Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of London

In the sanitary point of view, I probably need not insist much on the advantages which these establishments have conferred. You will hardly doubt how good and wholesome a thing it has been for so many thousands to have had the means of cleanliness; who, in the absence of such facilities, must often have carried about their persons accumulations that one sickens to think of; and whose narrow, crowded chambers must constantly have steamed with wash-tubs, and been hung round with reeking clothes.

Next, very briefly, let me allude to what has been done in respect of the habitations of the poor; first, by the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Labouring Classes, under the patronage of their Majesties the Queen and the Queen Dowager, with the Prince Albert for its President, and Lord Ashley for its Chairman; secondly, by the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes, under the Chairmanship of Sir Ralph Howard, and with a committee which, like that of the former society, includes many of the best and wisest, as well as the highest persons of the country. Under the influence of these societies the following experiments have been made:—

In the Old Pancras-road a very large building has been erected, to accommodate 110 families separately and distinctly, in sets of two and three rooms each. Each set of rooms has its own boiler, range, oven, and coalbox; its separate scullery, in which are sink, cistern, and dust-shaft; its own watercloset, its own ample supply of water, and many other conveniences. The rents vary from 3s. 6d. to 5s. per week for a set of two rooms; and from 4s. 9d. to 6s. 3d. for a set of three rooms. The founders of this establishment have recently purchased land at the end of Spicer-street, Spitalfields, on which to erect a lodging-house for 300 single men, and also houses for families.

In the Lower-road, Pentonville, houses of three different classes have been built, on the same general principle of furnishing every convenience and sanitary requisite. They accommodate, on the whole, 23 families and 30 single women—widows, or of advanced age. The entire houses for families, with all the above-mentioned conveniences, are at a rent of 6s., having a good-sized living room, two bedrooms, with additional enclosed recesses for children’s beds, a yard at the back of the house, and the joint use of a wash-house and drying yard. A floor of two rooms is rented at 3s. 6d., and a single room by a single person at 1s. 6d.

In George-street, St. Giles’s, a model lodging-house has been established, affording accommodation to 104 single men, and combining everything essential to such an establishment. The ventilation and drainage have been carefully attended to; an ample supply of water is provided, gas extends through the house, the dormitories are arranged so as to keep their inmates private from each other; there are washing-closets fitted up with every requisite for cleanliness; there is a bath-room supplied with hot and cold water; there are a kitchen and wash-house furnished with all appropriate utensils, a pantry-hatch, with separate, ventilated, and secure compartments for the food of each inmate; in the pay-office is a small well-selected library, for the service of the lodgers, and the use of a spacious coffee-room is likewise for their common convenience. Their pay is 4d. per night, or 2s. a week—an amount little above the ordinary rent paid for the most miserable accommodation in a trampers’ lodging-house.

At 76, Hatton-garden, a lodging-house for 57 single women has recently been opened, consisting of three floors of dormitories, divided into separate compartments, and a basement fitted up with kitchen, washhouse, bath, pantry, safes, &c.

In Charles-street, Drury-lane, three tenements, originally separate, have been converted into a single lodging-house for 82 single men, on the same general plan and at the same rent as that in George-street, St. Giles’s.

All the lodging-houses are furnished; and the inmates are supplied with utensils for their food and other purposes, which must be returned, or made good, at their leaving.

In all these lodging-houses rules exist for the purpose of insuring cleanliness, sobriety, carefulness, and general propriety of conduct; any infraction of which subjects the offender to immediate expulsion. For the sake of those who choose to avail themselves of the opportunity, Scripture readings are appointed to take place in the common room every evening at 9 o’clock; and copies of the Scriptures, with other well-chosen books, are left in charge of the superintendent for distribution among the lodgers, in the hope that they may thus be induced to occupy their leisure to advantage.

