you will observe its fatality in two especial directions. First, in the
line I have indicated to you, northward from Blackfriars Bridge, in a
band of two or three hundred yards width; _there_, in the parallelogram
which lies along the main road, from Stonecutter-street to Bridewell
Hospital, were 76 deaths; _there_, in the little clump of houses forming
the angle of Farringdon-street and Holborn-hill, were 17 deaths;
_there_, in a square space behind twenty-seven shop fronts in
Fleet-street, were 57 deaths; _there_, in the small parish of St. Ann’s,
Blackfriars, were deaths at the rate of 25 to every thousand of its
population. This was incomparably the most afflicted portion of your
territory. Those who are acquainted with the ancient geography of the
City will readily conjecture a reason; they will remember when ‘the
course of water running at London under Old-bourne bridge and Fleet
bridge, into the Thames, was of such bredth and depth that ten or twelve
ships, navies at once with merchandises, were wont to come to the
foresaid bridge of Fleet, and some of them unto Old-bourne bridge;’ they
will remember how this broad river (like the Thames of our day) was
thronged on both sides with population; how (again like the Thames) it
was a draining river, probably with wide banks of putrefying mud; how
many fruitless attempts were made to cleanse and preserve its channel;
but how (in Stow’s day) ‘the brooke, by meanes of continuall
incrochments upon the banks, and casting of soylage into the stream, was
become worse cloyed than ever it was before.’ Where that _soylage_ was
cast, and where, since the days referred to, so many habitations have
arisen that no sign of stream remains visible to the wayfarer above
ground, its traces still remain below. Throughout at least a large
portion of this district, the sub-soil (your Surveyor informs me)
consists of black mud, the bed of the ancient river, in which are set
the foundations of the modern houses. The river, which centuries ago
fulfilled for a large population those vile uses which now pollute the
Thames, has gradually yielded its foul banks to the residence of a
growing population; and the sanitary relations of that population are
exactly such as might be imitated, if the volume of the Thames were
henceforth slowly reduced, and if those banks of mud which are now
exposed only at low water, were simultaneously converted into the site
of permanent habitations.
The history of the stream at Walbrook is, I believe, not dissimilar; but
there is this marked difference between the two cases, that the
comparative declivity of the latter district has allowed its soil to
acquire a dryness and healthiness which have never been reached on the
banks of the Fleet. For, owing to the extreme lowness of level in this
district, the tidal influence of the Thames is very inconveniently felt;
the cellars of houses are habitually exposed to dampness, even to
flooding; and probably the whole porous sub-soil, at least as far north
as your jurisdiction extends, is maintained in a sodden and malarious
state.
With respect to the second part of the City in which considerable groups
of cholera cases were observed, it has a not dissimilar peculiarity. I
refer to that northern part of the City which extends (on the other side
of London Wall) from Bishopsgate to Aldersgate. The epidemic prevailed
there with far less severity than in the Fleet district, but still with
a preference which easily shows itself in a cholera-map. At the
intersection of Whitecross-street by Beech-lane, in a space that the
point of one’s finger would hide in Wyld’s large map, there were 12
deaths: in that small portion of the City which lies north of Barbican
and Beech-street there were 40 deaths: in the immediate vicinity of
Half-moon-street, Bishopsgate, 60 deaths, of which more than half were
in the workhouse. Now, certainly, in all this space (and probably still
further in both directions, east and west) without the former gates of
the City, there is a marked local character. It is a reclaimed
marsh.[42] Throughout this district, in the olden times of the City,
there lay (says Stow) ‘a moorish rotten ground, unpassable but for
cawswaies purposely made to that intent;’ and one reads how ‘divers
dikes were cast, and made to drein the waters of the said Moorefields,
with bridges arched over them, whereby the said field was made somewhat
more commodious, but yet it stood full of noisome waters;’ till
gradually ‘by divers sluces was this fenne or moore made maine and hard
ground, which before, being overgrowne with flagges, sedges, and rushes,
served to no use;’ while ‘the farther grounds beyond Finsbury Court were
so over-heightened with laystalls of dung, that divers windmills were
thereon set, the ditches were filled up, and the bridges overwhelmed.’
