[Illustration: CHAMBER'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
Fourth Series
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.
NO. 682. SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 1877. PRICE 1½_d._]
HYGEIA: A MODEL CITY OF HEALTH.
A remarkable attempt has been made to bring into one focus numerous
suggestions put forth, within the last few years by social improvers
and sanitary reformers. These suggestions, as our readers are aware,
take a very wide range. Matters relating to water-supply, drainage,
disposal of refuse, lighting, ventilation, dry foundations and
dry walls to houses, stoves and fireplaces, cookery and kitchen
arrangements, washing and drying appliances, cleanliness of person and
of garments, cleanliness of rooms and of bedding, special arrangements
for unwholesome but necessary trades and employments, provision for the
sick that may not be perilous to other persons, moderation in diet and
regimen, avoidance of vicious indulgences--all these and many other
subjects have engaged the attention of thoughtful persons in a marked
degree; and it can be indisputably shewn that the annual death-rate
is lowered in districts where improvements in such matters have been
extensively adopted. Mr Edwin Chadwick, perhaps the chief worker in
this laudable direction, is so confident in the eventual success of
such endeavours, that he announces the possibility of building a city
that shall have any assignable death-rate or annual mortality, from a
maximum of fifty or more in a thousand to a minimum of five or less
in a thousand. Dr B. W. Richardson, a physician and physiologist of
eminence, has taken hold of Mr Chadwick's idea, and sketched the
plan of a city that shall shew the lowest rate of mortality. No such
city--we need hardly say--exists, and he has neither the time nor the
means to build one; but his purpose is to shew that it _can_ be done,
whenever public opinion is ripe for it.
Dr Richardson, in an Address to the Social Science Association,
afterwards published in a separate form, speaks of his _Hygeia_ or
City of Health in the present tense, as if it already existed. This is
done for vividness of description and brevity of language, and will be
understood by the reader in the proper sense.
Hygeia, then, is a city for a hundred thousand inhabitants. (The main
principles could be worked out in a much smaller community, but in a
less complete form.) It has twenty thousand houses on an area of four
thousand acres of ground: apparently rather densely populated, but
not too much so when good sanitary arrangements are adopted. There
are no very lofty houses. In busy thoroughfares, where shops are
required, there are three stories or floors over the shops; and some
of the best streets in private or 'west-end' neighbourhoods have four
stories in all; but in others the general number is three. Underground
living-rooms and kitchens there are none; instead of these, every house
is built upon arches of brickwork, which form channels of ingress for
fresh air, and of egress for all that is required to be got rid of.
Running along beneath each main street is a railway for the transport
of heavy commodities. All the streets are wide enough to admit plenty
of cheerful sunlight and fresh air, and rows of trees are planted
between the foot-ways and carriage-ways; the carriage-ways are paved
with wood set in asphalt, and the foot-ways with stone pavements ten
feet wide. Tramways are not permitted, as they cut up the roadway;
omnibuses above ground and railways below will suffice instead.
All the interspaces between the backs of the houses are laid out as
gardens. Churches, hospitals, theatres, banks, lecture-rooms, and other
public or large buildings, follow the same alignment as the houses in
the streets, but all detached; and every one flanked by a garden-space,
however narrow.
There is no occasion for those unsightly concomitants of London
sanitation, scavengers' carts. The accumulation of mud and dirt in the
streets is washed away every day through side-openings into subways,
and is with the sewage conveyed to a destination apart from the city;
there are neither gratings nor open drains; and there are no 'gutter
children,' because there are no gutters for children to paddle and
dabble in, and because we may hope that, eventually, 'young Arabs' will
disappear from our towns.
There being no rooms or offices whatever below the level of the street,
how, it may be asked, are the domestic arrangements carried on? The
kitchens and offices are at the top of the house instead of the bottom.
