures have been carried into effect systematically and promptly."
By the end of the year the epidemic was practically over. And then the
usual thing took place.
It is described a few months later by Dr. Grainger, who wrote:--
"In many of the most densely populated districts the inspectors of
nuisances have been dismissed, the cleansing operations have been
relaxed, and there is too much reason to apprehend that the courts and
alleys will lapse back again into their accustomed filth, ... that
houses proved by the evidence of medical officers, inspectors, and
local authorities to be unfit for human habitation will long continue
to remain 'pest-houses,' spreading disease around; and that, in the
midst of these tolerated and accumulated evils, the industrious classes
will continue as heretofore to be decimated by fever, or, should it
again break out, by cholera."[39]
CHAPTER I, PART III
The "City" of London, though constituting territorially and by
population but a small portion of the metropolis, affords much matter
of deep interest in connection with the sanitary evolution of London,
totally apart from those great economic forces emanating from it which
have dominated the whole of London life.
The "City" differed mainly, as has already been pointed out, from
"greater London" in that it had a real and active governing body for
its local affairs, and that that body was possessed of considerable
powers for dealing with the sanitary condition and requirements of
its inhabitants. That those sanitary powers were annually delegated
to a body entitled the Commissioners of Sewers in no way diminished
its sanitary authority or weakened its efficiency, for that body was
practically a Committee of its own, and had authority, directly or
indirectly, over nearly every one of the physical conditions which were
likely to affect the health or comfort of its inhabitants.
The "City" differed also in that it was able to obtain from the
Government and Parliament powers which neither Government nor
Parliament would grant to "greater London."
It differed too in that from 1848 onwards it was in beneficial
enjoyment of the services of a Medical Officer of Health.
But in many respects the "City" was a microcosm of the metropolis; and
though possessed of a local government, yet was it cursed with evils
which were the terrible legacy left it by the ignorance, indifference,
neglect, incapacity, or cupidity, of previous generations.
The graphic reports of its Medical Officer of Health--Dr. John
Simon--have left us a most vivid and valuable contemporary picture of
the sanitary condition and surroundings of the people living in the
favoured area about the middle of the last century, and they disclose,
in no hesitating manner, the desperate evils prevalent therein.
The Thames, "with the immeasurable filth" which polluted it, and its
acres of mud banks saturated with the reeking sewage of an immense
population, vitiated the atmosphere of the City, just as it did that of
other parts of London. But sewers there were in the City, of one sort
or another, over forty miles of them, and some of the filth of the City
was carried away, at least into the river.
House drainage into the sewers was, however, either lamentably
deficient or non-existent, and cesspools abounded--abounded so freely
that "parts of the City might be described as having a cesspool-city
excavated beneath it."
"It requires," reported Dr. Simon to his employers, "little medical
knowledge to understand that animals will scarcely thrive in an
atmosphere of their own decomposing excrements; yet such, strictly and
literally speaking, is the air which a very large proportion of the
inhabitants of the City are condemned to breathe.... In some instances,
where the basement storey of a house is tenanted, the cesspool lies,
perhaps merely boarded over, close beneath the feet of a family of
human beings whom it surrounds uninterruptedly, whether they wake or
sleep, with its foetid pollution and poison."
For such evils, and such a state of things, he said, house drainage,
with effective water supply, were the remedies which could alone avail;
and it was only in the Session of 1848 that the authority to secure and
enforce these remedies was vested by the Legislature in any public body
whatsoever. The City was fortunately included, but the metropolis, with
its two and a half millions of inhabitants, was unfortunately not.
The unrestricted supply of water, he pointed out, was the first
essential of decency, of comfort, and of health; no civilisation of the
poorer classes could exist without it; and any limitation to its use in
the metropolis was a barrier which must maintain thousands in a state
of the most unwholesome filth and degradation.
Even in the City, however, the supply of water was but "a fraction of
what it should have been, and thousands of the population inhabited
houses which had no supply of it."
Nor was what was supplied by the Water Companies much to boast of.
"The waters were conducted from their sources in open channels; they
received in a large measure the surface-washing, the drainage, and
even the sewage of the country through which they passed; they derived
casual impurities from bathers and barges, and on their arrival were,
after a short subsidence in reservoirs, distributed without filtration
to the public."
In some cases the scanty distribution was from a stand-pipe in a
court or alley, for a very short time of the day. In other cases the
water was delivered into butts or cisterns. Their condition is thus
described:--
"In inspecting the courts and alleys of the 'City,'" he wrote, "one
constantly sees butts, for the reception of water, either public
or in the open yards of 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."