[42] I have reason to believe that this statement, though founded on
the authority of Stow, is erroneous, for so much of the district as
lies west of Moorgate-street; and that the main cause of this locality
suffering so severely from cholera must have lain in those very
extensive defects of house-drainage, which more recently I have become
better able to appreciate. With the kind assistance of Mr. Haywood, I
have been enabled to look over the memoranda which are kept in his
office, of deep cuttings of soil made in the construction of sewers by
himself and his predecessor, Mr. Kelsey. These sections do not by any
means tally with Stow’s description of the Moor, as extending in part
‘from without the postern called Cripplegate, even to the river of
Wels;’ for here at least there is no trace of any such condition of
soil.--J. S., 1854.
It is not as matter of literary curiosity that I quote these passages of
your old historian, but simply that I may avail myself of his accurate
local knowledge for the explanation and the cure of a serious existing
evil. For if, as I believe, the unfortunate preference for certain
localities evinced by the recent epidemic be, _primâ facie_, a reason
for doubting the effectiveness of their sub-soil drainage, and if the
ancient records of the City assure one that these very localities are
such as, from conditions then in active operation, would be liable to
retain, perhaps for an indefinite period, the materials of malarious
poison, useful and practical deductions may be drawn. And as the
liability to this severe recurrent epidemic is an extreme detriment to
the population of such localities--one too, which, if unremoved, must
inevitably lead to the deterioration of property, as well as to the
sacrifice of life, I know that your Hon. Court will be solicitous to
adopt whatever remedial measures are possible.
To those measures I shall presently return, having here dealt with the
question only as it relates to the distribution of our mortality, and
explains the preponderance of a large class of deaths in some special
districts of the City.
* * * * *
In the Tables which accompany this portion of my Report, I have arranged
in a synoptical form, convenient for reference, the chief facts of our
sanitary statistics to which I have invited your attention.
In the first[43] you will read a summary of the deaths as they have
occurred, male and female, in the several districts and sub-districts of
the City, during each quarter of the past year.
[43] _Appendix_, No. IV.
In the second[44] table the deaths of the year are classified according
to the ages at which they befell.
[44] Now incorporated in the general table, _Appendix_, No. VIII.
In the third table,[45] for the sake of comparison in respect both of
general and of infant mortality, I have arranged the statistics of
certain other localities side by side with our own.
[45] Now inserted at page 84.
In the fourth[46] (to which I have already especially referred) is
contained an enumeration, according to the several Wards of the City, of
those deaths, during the last two years, which have arisen in
consequence of acute disease partially or entirely preventable.
[46] Page 167.
In tables of this nature perfection is at present impossible; partly
because of trifling changes in the population which often occur, but
rarely can be estimated; partly because of the slovenly manner in which
deaths are occasionally recorded. While, therefore, I would not consider
myself responsible for their absolute and infinitesimal accuracy
(consisting as they do of so many and so various details) I may assure
your Hon. Court that all proper pains have been taken to render them for
every useful purpose correct and trustworthy: and that I believe them,
in all essential particulars, truthfully to represent whatsoever I have
sought to embody in them.
The annual ratio of deaths within your district; the local differences
of that ratio; the proportion of infantile mortality; the amount of
preventable disease; and, in all these respects, a comparison of parts
of the City with each other, and of the whole City with other inhabited
districts,--these are the materials on which your judgment must be
formed as to the necessity of sanitary measures, whether for the entire
City, or for its component parts: and as a main object of the
appointment which I have the honour to hold is that I should furnish you
with materials for forming that judgment, so I may probably stand
excused for troubling you with these considerations at such great
length.
II. THE CAUSES AND THE PREVENTION OF ENDEMIC DISEASE.
According to the method adopted in my last Annual Report, I now proceed
to offer you such observations as another year’s experience may justify,
on those physical influences which prevail against life within the City
of London, and on such remedial measures as seem aptest to remove them.