Plenty of light and ventilation are thus obtained; while hot odours,
being lighter than common air, pass away without contaminating the
living and sleeping apartments. All the larger houses are provided with
lifts, up which provisions and stores can be conveyed. As there is a
constant service of water, available to the highest story of every
house, the kitchen boiler may be kept constantly filled; hot water
from the boiler can be distributed by conducting pipes to the lower
rooms, as well as cold water from the tank or cistern--an inestimable
advantage, especially in bed-rooms. Every floor or story has a sink
for waste water, whereby the carrying of the uncomfortable slop-pail
up and down stairs is rendered unnecessary. The scullery, adjoining
the kitchen, has an opening to the dust-shaft; and so have the several
floors or stories, every opening being provided with a sliding-door
or shutter. The dust-bin, into which the shaft descends, is under the
basement of the house. The roof of the house is nearly flat, paved with
asphalt or tiles; it serves either as a pleasant little garden or as a
drying-ground for clothes--the wherewithal for a laundry being provided
in connection with the scullery.
The houses are built of a kind of brick which has the following
sanitary advantages--glazed, so as to be impermeable to water and
moisture; perforated, so as to admit of circulation of fresh air
through the very substance of the walls; glazed in different colours
for the interior of the rooms, thereby dispensing with the necessity
for paint, paper-hanging, or whitewash, and affording scope for
tasteful design in the selection and arrangement of the tints; smooth
and hard, so as to be easily cleaned by washing; and some of them
flattened into tiles for more convenient use as ceilings. Sea-sand is
excluded from the mortar employed, on account of its tendency to imbibe
and exude moisture. The chimneys, arranged on a plan prepared by Mr
Spencer Wells, are all connected with central shafts; the smoke, drawn
into these shafts, is passed through a gas-furnace to destroy the free
carbon, and finally discharged colourless into the open air. 'At the
expense of a small smoke-rate, the city is free from raised chimneys
and the intolerable nuisance of smoke.' On the landing of the middle or
second stories is a bath-room, supplied with hot and cold water from
the kitchen above. The houses being built on arched subways, great
facilities exist for the admission of gas and water into the several
domiciles, and for the exit of sewage and refuse. All pipes are laid
along the subways, and up thence into the houses; and workmen have easy
access to these subways for the adjustment and repair of the several
pipes. Abundance of water is at hand for flushing the sewers, which are
laid along the floor of the subways. All the domestic offices of every
kind being within the four walls of the house itself, there are none of
these unsightly outhouses which so much disfigure most of our towns,
and so greatly lessen the available garden-space.
In the living-rooms an oak margin of floor about two feet wide extends
round the room; this is kept bright and clean by the old-fashioned
beeswax and turpentine, the centre only of the floor being carpeted
or otherwise covered. In the bed-rooms twelve hundred cubic feet of
space is allowed for each sleeper; and all unnecessary articles of
furniture, bedding, and dress are excluded--the use of a bedroom as a
lumber-room being a fertile source of weakened health to the inmates.
The lift already spoken of, for conveying provisions and stores to the
upper story of the house, is a simple affair: a shaft runs up in the
party-wall between two houses, and in this a basket-lift is raised
by a rope; while side-openings connect this lift with the middle
story or stories. The living-rooms have the open cheerful fireplace
which English folks so much prefer to the closed stoves of many
continental countries; but at the back of the fire-grate is an air-box
communicating by a passage with the open air, and by another opening
with the room; the heated iron box draws in fresh air from without, and
diffuses it in the upper part of the room--on a plan similar to that
devised by Captain Galton.
Walking through the streets, what kind of aspect does Hygeia present?
There is an absence of places for the sale of spirituous liquors.