In the construction of all these establishments, equally, the greatest pains have been taken to bring sanitary science to bear on the comfort, and convenience, and health of the inmates. Ventilation, drainage, facilities for decency and for cleanliness, have in every instance been made the leading considerations of the architect.[27]

In regard of these model houses and model lodgings, it would, I think, be a great error to estimate their benefit as merely relative to the number of persons at any one time inmates of them. No doubt it is a great advantage that they furnish, at the ordinary prices of the day, or at a still lower price, so excellent accommodation to several hundreds of persons; and it is a still greater good (particularly in regard of those established for single men and single women) that they drill their inmates into decent and orderly habits, and accustom them to a high standard of household-accommodation, which will probably influence their subsequent married lives in the same desirable direction. But, indirectly, their utility has a far wider scope. They stand in bright contrast to the dark features of filth and unwholesomeness which environ them; they familiarise the poorest classes generally with all the practical advantages of cleanliness; they show that dirt is not inevitable; they therefore create and foster among the humblest members of society, a laudable discontent with defective sanitary arrangements; and they establish a strong public opinion, grounded on experience, in favour of those conditions of cleanliness and comfort, which determine the maintenance of health.

That all the great results of sanitary science can be applied in their utmost perfectness to the dwellings of the poor, for the payment of a rent often below, and never above, the average given for some miserable doghole, that poisons its inhabitants, is a truth of immense importance, deserving the widest dissemination, and pregnant with the most hopeful promise. Such advantages spring from and illustrate the economical application of the associative principle; they cannot be obtained otherwise than by the application of capital, in such an amount as lies only within the compass of wealthy corporations, or is reached by the voluntary combination of several private purses. While the labouring classes are abundantly able to maintain these institutions when established, and to render them amply remunerative to those whose capital has first founded them, it is obvious that no power of association lying within their means can suffice to originate such work.

The task of initiation rests with others. And therefore it is, gentlemen, that on this occasion I have been induced to bring under your notice, as a most important part of my subject, the outline of what has been done in the matter of Model Dwellings and Public Baths and Washhouses. Feeling assured that establishments of this nature are of infinite utility in the several respects I have enumerated; feeling assured that, beyond their immediate operation on the health of inmates and users, they also tend, by their indirect educational influence, to improve the social habits, to promote the civilization, to elevate the general tone and character of the labouring classes, I earnestly recommend them to your attention; hoping that you may either yourselves confer on the poor population of the City the advantage of your patronage and succour in this respect, or else may transfer the matter to the jurisdiction of the Common Council, with all the influence and authority in its favour which your recommendation would insure.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SANITARY ORGANISATION IN THE CITY.

Having now enumerated the sanitary evils of the City, and the remedies which appear to my mind most appropriate for their removal, it becomes desirable that, in concluding, I should point out to you the organisation which seems necessary to be adopted during the gradual transition of the City from its present to a healthier state;—an organisation which may render this transitional period as short as possible, and may most effectually contribute to mitigate, for the time, the pressure of such evils as cannot immediately be removed.

The object of this organisation lies in a word; Inspection—gentlemen, inspection of the most constant, most searching, most intelligent, and most trustworthy kind, is that in which the provisional management of our sanitary affairs must essentially consist.

I presume I may take for granted that, in some form or other, a Committee of Health will exist, either as a Committee of the Court of Common Council, or as one of this Hon. Court. I may, perhaps, further assume that such a Committee will have authority to entertain all subjects relative to the sanitary improvement of the City, and to make thereon such recommendations as shall seem fit to them; and, further, that they will make it their business to receive periodical intelligence, as complete as possible, on all variations in the public health, and on all circumstances likely to affect it.

In order that any Committee, acting for sanitary purposes within the City, shall have a reasonable chance of success in its endeavours for the public good, the following means of information will be necessary for its use:—

1. That an account should be kept, corrected year by year, of every house within the City; as to the area of building, the number of floors, rooms, and windows; as to its ventilation; as to its drainage, water-supply, and other facilities for cleanliness; as to its method of occupation, and number of inhabitants:

2. That from this account there should be made out, at least twice yearly, a list of houses and streets remaining in an objectionable sanitary state; and a list, also, of such as may have been remedied to the satisfaction of the Committee since the formation of their last preceding list:

3. That, while trades injurious to health or offensive to their neighbourhood are suffered to continue within the City, there should be given periodical reports on the condition of such establishments, to the end that they may be so maintained as to be least detrimental to the public health:

4. That a record of every death registered as occurring in the population of the City should lie before the Committee; and

5. I consider it quite indispensable, that they should likewise receive the largest and most accurate returns which can be procured of all sickness occurring among the poorer classes; and (particularly in respect of all epidemic, endemic, and infectious disorders) that the medical practitioner who communicates the fact of illness, should likewise report the existence of any local causes, or other influences of general operation, which have tended to produce, or are tending to continue, such illness.