_Sub-soil Drainage, House-Drainage, and Sewerage._
1. In respect of drainage, I have already adverted to those unwholesome
conditions which prevail along the low-lying valley of the ancient
Fleet, and have mentioned to you that frequent incursions of the river
aggravate whatever mischief is inherent in the soil, by maintaining it
as a perpetual swamp, and by favoring in it a constant succession of
putrefactive changes. I have likewise illustrated to you the probability
that, in some of the higher portions of the City, chiefly in the
Out-Wards of Cripplegate and Bishopsgate, there still survive some
properties of that old malarious fen, from which these districts were
originally reclaimed. Stow seems in his day to have had misgivings on
this subject; for after describing the improvements that had been
effected there, and the gradual levelling and heightening of the ground,
he adds, ‘it seemeth to me that if it be made level with the battlements
of the city wall, yet will it be little the dryer, such was then the
moorish nature of that ground.’
From a consideration of this former geography of the place, and from
observation of the diseases which prevail there, I am led to think it
highly probable, that some of its sanitary defects depend less on
defective house-drainage than on a still marshy undrained condition of
the ground itself, and that these defects would be removed by an
efficient application of sub-soil drainage.
I would therefore respectfully recommend to you, under this head, that
the state of soil in the specified districts be referred to competent
authorities, and that such measures be adopted as inquiry may prove
requisite, for relieving those parts where the sub-soil drainage is
imperfect, and for protecting the house-foundations, and sewers, and
sub-soil adjacent to the river, from being soaked or flooded by the
tide.
* * * * *
2. With respect to house-drainage, I have no addition to offer to those
remarks which I submitted to you in my last Report. Your Hon. Court has
fully recognised that immense peril to life which is connected with the
presence of cesspools beneath houses, and which depends on their
poisonous emanations. At the commencement of the present year, your
Surveyor stated that he might take ‘5414, as a fair approximation of the
number of cesspools’ then in existence within the square mile of the
City of London. This proportion, dangerously large as without doubt it
is, presented an important diminution from the number which existed a
year previously, when your Commission first obtained from the
Legislature authority to enforce their closure; and it may reasonably be
anticipated that at the termination of this present year, a still
further abatement will be recorded in the magnitude of that destructive
nuisance.
* * * * *
3. Notwithstanding the variety of stink-traps to which you have given
trial, and notwithstanding the fact (recorded by your Committee of
Health on the Surveyor’s authority) that ‘there does not exist within
your jurisdiction a single gully which is untrapped,’ there continue to
be frequent complaints of offensive exhalations from the sewers.
The mechanical difficulties in this matter of trapping have appeared to
be, from the nature of the case, almost insuperable. It may, indeed,
easily be conceived, how incompatible are the common uses of a
gully-hole with such fineness of adjustment and delicacy of balance as
would render the apparatus air-tight from within, and effectually
preclude an escape of the gaseous contents of a sewer. Under such
circumstances, your Hon. Court has desired that I should express my
opinion, how far a different course might be adopted in respect of these
exhalations; how far, namely, they might be neutralised within the
sewers; how far it might be chemically feasible, and in a sanitary point
of view expedient, that a systematic use should be made of deodorising
agents; so that any gas escaping from the sewers should at least be
divested of its original smell.
On this subject, I would submit to you the following considerations. As
respects its feasibility (putting aside as foreign to my province all
questions of the expense, and all details of the daily arrangement) a
first and obvious objection is this: Granted in the abstract, that
sewer-gases can be converted by appropriate agents into inodorous
compounds; in the practical application of these agents, you would find
impediments with which you are already familiar. Theoretically, there
may be no difficulty in providing air-tight traps; practically there is
said to be every difficulty. Just as that mechanical problem has
defeated you in practice, so would the chemical one; and for the same
reason. The fulfilment of either problem is a matter of nice adjustment.
