since that time, solely on the labours of this Commission, no doubt it
would have proceeded at a far quicker pace. How effectively your Hon.
Court had prepared for the best application of your increased powers, is
sufficiently evinced in the 45 miles of sewerage, ramifying through all
the districts of your jurisdiction, ready at every point to receive the
streams of private drainage, and leaving to the owners of house-property
(with few exceptions) no excuse for their non-performance of these
necessary works. I believe the extent of public sewerage within the City
to be quite unparalleled, and to furnish facilities of the rarest kind
for the abolition of cesspools, and for the establishment of an improved
system of house drainage. But, Gentlemen, while you have exerted
yourselves to the utmost in the application of your increased authority,
and have directed your staff of officers, from first to last, to proceed
with all possible despatch in enforcing sanitary improvement in the
matter now under consideration, the intentions of your Court and the
industry of its officers have been in a great measure frustrated by the
passive resistance of landlords. Delays and subterfuges have been had
recourse to by the owners of house-property, in order to avoid
compliance with the injunctions of the Commission; and the temporary
interruption of works, which occurred in August and September,
prevented these evasions from being dealt with as otherwise they would
have been.
Now, however, the course is again open. For some weeks your Hon. Court
has directed that all works of drainage and sewerage shall proceed; many
are already in progress; and I can see no reason why, within a year from
the present time, the number of cesspools and of undrained houses within
the City of London should not be reduced to a very small proportion.
Everything, however, in this respect will depend on the spirit of
_thoroughness_ with which the Act of Parliament is enforced; and I would
strongly recommend, in all cases of non-drainage or other non-compliance
with the terms of notice, that no indulgence whatever should be conceded
to landlords beyond the time specified in the notification of the Court;
that no difference should be recognised between a ‘notice’ and ‘a
peremptory notice;’ that all notices should be ‘peremptory;’ and that, a
certain period for performance having been allowed to the landlord, on
the very day of that period’s expiration, the work, if undone, should be
given over for completion by the workmen of the Commissioners of Sewers,
in accordance with the 61st clause of the Act of Parliament. In favour
of the adoption of this principle, I can adduce no stronger argument
than my conviction, that its non-adoption would insure a sacrifice of
human life, in exact proportion to the procrastination allowed; and
that, too, in a matter where henceforth your responsibility is undivided
and your power absolute.
* * * * *
In order to give efficiency to whatever improvements of house-drainage
may be instituted, the present system of water-supply will require to
undergo very extensive modifications; for at present in the poorer
tenements, even where some show of house-drainage is made, the
arrangements are constantly rendered inoperative from insufficiency or
absence of water. To this matter, however, I shall presently revert.
Another most important _desideratum_ in connexion with the sewerage of
the City is that, if possible, some more perfect system of trapping
should be devised, or that, in some way or other, the sewers should be
ventilated effectively and inoffensively.[16] At present there are
frequent complaints of offensive exhalation from gratings in the open
ways of the City; and it will be obvious to your Hon. Court, that all
which I have urged on the subject of cesspool-exhalations must apply
equally to those which are emitted from sewers. The impediments to
effective trapping are almost insuperable; but I believe that when the
water-supply of the City is very largely increased, washing the drains
amply and incessantly, the evil complained of will undergo a sensible
diminution.
[16] This subject is adverted to, with more detail, in the next year’s
Report.--See page 104.
* * * * *
In further connexion with my present subject, I would also solicit
attention to the fact that the sanitary purposes of drainage are but
imperfectly achieved, where the outfall of sewerage is into a tidal
river passing through the heart of a densely peopled metropolis. I
should be stepping beyond my province, if I were to say much respecting
the schemes now before the public for dealing with the difficulty to
which I here refer, inasmuch as those schemes involve questions of
engineering and machinery, on which I am incompetent to form an opinion.
But I can have no hesitation in stating it as a matter greatly to be
desired in the City of London, that the noble river which ebbs and flows
beneath its dwellings should cease to be the drainpool of our vast
metropolis; and that the immeasurable filth which now pollutes the
stream should be intercepted in its course, and be conveyed to some
distant destination, where instead of breeding sickness and mortality,
it might become a source of agricultural increase and national
wealth.[17]
[17] This subject is more particularly dwelt upon in the last Report;
page 261.
I would venture, likewise, to express an opinion that the City of London
is peculiarly interested in the accomplishment of this great public
work, not only on general grounds relating to the conservancy of the
river, but likewise and especially on sanitary grounds, by reason of the
large bank-side population, subjects of the City, who now, instead of
deriving advantage from their nearness to the stream, are constantly
disgusted and injured by its misuse.
While the consideration of this most important measure is pending, I
would invite attention to some circumstances, by which even the present
evil is needlessly aggravated.