Whether by permissive bills or by temperance pledges, this kind of
abstinence is so far enforced; and a drunkard would be forced out
of the city by the frown of public opinion. Another moral restraint
which, however, is one extremely difficult to impose--we will mention
in Dr Richardson's own language, as it evidently expresses his opinion
as a physician: 'As smoking and drinking go largely together--as the
two practices were, indeed, original exchanges of social degradations
between the civilised man and the savage (the savage getting very
much the worst of the bargain)--so do the practices largely disappear
together. Pipe and glass, cigar and sherry-cobbler, like the Siamese
twins who could only live connected, have both died out in our model
city. Tobacco, by far the most innocent partner of the firm, lived, as
it perhaps deserved to do, a little the longest; but it passed away,
and the tobacconist's counter, like the dram counter, has disappeared.'
The streets have plenty of life and movement in them, but a minimum of
rattling jarring noises, owing to the heavy traffic being conducted
through the underground railways. Most of the principal factories
are at a short distance from the city; as are also large clusters of
workrooms let out singly. A workman can have a workroom on payment of
a moderate weekly rent; in it he can work as many hours as he pleases,
but must not make it his home. Each block is under the charge of a
superintendent, and under the supervision of a sanitary inspector.
The artisan goes away from his home to work, like the lawyer, the
merchant, or the banker. There might appear to be some waste of time
in this arrangement; but it is more than compensated, in the opinion
of the citizens of Hygeia, by comparative immunity from disease: 'It
has,' says Dr Richardson, 'been found in our towns generally, that men
and women who are engaged in industrial callings, such as tailoring,
shoe-making, dressmaking, lace-making, and the like, work at their own
homes among their children. That this is a common cause of disease is
well understood. I have myself seen the half-made riding-habit that
was ultimately to clothe some wealthy damsel rejoicing in her morning
ride, act as the coverlet of a poor tailor's child stricken with
malignant scarlet fever. These things must be, in the ordinary course
of events under our present bad system. In the model system we have
in our mind's eye, these dangers are met by the simple provision of
workmen's offices or workrooms.'
Public laundries are a feature in Hygeia. If the washing of a small
family is done at home, the housewife knows with what she has to deal;
but when 'the washing is put out,' the linen of the family may, for
aught she knows, have been mixed before, during, or after the process
of washing with the linen from the bed or the body of some sufferer
from a contagious malady. Some of the most fatal outbreaks of disease
are known to have been communicated in this manner. To avoid these
evils, public laundries are established in the outskirts of Hygeia,
each with an extensive drying-ground, and all under sanitary inspection.
There is no one gigantic hospital, nor any hospital for special
diseases--with perhaps one or two exceptions. Numerous small hospitals
are distributed equidistant throughout the city; each constructed
according to the most approved and efficient plan, and surrounded
by its own open grounds. One of these would suffice for about five
thousand inhabitants. The current system of large hospitals is
abandoned, as being equivalent to 'warehousing diseases on the largest
possible scale;' while special hospitals are deemed unnecessary--'as if
the different organs could walk out of the body and present themselves
for separate treatment.' Each hospital has an ambulance ready to be
sent out to bring any injured persons to the institution; the ambulance
drives straight into the hospital, where a bed of the same height on
silent wheels receives the patient, and conveys him or her to a ward.
The staff is so appointed that every medical man in the city has in
turn the advantage of hospital practice; whereby the best medical and
surgical skill is fairly equalised through the whole community.
Homes for little children are abundant. In these the destitute young
are carefully treated by intelligent nurses; so that mothers, following
their daily callings, are enabled to leave their children under
efficient care.
In a city so organised, it is believed that insanity would be very
small in amount, and that a few small special establishments would
suffice for its treatment. For the same reason huge buildings as
workhouses for the destitute would be neither desirable nor necessary;
small well-managed establishments, with useful work for all who are
not really incapacitated, will be better both for the unfortunates
themselves and for the ratepayers of the city. Ablution-baths,
swimming-baths, play-grounds, gymnasia, public libraries, public
schools, fine-art schools, and lecture-halls, are good and plentiful in
Hygeia.