In proportion as your gully-hole is exquisitely trapped, it becomes
liable to obstruction; it loses its use as an inlet to the sewer, nearly
in the same measure as it becomes an effective obstacle to regurgitant
gases. Similarly, in proportion as these alleged deodorisers might
succeed in completely stifling the characteristic odour of sewage, they
would be liable to diffuse perfumes peculiarly their own, and to
establish, in the vicinity of gully-holes, the alternation of a new
nuisance with the old. To proportion with accuracy the introduction of
these chlorinous preparations to the amount of refuse traversing the
sewers--an amount varying most considerably at different hours of the
day, seems to me quite a visionary hope. Failing such accurate
proportions, I am not prepared to say that the result would be useful;
and I accordingly consider the scheme as not chemically feasible.
Further--as involving an important sanitary principle, I would say, that
the great object which must be aimed at is not the mere chemical
neutralisation of certain stinks which arise within your jurisdiction,
but the closest possible limitation, and the promptest possible removal
of all those materials which are decomposed into fœtid products.
Admirable, no doubt, is that arrangement by which Nature, stationing a
sense of smell at the inlet of our breath, cautions us by this vigilant
sentinel against the inhalation of many poisonous airs; but, in respect
of organic decomposition, I am in no degree satisfied that its odorous
products are its only, if even its principal, agents of injury; nor have
I any reason to suppose that the real detriment to health which arises
from breathing the miasms of sewers or marshes, of cesspools,
burial-grounds, or slaughter-houses, would in any important degree be
lessened by the mere mitigation of fœtor in their effluvia. Offensive as
these are, they at least answer the useful purpose of warning us against
the other poisons with which they are associated.
Let me likewise take the opportunity of correcting a misapprehension,
which, by the use of an inappropriate word, is sometimes shown to exist
on this subject. The agents in question are spoken of as
_dis-infectant_. As there is no scientific reason whatever for believing
that they in any degree interfere with the spread of epidemic or
infectious disease, and as an erroneous opinion on this point may lead
to the neglect of measures which are truly precautionary and useful, I
think it well to state explicitly, for your information, that I have no
evidence of their possessing any other utility, in the respects under
consideration, than simply and singly that of removing stink from the
atmosphere around them.
For reducing to a _minimum_ the exhalations which arise from sewers and
house-drains, it appears to me that the following are the essential
principles: First, to render the current through them as rapid as
possible; and, above all, by every care for their form, their junctions,
their slope, and their material, to provide against the occurrence of
obstructions and deposit: Secondly, to employ in their construction, so
far as may be possible, such substances as are porous in the least
procurable degree; such as consequently will be least apt to imbibe and
retain in their interstices any considerable impregnation from the fœtid
fluids running over them at intervals; such, too, as will be least
likely to permit soakage into the surrounding soil: Thirdly, by reducing
the size of drains and sewers to the lowest dimensions compatible with a
full performance of their uses, to diminish to the utmost the extent of
their interior evaporating surface, and of those large chambers which
they now offer for the evolution, retention, and diffusion of gases.
To the application of these principles (together with a sufficient and
appropriate distribution of water) far more than to chemical agents, or
to the invention of mechanical traps, I believe that you must look for
rendering inodorous the vicinity of your numerous gully-holes. I content
myself with stating them to you, as a practical deduction from physical
laws, without venturing to offer any opinion on the degree in which they
are applicable within your jurisdiction, or on the manner in which they
should be applied. For although, as principles, they have their
foundation in physics, and although their importance to sanitary
improvement is beyond measure great, all details relating to their
application lie out of my province, and belong to a class of subjects in
which your Surveyor’s opinion will, of course, be infinitely more useful
to you than mine.
_Water-Supply._
During the past year, as in the preceding one, I have given frequent
consideration to the subject of water-supply within the City.
I have already endeavoured to convey to you the deep sense which I
entertain of its importance, and I have every reason to believe that
your Hon. Court recognises, at its full weight, the necessity of
providing for the City of London a supply of water which in quantity
shall be ample, in quality pure, in distribution constant and
accessible.
In my former Annual Report, and in some remarks subsequently addressed
to your Committee of Health, I dwelt especially on such defects of our
present system as relate to the quantity and distribution of water;
endeavouring to illustrate the insufficiency of its supply to the poorer
tenements of the City, and the extreme inconvenience which is entailed
on their inmates, sometimes by dependence on a common tap, sometimes by
the troublesome, expensive, and unwholesome necessity of storing water.