In the first place the sewers are of defective length, so that during
the ebb of the tide their contents, as they escape, are suffered to flow
in a stream of some length across the mud of the retreating river. The
stream, together with the mud which it saturates, and the open mouth of
the sewer, evolve copious and offensive exhalations, and I would
recommend that measures be taken for abatement of the nuisance. This
purpose, as concerns the sewer, would be fulfilled by the addition, in
each instance, of a sufficient length of brick or cast-iron work, to
prolong the canal beyond low water mark; but the great extent of mud
which is left uncovered at each tide, and which during the present
pollution of the river is a source of extreme nuisance and of disease,
constitutes an evil for which no remedy can be found till the stream
shall be narrowed and embanked.
Meanwhile, the complaints which reached the Committee of Health during
the summer, together with the results of my own inspection, lead me to
believe that the several small docks which lie along the City bank of
the river from the Tower to the Temple, fulfil little really useful
purpose; that they are to a great extent used as laystalls for their
vicinage; that copious deposits and accumulations of filth take place in
them; that they are a nuisance and injury, except to the very few who
are interested in their maintenance; and that it would be of public
advantage that they should be filled up.
WATER-SUPPLY.
II. I am sure that I do not exaggerate the sanitary importance of water,
when I affirm that its unrestricted supply is the first essential of
decency, of comfort, and of health; that no civilization of the poorer
classes can exist without it; and that any limitation to its use in the
metropolis is a barrier, which must maintain thousands in a state of the
most unwholesome filth and degradation.
In the City of London the supply of water is but a fraction of what it
should be. Thousands of the population have no supply of it to the
houses where they dwell. For their possession of this first necessary of
social life, such persons wholly depend on their power of attending at
some fixed hour of the day, pail in hand, beside the nearest stand-cock;
where, with their neighbours, they wait their turn--sometimes not
without a struggle, during the tedious dribbling of a single small pipe.
Sometimes there is a partial improvement on this plan; a group of houses
will have a butt or cistern for the common use of some scores of
inmates, who thus are saved the necessity of waiting at a standcock, but
who still remain most insufficiently supplied with water. Next in the
scale of improvement we find water-pipes laid on to the houses; but the
water is turned on only for a few hours in the week, so that all who
care to be adequately supplied with it must be provided with very
spacious receptacles. Receptacles are sometimes provided: and in these,
which are often of the most objectionable description, water is retained
for the purposes of diet and washing, during a period which varies from
twenty-four to seventy-two hours. One of the most important purposes of
a water-supply seems almost wholly abandoned--that, namely, of having a
large quantity daily devoted to cleanse and clear the house-drains and
sewers; and in many cases where a waste-pipe has been conducted from the
water-butt to the privy, the arrangement is one which gives to the
drainage little advantage of water, while it communicates to the water a
well-marked flavour of drainage.
I consider the system of intermittent water-supply to be radically bad;
not only because it is a system of stint in what ought to be lavishly
bestowed, but also because of the necessity which it creates that large
and extensive receptacles should be provided, and because of the
liability to contamination incurred by water which has to be retained
often during a considerable period. In inspecting the courts and alleys
of the City, one constantly sees butts, for the reception of water,
either public, or in the open yards of the 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; and one hardly knows whether this
arrangement can be considered preferable to the precarious chance of
scuffling or dawdling at a standcock. It may be doubted, too, whether,
even in a far better class of houses, the tenants’ water-supply can be
pronounced good. The cisternage is better, and all arrangements
connected with it are generally such as to protect it from the grosser
impurities which defile the water-butts of the poor; but the long
retention of water in leaden cisterns impairs its fitness for drinking;
and the quantity which any moderate cistern will contain is very
generally insufficient for the legitimate requirements of the house
during the intervals of supply. Every one who is personally familiar
with the working of this system of intermittent supply, can testify to
its inconvenience; and though its evils press with immeasurably greater
severity on the poor than on the rich, yet the latter are by no means
without experience on the subject.
* * * * *
The following are the chief conditions in respect of water supply, which
peremptorily require to be fulfilled:--
1. That every house should be separately supplied with water, and that
where the house is a lodging-house, or where the several floors are let
as separate tenements, the supply of water should extend to each
inhabited floor.
2. That every privy should have a supply of water, applicable as often
as it may be required, and sufficient in volume to effect, at each
application, a thorough flushing and purification of the discharge-pipe
of the privy.
3. That in every court, at the point remotest from the sewer-grating,
there should be a standcock for the cleansing of the court; and
4. That at all these points there should always and uninterruptedly be a
sufficiency of water to fulfil all reasonable requirements of the
population.