At a distance from the city are the water and gas works, and the
sewage-pumping works. The water, drained from a river unpolluted by
sewage, is filtered, and conveyed to the houses through iron (not
lead) pipes. The sewage, brought from the city partly by its own flow
and partly by pumping apparatus, is conveyed away to well-drained
sewage-farms at a distance, where it is utilised as a fertiliser.
Scavengers traverse the streets in early morning, and remove all
refuse from roads, pavements, yards, and stables in covered vans to
the sewage-farm. The public slaughter-houses, at some distance from
the city, are under the control of inspectors, who examine all animals
before being killed for food; and painless slaughtering, which is now
known to be practicable, is adopted. The city cemetery is artificially
made of fine carboniferous earth, on which vegetation springs up
quickly. The dead, either in shrouds or in baskets or cradles of
wicker-work, are placed in the earth, and vegetation soon covers them;
and anything in the nature of a monumental slab or inscribed stone is
placed in a spacious covered hall built for the purpose. The burial
system is thus a compromise between the old graveyard usages to which
England has been accustomed for a thousand years or more, and the very
un-English process of cremation which has a few advocates among us.
Such is Hygeia, the imaginary City of Health. Dr Richardson states his
reasons for thinking that mortality would lessen to eight per thousand
per annum in the first generation, in a community thus domiciled and
organised; and afterwards lessen to five per thousand. He says, to
the audience he addressed: 'Do not, I pray you, wake up as from a
mere dream. The details of the city exist; they have been worked out
by the pioneers of sanitary science; I am but as a draughtsman who
has drawn out a plan, which you in your wisdom can modify, improve,
perfect.' Whether by speculative landowners, architects, and builders,
or by social reformers who have no interested or professional motives,
a scheme has been brought forward for a City of Health to be called
_Hygeopolis_, somewhere on the Sussex coast; but it is only in the
rough, without any detail of 'ways and means.' We fear that the whole
project is little better than a dream. It is certain that a city such
as Dr Richardson portrays in imagination could not be established
without a revolution in our social habits; that a species of communism
would supplant a good deal of individual enterprise; and that the local
rates, however imposed and however collected, would be enormously
heavy. Nevertheless, many of the suggestions are admirable, and could
be singly worked out in most of our existing towns.
THE LAST OF THE HADDONS.
CHAPTER III.--FLITTING.
On opening the envelope sent to me by Mr Wentworth, I found a
five-pound note, and a few words to the effect that Mr Farrar desired
to do what was usual in the way of paying all expenses incidental to
the journey and so forth, which might be incurred by the lady who
accepted the engagement.
How can words express my appreciation of the good fortune which had
come to me? I sat thinking over it in deep thankfulness; realising its
blessedness in the sudden renewal of faith, and hope, and trust which
it had brought to my fainting spirit. Then I presently recollected what
had to be done, and went down-stairs and tapped at the door of the
back-parlour, which was my land-lady's sitting-room.
I occupied one room at the top of the house at the modest rental of
five shillings a week, slipping in and out on sufferance, as it were;
and I had hitherto seen very little of Mrs Sowler, sending down my
week's rent and receiving the receipt by the small maid Becky. Becky
had not yet arrived at the dignity of waiting upon the first or second
floor lodgers; being only a drudge to the other servants, of whom I had
seen as little as of their mistress. Indeed I had no right to expect
much in the way of attendance for the sum I paid. Such small services
as I had received from Becky had been for the most part rendered from
goodwill, and so to speak surreptitiously, as was the little I had been
able to do for her. There was a sort of freemasonry between us. We had
been some little comfort to each other in a quiet way, and without
injury to any one else; it being understood that complaining or ill
speaking was undignified, and beneath people who knew how to endure.
We simply helped each other to make the best of the position we found
ourselves in.
Mrs Sowler, who had been a ladies' maid, had married the butler in
the family she lived with, and they had invested their joint savings
in furnishing a lodging-house. She was a very great personage in the
eyes of Becky, who had great reverence for elegance of attire, and
considered it quite natural to be 'a bit set up, when you were dressed
better than your neighbours.'