On the subject of returns of the nature last referred to, I have already, on various occasions, submitted my opinion to the judgment of your Hon. Court. A year ago, in the first Report which I had the honour to make here, and in various discussions which during some months followed the reception of that Report, I stated how necessary I deemed such returns, for the purpose of guiding and justifying the various recommendations which it would become my duty to lay before you. The period which has since elapsed, including its three months of pestilence, has furnished me with the strongest confirmation of those views. As I formerly stated by anticipation, so now I repeat from experience, that nothing deserving the name of sanitary administration can exist in the City, without accurate periodical intelligence of all such sickness (at least) as comes under parochial treatment; or without such reports on the local sanitary conditions, and on other causes of disease, as were desired to accompany that intelligence.

When the matter was previously under your consideration, it was argued that the reception of such intelligence formed no part of your functions as a Commission for draining, lighting, paving, and cleansing the City of London; that all sanitary matters, beyond these and the like, were foreign to your proper sphere of operation; and that your funds, raised by rates from the citizens of London, could not with propriety be applied to meet the expenses of such an arrangement. On this question of jurisdiction and finance I shall, of course, hazard no opinion. I would simply beg to repeat, with regard to so much of the matter as lies within my own professional province, that the intelligence in question is absolutely necessary for the present progress of sanitary measures within the City; that no Health-Committee can exist for a month without it; nor can any officer, having proper respect for his character, consent to be considered responsible for the health of a population, whose illnesses he learns only from their posthumous record in the death-register.

During the recent prevalence of cholera, the Health-Committee of the Common Council complied for the time with my recommendation, and established a system of daily reports, rendered still more serviceable by free personal intercourse between myself and the several gentlemen having medical charge of the three City unions. What needed to be daily during a period of pestilence, might fitly become a weekly communication at all other times. I have already reported to the Health-Committee, and I beg to reiterate here, that the advantages derived from that system of communication were such as could have been attained in no other way.

I may remind you that each of the gentlemen referred to, serving under the Poor Law, works within a certain small and definite district; that he is therefore peculiarly competent to speak on the state of the population in that district, on their habits and necessities, on their customary condition of health, and on their liability to epidemic disease; and that the total staff of these officers, taken collectively, representing the medical practice of the whole city, can supply exactly that kind of detailed and precise information which is most serviceable to your Officer of Health, in guiding him to those more general and comprehensive conclusions which it is his business to lay before you. These gentlemen are the habitual medical attendants of the poorer classes; day by day, in the unobtrusive beneficence of their calling, they pass from house to house, and from court to court—the constant recipients of complaint, or the constant observers of ground of complaint—amid all that destitute population on whose condition you require to be informed. They are in the constant presence of the pestilences which reign in our worst localities; they are the chief treaters of endemic disease within the City—of that disease which, by its proportion, measures the success of sanitary changes, or indicates their failure; and it has been the professional education of these gentlemen, as it is their business, to trace such effects to their causes. Their reports would be the authenticated statements of experienced medical practitioners, familiarly conversant with their several respective localities.

If it were your wish and object, with utter indifference to expense, to organise the best scheme for procuring to yourselves from time to time a succession of accurate and trustworthy reports on the state of health, and condition of dwellings, in the several districts of the City;—if you were willing to engage a large number of non-medical persons who should give their whole time to the duty of exploring and reporting on that state, I am persuaded that this expensive and cumbrous proceeding would have a smaller measure of success than that which I submit to you, and which consists essentially in availing yourselves of the local knowledge and daily observations of a staff of officers, already organised and in active occupation for the very purposes in question.

That such intelligence, embracing weekly returns from the eleven parochial surgeons of the City of London, and including their comments on the local causes of prevailing disease, would involve an annual expenditure of money,[28]—and that this expenditure, sooner or later, and in some form or other, would be derived from the rate-paying portion of the community, are facts which cannot be doubted. But that the expenditure would be a judicious one; that it is indispensable to the effective working of any Health-Committee, or any Health-Officer within the City; that it would be the first step to the mitigation of the disorders reported on; that it would disclose evils which else must escape recognition and remedy; that in a few years it would render our general mortality of 3 per cent. on the entire population of the City a matter of history and a warning, instead of its being, as now, a present and awful reality; that in lessening sickness and death, it would stay a large source of pauperism, would diminish the number of occasional and habitual claimants of Union relief, and would become a measure of real and considerable economy;—these are points on which, with the utmost sense of official responsibility, I beg to record my deliberate conviction.