It is interesting to observe that the evils of the system of water
supply by private companies were, even in the "City," so manifest that
Dr. Simon expressed his opinion that the only satisfactory solution
of the difficulty in connection therewith was the acquisition by
the public authority of the control of the supply, and he urged the
adoption of the principle of what is now denounced by some people as
"municipal trading."
In every practical sense the sale of water in London was a monopoly.
"The individual customer," wrote Dr. Simon, "who is dissatisfied with
his bargain can go to no other market; and however legitimate may be
his claim to be supplied with this prime necessary of life at its
cheapest rate, in the most efficient manner, and of the best possible
quality, your Honourable Court (the Commissioners of Sewers) hitherto
possesses no power to enforce it."
In the Public Health Act of 1848 the principle had been recognised by
Parliament so far as towns in the country were concerned--local Boards
of Health being authorised to provide their district with such a supply
of water as might be proper or sufficient, or to contract for such a
supply. He urged that the City should obtain a similar power.
"All the advantages which could possibly be gained by competition,
together with many benefits which no competition could ensure, would
thus be realised to the population under your charge."
But that solution of the difficulty was more than half a century in
advance of its accomplishment so far as either the "City" or "greater
London" was concerned.
As to the atmosphere in the "City," there seems to have been no limit
to the pollutions thereof, all of which were injurious to the health of
the public.
Numerous noxious and offensive trades were carried on in the most
crowded places.
Directly and indirectly, slaughtering of animals in the "City" was
prejudicial to the health of the population, and exercised a most
injurious influence upon the district.
The number of slaughter-houses registered and tolerated in the "City"
in 1848 amounted to 138, and of these, in 58 cases, the slaughtering
was carried out in the vaults and cellars.[40]
And there were very many noxious and offensive trades in close
dependence upon "the original nuisance" of the slaughter-house, and
round about it, "the concomitant and still more grievous nuisances
of gut-spinning, tripe-dressing, bone-boiling, tallow-melting,
paunch-cooking, &c., &c."
Certain it is that offensive businesses of these and other sorts were
carried on by their owners with an absolute disregard to the comfort or
health of the public.
The matter was a difficult one to deal with, as any severe restrictions
might destroy the trade or manufacture and take away from the people
the employment which gave them the means of earning a livelihood.
Furthermore, such restrictions were usually resented as an infraction
of personal liberty. Dr. Simon forcibly and conclusively answered this
contention.
"It might," he wrote, "be an infraction of personal liberty to
interfere with a proprietor's right to make offensive smells within
the limits of his own tenement, and for his own separate inhalation,
but surely it is a still greater infraction of personal liberty
when the proprietor, entitled as he is to but the joint use of an
atmosphere which is the common property of his neighbourhood, assumes
what is equivalent to a sole possession of it, and claims the right of
diffusing through it some nauseous effluvium which others, equally with
himself, are thus obliged to inhale."
Some improvement in this respect was rendered possible by the Act of
1851, which enacted that whatever trade or business might occasion
noxious or offensive effluvia, or otherwise annoy the inhabitants of
its neighbourhood, "shall" be required to employ the best known means
for preventing or counteracting such annoyance.
But the remedy scarcely appears to have been availed of or enforced,
and "greater London" was, as usual, excluded from the Act.
Another more constant pollution of the air was that resulting from
intramural burial. "Overcrowding" in the "City" was not limited to the
living; it extended even to the dead, and though the dead themselves
had passed beyond any further possible harm from it, yet their
overcrowding affected disastrously those they had left behind. Here
the evils already described as existing in "greater London" existed
also in acute form. Two thousand bodies or more were interred each year
actually within the "City" area, and the burial grounds were densely
packed. And "in all the larger parochial burying grounds, and in most
others, the soil was saturated with animal matter undergoing slow
decomposition."
And the vaults beneath the churches were "in many instances similarly
overloaded with materials of putrefaction, and the atmosphere which
should have been kept pure and without admixture for the living, was
hourly tainted with the foetid emanations of the dead...."
In Dr. Simon's words:--
"Close beneath the feet of those who attend the services of their
church there often lies an almost solid pile of decomposing human
remains, heaped as high as the vaulting will permit, and generally but
very partially coffined."