* * * * *
Now, if my statements are accurate with regard to the imperfect manner
in which thousands participate in the distribution of water, even for
their personal necessities; if my statements are again accurate with
respect to house-drainage, and to the immense increase of water
distribution which must accompany any improvement in this respect--and I
am quite prepared, if necessary, to adduce ample evidence on these
subjects; if, again, it be considered that the appreciation of water by
the multitude, who have so long suffered from lack of it, will lead to a
vast augmentation of its domestic use; then, I apprehend, it cannot be
doubted that the subject of water-supply to the City is one that
requires now to be looked at almost as though it were to-day broached
for the first time.
Those important conditions, which I just enumerated as urgently
requiring fulfilment, may certainly be accomplished, so far as
mechanical construction is concerned, in more than one way. It may be
possible, no doubt, in further compliance with the principle of
intermittent supply, to furnish every tenement in the City with a
cistern of proper dimensions, and with its usual appurtenances of
ballcock, waste-pipe, &c.; but this, I need hardly say, would be a
process involving a vast expenditure of money, and hardly to be
recommended on the mere ground of conformity with what has hitherto been
done in the matter. It may be possible, on the other hand, to convert
the whole water-supply of the City into a system of uninterrupted
supply, and to construct all new works in conformity with this system.
I beg to suggest that the choice between these alternatives is one of
immense and very urgent importance to the sanitary welfare of the City;
and I would earnestly commend it to the best consideration of your Hon.
Court.
The system of a constant supply is now no longer a novelty. In
Philadelphia, in New York, in Nottingham, in Preston, in Glasgow, in
Newcastle, in Bristol, and in various other places, this system has been
adopted; its practicability and its advantages have been amply
demonstrated.[18] Five years ago, when evidence on the subject was given
before the House of Commons, it appeared that in the city and suburbs of
Philadelphia 25,816 houses were supplied at an average rate of five
dollars per house; that in Preston more than 5,000 houses were supplied
continually at high-pressure, and that the company was increasing its
tenants at the rate of 400 annually; that in Nottingham about 8,000
houses, containing a population of 35,000 persons, were supplied in the
same manner; and in respect of many other towns, public experience has
been equally extensive and satisfactory. About a month ago, the Sanitary
Committee of the last-mentioned town published what I may call a report
of congratulation on their freedom from cholera, which had visited the
town with great severity in 1832. They detail the measures by which
Nottingham has been rendered a healthy town, and the first item in that
enumeration stands thus:--‘An unlimited supply of wholesome filtered
water, forced, by day and night, at high pressure, through all the
streets to the tops of almost all the houses, at a cost, for the
dwellings of the poor, of about five shillings per week.’
[18] It seems almost unnecessary to remind the reader that five more
years have added infinite additional testimony to that mentioned in
the text as existing in 1849; and that, two years ago, in a special
Act of Parliament, it was enjoined on the Water Companies of the
Metropolis that, within seven years, they should follow the precedent
so extensively established. In the face of such evidence--with the
knowledge that Manchester has a constant supply and that Glasgow is
arranging one, it certainly tests one’s credulity to hear it rumoured
that our Metropolitan Water-Merchants are hoping to resist that
requirement, on the ground that such a supply in London would be
_impossible_.--J. S., 1854.
On the relative merits or demerits of the two competing systems of
supply, I have only to speak so far as their adaptation to sanitary
purposes is concerned. In this respect, I have no hesitation in saying
that the system of constant supply is immeasurably superior to its
rival; so superior, that unless competent engineering authorities should
decide on its practical inapplicability to the City of London, I would
strongly recommend its adoption as the only one, in my judgment, by
which the growing necessities of the population can be fully and
effectively satisfied.
OFFENSIVE AND INJURIOUS TRADES.
III. With respect to offensive trades and occupations pursued within the
city of London, my task of recommendation is an easy one. To any person
conversant with the simplest physiological relations of cause and
effect, it is quite notorious that the decomposition of organic matter
within a certain distance of human habitations unfailingly tends to
produce disease; and every one who is competent by knowledge and
impartiality to pronounce an opinion on the subject, must feel that no
occupation which ordinarily leaves a putrid refuse, nor any which
consists in the conversion or manufacture of putrescent material, ought,
under any circumstances, to be tolerated within a town.
* * * * *
1. First, in regard to slaughter-houses, I may remind you that, on the
23rd of January last, when your Hon. Commission first met under the new
Act of Parliament, I recommended to you on sanitary grounds, that in
such rules as you might make for the regulation of slaughter houses, all
underground slaughtering should be absolutely prohibited. It was laid
down, however, that your Act of Parliament would not enable you to
establish this restriction, which (it was argued) would be equivalent to
a direct suppression of many existing slaughter-houses.[19]
[19] Slaughtering in cellars was rendered illegal by the amended City
Sewers Act, 1851, and since that year has been entirely discontinued
in the City. See page 192.--J. S., 1854.