Accordingly, I have to recommend that any Committee, which may undertake the administration of sanitary affairs for the City, shall be furnished as completely as possible with information of the nature I have specified.

Another element to which I think it necessary to advert, in connexion with a future sanitary organisation for the City, is this,—that some permanent arrangement should be made, by which the maintenance of exterior and interior cleanliness, the enforcement of scavengers’ duties, the suppression of nuisances, and the like, should be brought under habitual and systematic surveillance; one, by which all breaches of your present or future sanitary regulations may be quickly detected, and may be visited with their appropriate penalties as speedily and as certainly as possible. I am induced the rather to bring this subject before you, as complaints of scavengers’ duties being neglected have reached me at every turn. I am informed that it is usual for them to refuse to remove dirt and rubbish from houses, according to the terms of their contract, except on the tenants’ payment of an additional gratuity; and it must be obvious to your Hon. Court that the arrangements which you have made by contract for this purpose are virtually defeated, as regards the poorer population, when the removal of refuse-matter is made contingent on the gift of beer-money by those whose means are so restricted.

It is in respect of matters of this sort, and of such only, that I think the services of the Police-Force might usefully be employed. Their want of special education, and their employment in other duties, are circumstances which appear to me quite conclusive for objecting to their utilisation as sanitary reporters. But while I entertain the opinion that their employment in the latter direction would be both fruitless and inconvenient, I would submit that their numbers and their diffusion through the City qualify them well to act against all causers of nuisance, as they act against other offenders, both detectively and preventively; and I would venture to repeat a suggestion, which I made in January last, ‘that the police should consider it part of their duty, to report on every nuisance within their knowledge, and on every infraction of such sanitary rules as this Court may establish.’

Here, Gentlemen, terminates the list of subjects which, on this occasion, I have thought it my duty to bring before you. Long as the enumeration may have appeared, I can assure you that my present Report bears a small proportion, in point of dimensions, to the very large and very various mass of materials on which it is founded. In compressing it within the narrowest limits consistent with intelligibility, and in excluding from it nearly all details on the matters treated of, I have consulted the convenience of your Hon. Court, notwithstanding the greater labour and difficulty of execution which belong to the plan I have adopted. At any time, in Court or in Committee, when you may wish to pursue the subject, I shall be ready to enter at far greater length, and with more elaborate minuteness, on any of those subjects which, at the present opportunity, I have only sketched for your general information.

In the matters which I have enumerated, some lie distinctly within your province, as assigned by the Act of Parliament; while others may be thought to lie, just as distinctly, without that province. In affairs strictly under your jurisdiction, and within the present scope of the law, there remains very much to achieve. The complete enforcement of house-drainage, till every house washes itself into the sewer; the more general distribution of water, till every individual within the City has an abundant supply within his immediate reach; the effective preservation of public cleanliness; the construction and maintenance of sewerage, paving, lighting, for all the streets, courts and passages of this great City;—these constitute an immense amount of responsibility and labour. Those other objects to which I have referred, are partly such as cannot be accomplished without the further interference of the Legislature. It is a point solely for the discretion of your Hon. Court to determine, how far you may be willing to enlarge the sphere of your sanitary operations, and to undertake the difficulties of a new campaign.

To your Officer of Health the Act of Parliament allows no such option. ‘Whereas the health of the population, especially of the poorer classes, is frequently injured by the prevalence of epidemical and other disorders,’ therefore it is appointed for his duty that he shall report on whatsoever ‘injuriously affects the health of the inhabitants of the City,’ and that he shall ‘point out the most efficacious mode of checking or preventing the spread of contagious or other epidemic disease.’ Actuated by obligation of the duty thus expressed in your Act of Parliament, after full reflection on all that those expressions imply, and with the deepest sense of the responsibility belonging to one who is honoured with the task of advising the first Corporation of the country in respect of its sanitary proceedings, I have been compelled, in the course of my present Report, to trench upon many subjects which do not customarily fall under your consideration, and which (as I have stated) may by some be considered as utterly foreign to your jurisdiction and province.