The Metropolitan Burials Act of 1852 effected a great improvement
in this respect by putting a term to the indefinite perpetuation of
this horrible evil. It gave the Secretary of State power to prohibit
further intramural burials, and it gave the "City," and other local
authorities, the power to establish burial places beyond the boundaries
of the metropolis. But, even when thus stopped, years had to elapse
before the condition of intramural burial grounds and vaults would
cease to vitiate the air around them.[41]
The atmosphere of the "City," the air which people breathed, was thus
vitiated in varying degrees of intensity by numerous and various
abominations--the polluted Thames, defective sewerage and drainage,
offensive trades, intramural interments.
As regards the houses in which the people lived, these were crammed
together--packed as closely together as builders' ingenuity could pack
them--many of them combining every defect that houses could have, and
so situated that ventilation was an impossibility.
"In very many parts of the City you find a number of courts, probably
with very narrow inlets, diverging from the open street in such
close succession that their backs adjoin, with no intermediate space
whatsoever. Consequently each row of houses has but a single row of
windows facing the confined court, and thus there is no possibility of
ventilation, either through the court generally or through the houses
which compose it.... Houses so constructed as to be as perfectly a
cul-de-sac out of the court as the court is a cul-de-sac out of the
street."[42]
And the climax of insanitary conditions was reached when these
densely-packed houses were overcrowded by human beings.
The process of converting dwelling-houses into warehouses, or business
offices, or for trade or manufactures was in full swing--a constant
force--and so the number of houses for people to live in became ever
fewer.
And the "tenement houses," in which the great bulk of the working
classes lived, became more and more crowded; houses wherein "each
holding or tenement, though very often consisting but of a single small
room, receives its inmates without available restriction as to their
sex or number, and without registration of the accommodation requisite
for cleanliness, decency, and health."
The Census of 1851 had shown an increase of over 4,200 in the
population of the "City," and a diminution of nearly 900 houses.
"Probably," wrote Dr. Simon, "for the most part it represents the
continued influx of a poor population into localities undesirable for
residence, and implies that habitations previously unwholesome by their
overcrowdedness are now still more densely thronged by a squalid and
sickly population....
"It is no uncommon thing, in a room twelve feet square or less, to find
three or four families styed together (perhaps with infectious disease
among them), filling the same space night and day--men, women, and
children, in the promiscuous intercourse of cattle. Of these inmates
it is nearly superfluous to observe that in all offices of nature they
are gregarious and public; that every instinct of personal or sexual
decency is stifled; that every nakedness of life is uncovered there....
Who can wonder at what becomes, physically and morally, of infants
begotten and born in these bestial crowds?..."
Of overcrowding or "pestilential heaping of human beings," this matter
of "infinite importance," he wrote:--
"While it maintains physical filth that is indescribable, while it
perpetuates fever and the allied disorders, while it creates mortality
enough to mask the results of all your sanitary progress, its moral
consequences are too dreadful to be detailed."
Pursuing his masterly analysis of the sanitary condition of the people
in the "City" and its causes, he wrote:--
"Last and not least among the influences prejudicial to health in
the City, as elsewhere, must be reckoned the social condition of the
working classes.... Often in discussion of sanitary subjects before
your Honourable Court, the filthy, or slovenly, or improvident, or
destructive, or intemperate, or dishonest habits of these classes are
cited as an explanation of the inefficiency of measures designed for
their advantage. It is constantly urged that to bring improved domestic
arrangements within the reach of such persons is a waste and a folly.
"It is unquestionable that in houses containing all the sanitary
evils enumerated--undrained and waterless, and unventilated--there do
dwell whole hordes of persons who struggle so little in self-defence
against that which surrounds them that they may be considered almost
indifferent to its existence, or almost acclimated to endure its
continuance.
"It is too true that among the lower classes there are swarms of
men and women who have yet to learn that human beings should dwell
differently from cattle--swarms to whom personal cleanliness is utterly
unknown; swarms by whom delicacy and decency in their social relations
are quite unconceived.
"My sphere of duty lies within the City boundary.
"I studiously refrain from instituting comparisons with other
metropolitan localities.
* * * * *
"I feel the deepest conviction that no sanitary system can be adequate
to the requirements of the time, or can cure those radical evils
which infest the under framework of society, unless the importance be
distinctly recognised and the duty manfully undertaken of improving the
social condition of the poor....
"Who can wonder that the laws of society should at times be forgotten
by those whom the eye of society habitually overlooks, and whom the
heart of society often appears to discard?
"To my duty it alone belongs, in such respects, to tell you where
disease ravages the people under your charge, and wherefore; but
while I lift the curtain to show you this--a curtain which propriety
may gladly leave unraised--you cannot but see that side by side with
pestilence there stalks a deadlier presence, blighting the moral
existence of a rising population, rendering their hearts hopeless,
their acts ruffianly and incestuous, and scattering, while Society
averts her eyes, the retributive seeds of increase for crime,
turbulence, and pauperism."
