The blood flowing from a slaughtered bullock, whether killed according to the Christian or the Jewish fashion, amounts, on an average, to 20 quarts; from a sheep, to 6 or 7 quarts; from a pig, 5 quarts; and the same quantity from a calf. The blood from a horse slaughtered in a knackers’ yard is about the same as that from a bullock. This blood used to bring far higher prices to the butcher than can be now realized.

In the evidence taken by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1849, concerning Smithfield-market, Mr. Wyld, of the Fox and Knot-yard, Smithfield, stated that he slaughtered about 180 cattle weekly. “We have a sort of well made in the slaughterhouse,” he said, “which receives the blood. I receive about 1l. a week for it; it goes twice a day to Mr. Ton’s, at Bow Common. We used to receive a good deal more for it.” Even the market for blood at Mr. Ton’s, is, I am informed, now done away with. He was a manufacturer of artificial manure, a preparation of night-soil, blood, &c., baked in what may be called “cakes,” and exported chiefly to our sugar-growing colonies, for manure. His manure yard has been suppressed.

I am assured, on the authority of experienced butchers, that at the present time fully three-fourths of the blood from the animals slaughtered in London becomes a component part of the wet refuse I treat of, being washed into the sewers. The more wholesale slaughterers, now that blood is of little value (9 gallons in Whitechapel-market, the blood of two beasts—less by a gallon—can be bought for 3d.), send this animal refuse down the drains of their premises in far greater quantities than was formerly their custom.

Now, reckoning only three-fourths of the blood from the cattle slaughtered in the metropolis, to find its way into the sewers, we have, according to the numbers above given, the following yearly supply:—

This is merely the blood from the animals sold in Smithfield-market, the lambs not being included in the return; while a great many pigs and calves are slaughtered by the London tradesmen, without their having been shown in Smithfield.

The ordure from a slaughtered bullock is, on an average, from ½ to ¾ cwt. Many beasts yield one cwt.; and cows “killed full of grass,” as much as two cwt. Of this excrementitious matter, I am informed, about a fourth part is washed into the sewers. In sheep, calves, and pigs, however, there is very little ordure when slaughtered, only 3 or 4 lbs. in each as an average.

Of the number of horses killed there is no official or published account. One man familiar with the subject calculated it at 100 weekly. All the blood from the knackers’ yards is, I am told, washed into the sewers; consequently its yearly amount will be 26,000 gallons.

But even this is not the whole of the wet house-refuse of London.

There are, in addition, the excreta of the inhabitants of the houses. These are said to average ¼ lb. daily per head, including men, women, and children.

It is estimated by Bousingault, and confirmed by Liebig, that each individual produces ¼ lb. of solid excrement and 1¼ lb. of liquid excrement per day, making 1½ lb. each, or 150 lbs. per 100 individuals, of semi-liquid refuse from the water-closet. “But,” says the Surveyor of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, “there is other refuse resulting from culinary operations, to be conveyed through the drains, and the whole may be about 250 lbs. for 100 persons.”

The more fluid part of this refuse, however, is included in the quantity of water before given, so that there remains only the more solid excrementitious matter to add to the previous total. This, then, is ¼ lb. daily and individually; or from the metropolitan population of nearly 2,500,000 a daily supply of 600,000 lbs., rather more than 267 tons; and a yearly aggregate for the whole metropolis of 219,000,000 lbs., or very nearly about 100,000 tons.

From the foregoing account, then, the following is shown to be

The Gross Quantity of the Wet House-Refuse of the Metropolis.

Hence we may conclude that the more fluid portion of the wet house-refuse of London amounts to 24,000,000,000 gallons per annum; and that altogether it weighs, in round numbers, about 240,000,000,000 lbs., or 100,000,000 tons.

As these refuse products are not so much matters of trade or sale as other commodities, of course less attention has been given to them, in the commercial attributes of weight and admeasurement. I will endeavour, however, to present an uniform table of the whole great mass of metropolitan wet house-refuse in cubic inches.

The imperial standard gallon is of the capacity of 277·274 cubic inches; and estimating the solid excrement spoken of as the ordinary weight of earth, or of the soil of the land, at 18 cubic feet the ton, we have the following result, calculating in round numbers:—

Wet House-Refuse of the Metropolis.

Thus, by this process of admeasurement, we find the

Figures best show the extent of this refuse, “inexpressible” to common appreciation “by numbers that have name.”

Of the Means of Removing the Wet House-refuse.