It rests with your Hon. Court to determine what course you will adopt in respect of such departments of the great sanitary scheme;—whether you will retain them under your consideration, and will assume the responsibility of dealing with them in proportion to their magnitude and importance, or will transfer them to the Court of Common Council for the less restricted deliberation of that body.

Let me once more declare my profound conviction of their importance to the health and welfare of the City.

To provide an inoffensive outfall for the sewerage of our vast population; to render the river a source of unqualified advantage; to give wide extension and sounder principles to the system of water-supply; to suppress all trades and occupations which taint the atmosphere with materials of organic decomposition; to abate the nuisance of smoke; to provide the facilities for extramural interment, and to procure the prohibition of all further burial amidst our living; to improve the domestic arrangements of the poor, and to insure for them an adequate supervision; to establish public baths and laundries, which may offer the utmost facilities and inducement for the maintenance of personal cleanliness; to hinder the occupation of houses which breed pestilence; to destroy such as are irremediably hostile to health, and to disperse the stifled population of courts and alleys; to substitute for such slums as we hope to depopulate and destroy, but in open streets and with perfect ventilation, houses and lodgings, which not only shall offer to the labouring classes every convenience essential to health and decency and comfort, but shall likewise serve as models of household economy for the whole district in which they stand;—these, Gentlemen, are the aims, briefly recapitulated, for the sake of which I have been obliged, as it were casually in my Report, to touch on many subjects perhaps foreign to your jurisdiction, but lying at least on the confines of your province, and remaining with you now either to retain or to transfer.[29]

That the subject of sanitary improvement in its widest scope, and with all that even incidentally relates to it, is one which, according to the ancient constitution of the City, rightfully belongs to the authorities of the Corporation, in some one or other of their municipal relations—that it belongs to them equally as their privilege and their duty, cannot for a moment be questioned. And if your Hon. Court should determine on a negative opinion as regards yourselves, and should decide on transferring these matters to the Common Council, I venture to hope that your influence may accompany them in their course, and may procure for them the consideration they deserve.

Gentlemen, the history of the City of London is full of great examples of public service. It records many a generous struggle for the Country and for the Constitution; it records a noble patronage of arts and letters; it records imperial magnificence and Christian liberality; but never, within the scope of its annals, has the Corporation had so grand an opportunity as now for the achievement of an unlimited good. Because of the City’s illustrious history, and because of the vast wealth and power which have enabled it so often to undertake the largest measures of public utility and patriotism,—therefore it is, that the expectations of the country may well be fixed on the City of London in regard of this, the distinguishing movement of modern times—the movement to improve the social condition, and to prolong the lives of the poor.

Those who are familiar with the many abiding monuments of your civic munificence and splendor, may well expect that, in approaching this all-important question, the counsels of the City will be swayed by high and generous considerations.

In the great objects which sanitary science proposes to itself,—in the immense amelioration which it proffers to the physical, to the social, and indirectly to the moral condition of an immense majority of our fellow-creatures, it transcends the importance of all other sciences, and in its beneficent operation seems most nearly to embody the spirit and to fulfil the intentions of practical Christianity.

Ignorant men may sneer at its pretensions; weak and timorous men may hesitate to commit themselves to its principles, so large in their application; selfish men may shrink from the labour of change, which its recognition must entail; wicked men may turn indifferently from considering that which concerns the health and happiness of millions of their fellow-creatures. To such men an appeal would indeed be useless. But, to the Corporation of the City of London—whether as assembled in its entire Parliament, or as represented within the confines of this Court—to the Corporation which, on so many occasions, has attained patriotic ends by great expenditure and sacrifice; to men earnest, strong-minded, and practical, having much consideration for their fellow-creatures, and having little consideration for personal toil or municipal expense, so only that they may fulfil a great Christian duty, and may confirm the gratitude with which history records their frequent services to our kind;—to such a Corporation, and to such men, the Country looks for the perfection of a sanitary scheme which shall serve as model and example to other municipal bodies undertaking the same responsibility; and to such a Corporation and to such men do I, likewise, your Officer of Health, respectfully and confidently address a well-founded appeal.

FURTHER REMARKS ON WATER-SUPPLY.