In reverting to this subject, I may correct a fallacy which is apt to
prevail with respect to the abundance of supply. I have no reason
whatever to doubt that a very liberal allowance of water is daily pumped
into the City--enough, or more than enough, so far as I know, to fulfil
all necessary purposes.
But those purposes are not fulfilled by it. A certain large figure is
stated as representing the average quantity daily driven through the
mains of the City; this quantity is divided by the number of residents
within your area, and the inference is drawn that each individual inmate
of the City has at his disposal 25 gallons a day; or (after deduction
for public purposes and the like) 21¼ for his domestic supply. As an
arithmetical conclusion from the premises this may be true: nothing can
be less accurate as a practical representation of the facts. An average
amount of three million gallons _per diem_ may, or may not, be pumped
through the mains of the City: but to calculate the _available
water-supply_ from this dividend, without previous deduction for the
immense escape of _un-available water_ by waste-pipes or otherwise,
gives a most fictitious result. The large waste which naturally arises
in the system of intermittent supply has been well illustrated by some
evidence given by Mr. Lovick before the late Metropolitan Commission of
Sewers, in respect of a particular block of nearly 1200 houses.[47] Some
of the houses were of the higher, and many of the poorer class, but the
average might be stated to be of the middle class, and to present a fair
example of an urban population. The drainage of all these houses was
discharged through one main sewer. The run of water through this sewer
was carefully watched and gauged every hour, during the night as well as
the day, on days when the water was on, that is to say, when the
intermittent supplies were delivered, and also on the ordinary days,
when the consumption of the houses was from butts and cisterns, into
which the intermittent supplies were delivered. The gaugings of the
discharge of waste water into the sewer were checked by gaugings of the
consumption of water from the butts and cisterns, during the interval of
the delivery of the supply by the company. It was ascertained that the
average quantity discharged _per diem_ through the sewers was 44½
gallons per house; but it appeared that, on the days when the
intermittent supplies of water were on, the quantity discharged _per
diem_ was 209 gallons _per_ house. The waste in this district from
defects in house apparatus of distribution, incident to an intermittent
supply of water, was, on the water days, three and three quarter times
greater than the consumption on those days.
[47] General Board of Health Report on Supply of Water to the
Metropolis, page 120.
No similar gaugings have, I believe, been made within the City; so I am
unable to tell you with accuracy what are the proportions of waste and
consumption. In an interview with your Committee on Health, when they
were collecting information on the subject, Mr. Mylne, the engineer of
the New River Company, stated (as a reason against fulfilling some
object desired by the Committee) that within the City of London, in
connexion with its distributing apparatus, there existed for the escape
and waste of water, during the period of supply, ‘at least 10,000 open
cocks.’
Assuming the accuracy of this statement, I doubt whether the average
available supply of water for domestic purposes within the City can
possibly exceed a quarter of its alleged quantity; and I am persuaded
that there must be large numbers of persons to whom the enjoyment even
of that reduced average is utterly unknown. Your Hon. Court, observing
the incalculable waste, and knowing that the cost of water-supply (as of
all other commodities) must of necessity vary according to the quantity
supplied, can appreciate the consequences of so much fruitless
expenditure.
I would beg likewise to observe to you that this unapplied flood of
water is in itself not unobjectionable. It would be of questionable
advantage if the drainage of the City were so perfect as to carry all
away without inundation of the soil; while under opposite circumstances,
in every quarter where drainage is absent or faulty, evil must arise
from the extensive and habitual infiltration of moisture.
On the extreme inconvenience which attends the storage of water in the
poorer habitations of the City, I have already reported to you, and will
now only add that increased experience has given much confirmation to my
view. Their receptacles are generally such as contribute to the
contamination of water, and are constantly so arranged as to invite an
admixture of the most varied impurities.
In the large proportion of them, which are open casks, one sees
habitually a film of soot floating on the surface; one sees (if indeed
one can see so deeply into water which is often turbid and opaque) that
filth and rubbish lie at the bottom; one sees the interior of the cask
itself dirty and mouldering.