From the little I had seen of Mrs Sowler I judged her to be
sufficiently 'set up;' but that in no way offended me.
Obeying a request to enter, I opened the door and walked in. Mrs Sowler
had half-risen from her seat; but at sight of me she sank languidly
back again.
'Oh, it's you, Miss--Miss'----
'Haddon,' I smilingly suggested, taking a seat unbidden. 'I have come
to pay my next week's rent, and to say that I am going away, and shall
not require my room after to-morrow morning, Mrs Sowler.'
'Going away!' she repeated, in a somewhat raised voice. 'I am sure
you've had nothing to complain of here. Very few houses such as this
let rooms at five shillings a week, with a member of parliament on the
first floor, and a---- Why, it's worth five shillings to any one who
wants to be thought respectable, to have letters addressed here! Not
that it makes any difference. A paltry five shillings a week is not of
much consequence to me, of course; and if you are not satisfied, you
are quite welcome to go as soon as'----
'But I am, and always have been satisfied, Mrs Sowler. I can assure you
I have quite appreciated the advantage of having a respectable shelter
at so small a cost. It is not that'----
'Then what is it? I think I have a right to ask that much?' said Mrs
Sowler, looking as though there was no exaggeration in certain rumours
which had reached me to the effect that the partings with her lodgers
were not always got through in the most amicable way. 'If Becky has
been saucy'----
'No, indeed: she has'--I was going to say, 'been extremely good to me;'
but reflected in time that Becky's goodness to me might not impress
her mistress so favourably as it did me, so quietly added--'done quite
as much for me as I had any right to expect, Mrs Sowler. I am leaving
simply because I have succeeded in obtaining a situation.'
'A situation! O indeed!' ejaculated Mrs Sowler, sinking languidly back
into her seat again; graciously adding: 'Well, you have conducted
yourself in a quiet respectable way since you have been here, and I
hope you will do well.'
'Thank you, Mrs Sowler;' putting down the money for the week's rent as
I spoke.
'_Good_-evening; I will send a receipt up by one of the servants. And
if Becky can be of any assistance in cording your boxes or what not, I
have no objection.'
'I am much obliged. Good-evening, Mrs Sowler.'
Having thus taken leave of my landlady, I informed Becky--who had
returned with her purchases, still in a state of wonderment at my
extravagance--of my intended departure.
'I thought there was something the matter!' she ejaculated, sitting
down on the edge of my small bedstead and gazing forlornly at me, as
the tears began to make for themselves a channel down the poor grimed
cheeks.
'I have found a home, Becky,' I said gently.
'I know I ought to be glad, for you could never have bore going on
much longer like this; but I can't be just yet. O Miss Haddon, dear,
it isn't your mending my stockings and things; please don't think it's
because of that.'
'I do not think it, Becky. I am sure you care for me as much as I do
for you, and we will both try to prove our friendship by sparing each
other as much as possible at parting.'
'You will soon find other people--lots.'
'I shall find no one who will make me forget an old friend.'
'O miss, how can I be your friend?'
'You have been my only one here, Becky. But we will now put away
sentiment, and try to make the most of the afternoon. You are to be my
company.'
'Me!'
'Yes. Go down to Mrs Sowler; give my compliments to her, and say I
shall be much obliged if she will kindly allow you to spend the rest of
the day with me.'
'No good,' returned Becky, with a very decided shake of the head.
'Tell Mrs Sowler that I have a dress and a few other things to spare
which we might easily alter to fit you,' I replied, feeling that that
was the best way of appealing to Mrs Sowler's feelings. Becky had been
taken from the miserable home of a drunken mother out of charity, as
she was very frequently reminded, and was not as yet considered to have
any claim to wages; depending upon such odds and ends in the way of
clothes as fortune might bring her.