Whether this mass of filth be, zymotically, the cause of cholera, or whether it be (as cannot be questioned) a means of agricultural fertility, and therefore of national wealth, it must be removed. I need not dilate, in explaining a necessity which is obvious to every man with uncorrupted physical senses, and with the common moral sense of decency.

“Dr. Paley,” it is said, in a recent Report to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, “gave to Burckhardt and other travellers a set of instructions as to points of observation of the manners and conditions of the populations amongst whom they travelled. One of the leading instructions was to observe how they disposed of their excreta, for what they did with that showed him what men were; he also inquired what structure they had to answer the purpose of a privy, and what were their habits in respect to it. This information Dr. Paley desired, not for popular use, but for himself, for he was accustomed to say, that the facts connected with that topic gave him more information as to the real condition and civilisation of a population than most persons would be aware of. It would inform him of their real habits of cleanliness, of real decency, self-respect, and connected moral habits of high social importance. It would inform him of the real state of police, and of local administration, and much of the general government.

“The human ordure which defiles the churches, the bases of public edifices and works of art in Rome and Naples, and the Italian cities, gives more sure indications of the real moral and social position of the Italian population than any impressions derived from the edifices and works of art themselves.

“The subject, in relation to which the Jewish lawgiver gave most particular directions, is one on which the serious attention and labour of public administrators may be claimed.”

The next question, is—How is the wet house-refuse to be removed?

There are two ways:—

In London the most obvious means of getting rid of a nuisance is to convey it into the Thames. Nor has this been done in London only. In Paris the Seine is the receptacle of the sewage, but, comparatively, to a much smaller extent than in London. The fæcal deposits accumulated in the houses of the French capital are drained into “fixed” and “moveable” cesspools. The contents of both these descriptions of cesspools (of which I shall give an account when I treat of the cesspool system) are removed periodically, under the direction of the government, to large receptacles, called voiries, at Montfaucon, and the Forest of Bondy, where such refuse is made into portable manure. The evils of this system are not a few; but the river is spared the greater pollution of the Thames. Neither is the Seine swayed by the tide as is the Thames, for in London the very sewers are affected by the tidal influence, and are not to be entered until some time before or after high-water. I need not do more, for my present inquiry, than allude to the Liffy, the Clyde, the Humber, and others of the rivers of the United Kingdom, being used for purposes of sewerage, as channels to carry off that of which the law prohibits the retention.

Of the folly, not to say wickedness, of this principle, there can be no doubt. The vegetation which gives, demands food. The grass will wither without its fitting nutriment of manure, as the sheep would perish without the pasturage of the grass. Nature, in temperate and moist climates, is, so to speak, her own manurer, her own restorer. The sheep, which are as wild and active as goats, manure the Cumberland fells in which they feed. In the more cultivated sheep-walks (or, indeed, in the general pasturage) of the northern and some of the midland counties, women, with a wooden implement, may be continually seen in the later autumn, or earlier and milder winter, distributing the “stercoraceous treasure,” as Cowper calls it, which the animals, to use the North Yorkshire word, have “dropped,” as well as any extraneous manure which may have been spread for the purpose. As population and the demand for bread increase, the need of extraneous manures also increases; and Nature in her beneficence has provided that the greater the consumption of food, the greater shall be the promoters of its reproduction by what is loathsome to man, but demanded by vegetation. Liebig, as I shall afterwards show more fully, contends that many an arid and desolate region in the East, brown and burnt with barrenness, became a desolation because men understood not the restoration which all nature demands for the land. He declares that the now desolate regions of the East had been made desolate, because “the inhabitants did not understand the art of restoring exhausted soil.” It would be hopeless now to form, or attempt to form, the “hanging gardens,” or to display the rich florescence “round about Babylon,” to be seen when Alexander the Great died in that city. The Tigris and Euphrates, before and after their junction, Liebig maintains, have carried, and, to a circumscribed degree, still carry, into the sea “a sufficient amount of manure for the reproduction of food for millions of human beings.” It is said that, “could that matter only be arrested in its progress, and converted into bread and wine, fruit and beef, mutton and wool, linen and cotton, then cities might flourish once more in the desert, where men are now digging for the relics of primitive civilization, and discovering the symbols of luxury and ease beneath the barren sand and the sunburnt clay.”