ADDRESSED TO THE HEALTH-COMMITTEE OF THE HON. THE COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS OF THE CITY OF LONDON, PURSUANT TO A REFERENCE—

“What would be a sufficient supply of water to the houses and premises within the City, and the best principle upon which to effect such supply?”

February 21, 1850.

Gentlemen,

Such further observations on the subject of ‘Water-Supply to the City’ as you have desired me to lay before you, I have now the honor to submit, in as condensed a form as possible.

First, I may remind you, that in my report of last November, which still remains under your consideration, I stated the following ‘as 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 stand-cock 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.’

In re-organising the system of water-supply there are some other purposes, of a more public nature than these, which would likewise claim your attention: such as (1) an improved arrangement for meeting all accidents and emergencies of fire; (2) an efficient distribution of water to all common urinals and privies; (3) a sufficiency of supply for any public baths and wash-houses, which may be hereafter erected; and (4) an ample surplus to be at the disposal of the Commission for the cleansing of streets and sewers.

In order that those domestic purposes, which I first enumerated, should be adequately fulfilled, the supply of water ought, practically speaking, to be without limit to any individual consumer. It is the tendency of the system of constant supply, and constitutes a distinguishing advantage of that system, that it fulfils this important condition without any increase, or perhaps rather with a diminution, of the total draught of water for a large population.

The average of requirement (estimated from the consumption of large communities) would probably be about 12 gallons per person per diem; making an amount, for the total population of the City, of about 1¹⁄₂ million gallons per diem. Assuming this estimate to be correct, a point which I would beg you to observe is the following: that, although there might be very little fluctuation in the total quantity consumed, and although it might remain constant at the figure I have given, yet in the items of individual consumption, making up this gross amount, there would be almost infinite varieties. One family would habitually consume twice as much water as another family of the same size: one family would consume six gallons per person on five days of the week, and would require all its remaining quota on the other two days; and so forth. These differences and caprices of individual requirement do not sensibly affect the total quantity consumed in a given week by a population of 130,000 persons; one consuming more, another less, the first counterbalances the last in forming the materials for a fair personal average; and a source of supply calculated from such an average for a large population would, practically speaking, be unlimited to each individual consumer, provided only that it were so distributed, that each consumer could draw from the common stock at his own time and according to his own necessity. This advantage is obviously lost under the present system of intermittent supply, which compels a larger total distribution than would else be requisite, entails the expensive and unwholesome necessity for storage, and yet is notoriously fraught with the inconveniences of a restricted source, or a defective supply.

I have no sufficient data for judging with precision what quantity of water might be required to fulfil all those public purposes of cleanliness and of protection from fire, to which I have adverted. The supply would require to be practically inexhaustible; but the consumption, on an average of the four seasons, would probably lie considerably within half a million of gallons per diem.

When the distribution of water is brought into its proper relations with the drainage of the City—that is, when the arrangements of domestic drainage are completed, in conformity with the intentions of the Act of Parliament, and when all the water, distributed for private consumption, is made to traverse and to cleanse all the channels of house-drainage, it is probable that a smaller quantity of water than is now consumed will suffice for the flushing of sewers, and for other so-called sanitary purposes.

The quantity at present supplied to the City by its two Water-Companies is perhaps much in excess of the two millions of gallons per diem, which I have estimated as a sufficiency for our population; but the distribution is so unequal, and the waste of the intermittent system so incalculably great, that the effect produced on the population is, to a very great extent, that of scarcity.

With regard to the principle of supply on which I have been desired to report, it seems certain to my mind, from such evidence as I can collect on the subject, that the system of continuous supply at high-pressure promises advantages which can never be realized under the present system of intermittent supply. There are many matters connected with the comparison of these two systems, which lie beyond my sphere of professional observation, and on which I would not be bold enough to offer any opinion to your Committee. The sanitary points, on which alone I would venture to insist, as benefits in the system of continuous supply, are—first, the practical inexhaustibility of the source, and secondly, the absence of necessity for storage. If these benefits are attainable, and especially if (as alleged) they can be obtained at a material economy of expenditure, as compared with the present system, there can be little doubt as to which should obtain the preference.