She was quick enough to see that I had hit upon the best means of
inducing her mistress to consent; and at once went down to make the
request. It was graciously granted; and Becky presently returned with
the front of her hair well greased, and her face red and shining from
hasty friction with soap and water and a rough towel, which was as much
preparation for being company as she had it in her power to make.
I had some little difficulty at first to induce her to share my feast.
She resolutely turned her eyes away from the cake. 'I'm not hungry,
thank you, miss.'
But I soon succeeded in proving to her that I should enjoy it a
great deal more with her assistance, and that much would have to be
wasted without. 'Think of having to throw plumcake away, you know,
Becky'--plumcake being an acknowledged weakness of Becky's. Her
scruples once overcome, Becky and I feasted in good earnest, enjoying
our strong tea and all the rest of it in the most convivial manner. She
at first tried hard not to laugh at my little jests, with, I fancy, the
notion that laughter was not proper for the occasion. But I soon had
her stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, and burying her head in
the bed, to prevent the sound reaching the other lodgers, in the old
fashion. Such very small jokes did for Becky, and I was not going to
have my first tea-party made flat and dismal. Afterwards we passed a
pleasant evening patching and contriving.
'O Miss Haddon, do you think you'd better? Are you _quite_ sure you can
afford it?' again and again ejaculated Becky, quite overwhelmed by the
magnificence of the gifts, and afraid I should afterwards suffer for
the want of such treasures.
I smilingly unlocked two of the largest boxes, and shewed her the
contents--my wedding outfit, which had remained untouched, so far as
linen and so forth went, for eight years. Fortunately for me, the
fashion seemed to be veering round again to that which it was when they
were purchased, and the two dresses I had carefully preserved as too
good for ordinary wear, would serve me for best at Mr Farrar's, until
money was due to me.
'They _are_ clothes!' exclaimed Becky, looking in extreme surprise at
the little heaps of linen and what not.
'What did you think my boxes contained, Becky?' I inquired in some
amusement.
'Well, we knowed you paid for everything you had; but missis said you'd
never be living a-most upon dry bread if there was much left in your
boxes; and as to their being heavy, master said bricks would do that!'
It was impossible to divest Becky's mind of the idea that I had
suddenly become recklessly and extravagantly generous, as her heap of
belongings increased; and when I added a small box to contain them,
with a key, her gratitude knew no bounds.
'My very own! What's give me is my own; isn't it, Miss Haddon, dear?'
I was very decided about that.
'And if I was to run away in them, it would not be thieving, would it?'
'No; it would not be thieving; but I should be very sorry if you were
to run away, for then I should not be able to find you, in case I am
able to obtain a situation for you near me, by-and-by. It would be
wiser as well as braver to endure a little longer, Becky.' At which
Becky screwed up her mouth, and gave me a little nod, which I knew
meant enduring and staying.
Thus pleasantly was spent my last evening in the small room where I
had many a time passed half the night anxiously speculating upon the
chances of being able to earn sufficient to keep me. It had seemed
but a forlorn-hope answering that advertisement, without being able
to offer any testimony of previous experience. But I was becoming
desperate, knowing that if I once began to sell my small belongings in
order to obtain food, it would very soon be out of my power to accept
an engagement, should one offer.
I set forth for the railway station the next morning on better terms
with myself and the world than I had been for many a long day, Becky
and I comforting each other at parting with a smile instead of a tear,
as we had agreed to do.
What was my new home going to be like? The only impression which
had been conveyed to me about Mr Farrar had been that he was rich
and liberal. Mr Wentworth had given me no clue to the characters of
either father or daughter beyond saying that the former was liberal
and the latter sensitive. Liberality seemed to speak for itself;
but sensitiveness might or might not be a charm, according to
circumstances. A refined, self-depreciative nature is not sensitive
from the same cause as is a self-loving one; and unfortunately it is
not the latter kind of sensitiveness which is least prevalent. But I
comforted myself with the reflection that they must indeed be difficult
to please, if one so desirous of finding a home as I was could not
please them.