And what was the physical result of this state of living?
"In some spots in the City you would see houses, courts, and
streets, where the habitual proportion of deaths is far beyond
the heaviest pestilence rate known for any metropolitan district
aggregately--localities where the habitual rate of death is more
appalling than any such averages can enable you to conceive.
"Among their dense population it is rare to see any other appearance
than that of squalid sickness and misery, and the children who are
reproduced with the fertility of a rabbit warren perish in early
infancy.
"The diseases of these localities are well marked. Scrofula more or
less completely blights all that are born ... often prolonging itself
as a hereditary curse in the misbegotten offspring of those who, under
such unnatural conditions, attain to maturity and procreation.
"Typhus prevails as a habitual pestilence.
"The death rate during the last five years has been at the rate of
about twenty-four per 1,000 per annum.
"The City of London appears peculiarly fatal to infant life.
"Of the 15,597 persons who died within your jurisdiction in the five
years 1847-8 to 1852-3, nearly three-eighths died in the first five
years of life."
To his employers he mostly appeals. He hopes that the statements in his
reports may suffice to convince them of the necessity which exists
in the "City" of London for some effectual and permanent sanitary
organisation.
"For the metropolis generally there is hitherto no sanitary law such as
you possess for your territory."
He pointed out that--
"Inspection of the most constant, most searching, most intelligent, and
most trustworthy kind is that in which the provisional management of
our said affairs must essentially consist.
* * * * *
"The committee was given power by the Act for the amendment or removal
of houses presenting aggravated structural faults.
"Wherever your Medical Officer of Health may certify to you that any
house or building is permanently unwholesome and unfit for human
habitation, you are empowered to require of the owner (or in his
neglect yourselves to undertake) the execution of whatever works may be
requisite for rendering the house habitable with security to life."
And he urged that:--
"The principle might be distinctly recognised that the City will not
tolerate within its municipal jurisdiction the continuance of houses
absolutely incompatible with healthy habitation.
"Here terminates my statement of the powers now vested in you for the
maintenance of the public health.
"Authority so complete for this noble purpose has never before been
delegated to any municipal body in the country.
"If the deliberate promises of Science be not an empty delusion, it
is practicable to reduce human mortality within your jurisdiction to
nearly the half of the present prevalence."
The most valuable and weighty of all his conclusions was that affixing
the responsibility for the existing mass of insanitation and consequent
misery. With a courage worthy of all admiration he did not hesitate,
regardless of the consequences to himself, to fix the responsibility
and blame where they were due.
"The fact is that, except against wilful violence, life is very little
cared for by the law."
Of Parliament he wrote:--
"Fragments of legislation there are, indeed, in all directions;
enough to establish precedents, enough to testify some half-conscious
possession of a principle; but for usefulness little beyond this. The
statutes tell that now and then there has reached to high places the
wail of physical suffering. They tell that our law makers, to the
tether of a very scanty knowledge, have, not unwillingly, moved to
the redress of some clamorous wrong.... But ... their insufficiencies
constitute a national scandal, ... something not far removed from a
national sin....
"The landlord must be held responsible for the decent and wholesome
condition of his property, and for such conduct of his tenants as will
maintain that condition."
The clear, precise, and unqualified enunciation of such a principle
must have given a shock to many of the members of the governing
authority of the "City," and excited their wrath, the more especially
as it was so absolutely sound and true.
"The death of a child by smallpox," he went on to say, "would in most
instances call for a verdict of 'homicide by omission' against the
parent who had neglected daily opportunities of giving it immunity
from that disease by the simple process of vaccination; the death of
an adult by typhus would commonly justify still stronger condemnation
(though with more difficulty of fixing and proportioning the particular
responsibility) against those who ignore the duties of property, and
who knowingly let for the occupation of the poor dwellings unfit even
for brute tenants, dwellings absolutely incompatible with health."
And then he proceeds to explain and justify and enlarge upon his
assertion of the responsibility of the landlord.
"There are forty-five miles of sewerage in your jurisdiction, ready
to receive the streams of private drainage, and leaving the owners
of house property no excuse for the non-performance of necessary
works.... But ... the intentions of your Court, and the industry of
its officers, have been in great measure frustrated by the passive
resistance of landlords. Delays and subterfuges have been had recourse
to in order to avoid compliance with the injunctions of the Commission."
In his evidence before the Royal Commission of 1853-4 he said:--