If your Committee should wish, it would be easy to prepare for your examination a digested summary of such scientific evidence as has been given on these points: or it might be expedient, if such a course would be more satisfactory to you, that some person in your confidence should undertake to visit and inspect one or more of the towns where the system of continuous supply is in operation, and where direct information can be gathered on the very important particulars of its practical efficiency and success. But, at all events, whether your Committee should wish or should not wish this personal investigation to be undertaken, I would suggest, that it might be satisfactory to you and serviceable to the inquiry in which you are engaged, if you would procure a report from some eminent hydraulic engineer, practically conversant with the system of continuous supply, who might furnish you with conclusive testimony as to the admissibility of this system within the City, and as to the advantages and disadvantages, sanitary and economical, which might attend its adoption here, as compared with that which has hitherto prevailed.

It appears to me that at the present time the system of continuous supply might, provisionally, receive a fair trial in the City, in respect of some of those poorer habitations, which are now for the first time about to be supplied with water and drainage. The Water-Companies would probably not object, if desired by the Commission, to supply a hundred houses, experimentally, with constant pressure from their mains. The Commission might select for its experiment some of those courts about Cripplegate or Bishopsgate, where the drainage, as well as the water-supply, requires to be constructed anew: some, where there have hitherto been undrained cesspools, and where the water-supply has been from a stand-cock. Should this suggestion be found feasible, I would recommend that the details of its execution should be carried out under the joint superintendence of your Surveyor and myself, and that we should afterwards report to you its results, as material for guiding your decision with regard to the general supply of the City.

Mr. Quick, Engineer to the Southwark Water-Works, in a letter which is appended to Sir William Clay’s pamphlet, has recently suggested various arrangements for an uninterrupted supply, and these have no doubt been under your Surveyor’s consideration. I may add, too, that there are at present upwards of 40 houses within the City constantly supplied from the mains of the East London Water-Works; but as these are not houses of the poorest description, it is possible that they may not constitute so satisfactory a proof of the feasibility of the constant supply, or so complete an illustration of the detailed arrangements for its employment, as could be given by the experimental construction I have suggested.

While the supply remains, as at present, an interrupted one for the City generally, I would recommend that the Commission should procure from the Water-Companies an arrangement for the delivery to occur, under no circumstances, less than daily; and that Sunday should form no exception to this arrangement. Many tenants of the Water Companies at present receive their supply only on alternate days, Sunday counting as a dies non, so that a necessity is entailed in such cases for a three days’ storage of water.

Whether the quality of water supplied to the City by the existing Companies is such as it ought to be, or whether some purer source of supply may be found; whether their neglect of filtration, notwithstanding the important weight of testimony given in its favor, be not a serious dereliction of their duty to the public; whether the sanitary interests of the consumers of this first necessary of life can be properly protected, while at variance with those of the great trading companies which hold a virtual monopoly of the supply; whether it would not be an immense boon to the Citizens of London, that the control of the water-supply should be vested in the same jurisdiction as the drainage, paving, and sanitary cleansing of the district; are questions which have forced themselves closely on my attention while considering the sanitary affairs of the City, and on which I hope shortly to lay some special observations before this Committee or before the Court.

I defer dwelling on these subjects at present, partly because they were not mentioned in your Committee’s specific reference; partly because I think it desirable to wait for the issue of the experiment which I have suggested with regard to the competing system of supply; and partly because I have reason to know that at the present moment a very extensive series of chemical investigations is proceeding under orders of the Government, with a view to ascertain the purest possible sources for the water-supply of the metropolis. The results of this inquiry, so far as they have transpired, appear to me so infinitely important in their relation to some of the questions just alluded to, that I think it expedient under the circumstances to wait for such new light as may accrue to our knowledge from the completion of these researches, before I touch the chemical division of the subject.

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT.

TO THE HON. THE COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS OF THE CITY OF LONDON.

November 26th, 1850.

Gentlemen,

In obedience to that clause in your Act of Parliament under which my office is constituted, and which enjoins on your Officer of Health that he shall ‘report periodically upon the Sanitary condition of the City,’ I now submit to your Hon. Court my annual statement on this subject.

I. Mortality of the City of London.

During the fifty-two weeks, dated from September 30th, 1849, to September 28th, 1850, there died of the population under your charge 2752 persons. The rate of mortality, estimated from these data, for a population[30] of 125,500, would indicate somewhat less than twenty-two deaths (21·92) out of every thousand living persons.