Considering that, in my first recommendations to the Commission I ought
to confine myself to objects attainable by means of the Act of
Parliament then just coming into operation, I felt myself precluded for
the time from entering on the subject (however important in itself) of
the total abolition of urban slaughtering. Now, however, while treating
generally of sanitary improvement for the City, I can have no hesitation
in repeating an opinion which I have already submitted to the
Health-Committee of the Common Council; and I beg accordingly to state,
that I consider slaughtering within the City as both directly and
indirectly prejudicial to the health of the population;--_directly_,
because it loads the air with effluvia of decomposing animal matter, not
only in the immediate vicinity of each slaughter-house, but likewise
along the line of drainage which conveys away its washings and fluid
filth; _indirectly_, because many very offensive and noxious trades are
in close dependence on the slaughtering of cattle, and round about the
original nuisance of the slaughter-house, within as narrow limits of
distance as circumstances allow, you invariably find established the
concomitant and still more grievous nuisances of gut-spinning,
tripe-dressing, bone-boiling, tallow-melting, paunch-cooking, &c. Ready
illustrations of this fact may be found in the gut-scraping sheds of
Harrow-alley, adjoining Butchers’-row, Aldgate; or in the Leadenhall
skin-market, contiguous to the slaughtering places, where the stinking
hides of cattle lie for many hours together, spread out over a large
area of ground, waiting for sale, to the great offence of the
neighbourhood.
Such evils as those to which I have adverted are inseparable from the
process of slaughtering, however carefully and cleanlily conducted; and
they may easily be aggravated to an unlimited extent by defects in
drainage, in water supply, or in ventilation, or by the slovenly habits
and impunctuality of those to whom the removal of filth and offal is
intrusted.
In short, I believe it to be quite impossible, so to conduct the process
of slaughtering within the City of London as to remove it from the
category of nuisances, or to render it harmless to the health of the
population; and I believe it to be equally impossible so to superintend
the details of its performance as to prevent them, where
ill-administered, from rising into considerable and fatal importance
among the promoting causes of epidemic and infectious disease.
* * * * *
It is scarcely necessary, after this expression of my opinion, that I
should say how strongly I would recommend that measures should be taken
for the discontinuance of all slaughtering within the City; and that,
with the abolition of slaughtering, all establishments which deal with
animal matter approaching putrefaction, and all sheds and stalls for the
continued keeping of cattle, should likewise be prohibited and
suppressed.
The number of slaughter-houses at present registered and tolerated
within the City amounts to 138, and in 58 of these the slaughtering
occurs in vaults and cellars. How overwhelming an amount of organic
decomposition must be furnished by these establishments, can neither be
estimated nor conceived; but the influence of that decomposition admits
of being measured in its effects on the population, and in the high
zymotic mortality which denotes an atmosphere over-laden with organic
poison.
Before leaving this subject, I think it right very briefly to allude to
an argument which is often objected to the view here stated. The
objector looks to a particular district, or to a particular
slaughter-house, and says that the mortality of the district is an
average one; or he points to Mr. A. or Mr. B.--the butcher or the
butcher’s man, saying, ‘Who can be healthier than A. or B.? Surely, if
the pursuit be injurious, these men ought to have been poisoned long
ago.’ Now, to this I reply;--first, as regards the men employed in these
crafts, we have no statistics of any value to decide on their mortality,
and judgment on the matter cannot be deduced from some half-dozen cases,
known to any of us individually; but, further, if we admit (which I by
no means know to be the case) that they are persons of average longevity
and healthiness, then it must be remembered that their activity, their
out-door exercise, and, above all, their unlimited supply of animal
food, are circumstances conducing to give them health beyond the average
of their station; and it must be remembered that these palliating
circumstances, though they may counteract the evil for those persons
most nearly concerned in it, contribute nothing towards deodorising the
neighbourhood, or towards preserving its poorer inhabitants from the
depressive influence of putrid emanations.
And, as regards the district--although we have certain evidence that
organic decomposition is a chief cause of disease, yet we do not
invariably find disease generated in immediate proximity to the source
of nuisance. Drainage beneath the soil, and currents of air above it,
convey the materials of decomposition to a distance; and if the
particular slaughter-houses be placed on a high level amidst the
surrounding City, so that their drainage be effectual and their
ventilation complete, then obviously their influence must be sought for,
not so much in any special aggravation of the local mortality, as in
certain remoter effects of their diffused emanation; in effects, namely,
which are discoverable along their lines of drainage and ventilation,
and in the various consequences of a highly zymotic atmosphere generally
through the entire town.
* * * * *