This is one great evil; but in our metropolis there is a greater, a far greater, beyond all in degree, even if the same abuse exist elsewhere. What society with one consent pronounces filth—the evacuations of the human body—is not only washed into the Thames, and the land so deprived of a vast amount of nutriment, but the tide washes these evacuations back again, with other abominations. The water we use is derived almost entirely from the Thames, and therefore the water in which we boil our vegetables and our meat, the water for our coffee and tea, the water brewed for our consumption, comes to us, and is imbibed by us, impregnated over and over again with our own animal offal. We import guano, and drink a solution of our own fæces: a manure which might be made far more valuable than the foreign guano.

Such are a few of the evils of making a common sewer of the neighbouring river.

The other mode of removal is, to convey the wet house-refuse, by drains, to a hole near the house where it is produced, and empty it periodically when full.

The house-drainage throughout London has two characteristics. By one system all excrementitious and slop refuse generally is carried usually along brick drains from the water-closets, privies, sinks, lavatories, &c., of the houses into the cesspools, where it accumulates until its removal (by manual labour) becomes necessary, which is not, as an average, more than once in two years. By the other, and the newer system, all the house-refuse is drained into the public sewer, the cesspool system being thereby abolished. All the houses built or rebuilt since 1848 are constructed on the last-mentioned principle of drainage.

I shall first deal with the sewerage of the metropolis.

Of the Quantity of Metropolitan Sewage.

Having estimated the gross quantity of wet house-refuse produced throughout London in the course of the year, and explained the two modes of removing it from the immediate vicinity of the house, I will now proceed to set forth the quantity of wet house-refuse matter which it has been ascertained is removed with the contents of London sewers.

An experiment was made on the average discharge of sewage from the outlets of Church-lane and Smith-street, Chelsea, Ranelagh, King’s Scholar’s-pond, Grosvenor-wharf, Horseferry-road, Wood-street, King-street, Northumberland-street, Durham-yard, Norfolk-street, and Essex-street (the four last-mentioned places running from the Strand). The experiments were made “under ordinary and extraordinary circumstances,” in the months of May, June, and July, 1844, but the system is still the same, so that the result in the investigation as to the sewage of the year 1844 may be taken as a near criterion of the present, as regards the localities specified and the general quantity.

The surface drained into the outlets before enumerated covers, in its total area, about 7000 acres, of which nearly 3500 may be classed as urban. The observations, moreover, were made generally during fine weather.

I cannot do better by way of showing the reader the minuteness with which these observations were made, than by quoting the two following results, being those of the fullest and smallest discharges of twelve issues into the river. I must premise that these experiments were made on seven occasions, from May 4 to July 12 inclusive, and made at different times, but generally about eight hours after high water. In the Northumberland-street sewer, from which was the largest issue, the width of the sewer at the outlet was five feet. In the King-street sewer (the smallest discharge, as given in the second table) the width of the sewer was four feet. The width, however, does not affect the question, as there was a greater issue from the Norfolk-street sewer of two feet, than from the King-street sewer of four feet in width.

Here we find that the mean discharge per second was, from the Northumberland-street sewer, 692,382· cubic feet per 24 hours, and from the King-street sewer, 3049 cubic feet per 24 hours.

The discharge from the principal outlets in the Westminster district “being the mean of seven observations taken during the summer,” was 1,798,094 cubic feet in 24 hours; the number of acres drained was 7006. The mean discharge per acre, in the course of 24 hours, was found to be about 256 cubic feet, comprising the urban and suburban parts.

The sewage, from the discharge of which this calculation was derived—and the dryness of the weather must not be lost sight of—may be fairly assumed as derived (in a dry season) almost entirely from artificial sources or house drainage, as there was no rain-fall, or but little. “Supposing, therefore,” the Report states, “the entire surface to be urban, we have 540 cubic feet as the mean daily discharge per acre. If, however, the average be taken of the first eight outlets, viz., from Essex-street to Grosvenor-wharf inclusive, which drain a surface wholly urban, the result is 1260 cubic feet per acre in the 24 hours. This excess may be attributed to the number of manufactories, and the densely-populated nature of the locality drained; but, as indicative of the general amount of sewage due to ordinary urban districts, the former ought perhaps to be considered the fairer average.”

It is then assumed—I may say officially—that the average discharge of the urban and suburban sewage from the several districts included within an area of 58 square miles, is equal to 256 cubic feet per acre.

Or a quantity equivalent to a surface of more than 36 acres in extent, and 6 feet in depth.

This mass of sewage, it must be borne in mind, is but the daily product of the sewage of the more populous part of the districts included within the jurisdiction of the two commissions of sewers.

The foregoing observations, calculations, and deductions have supplied the basis of many scientific and commercial speculations, but it must be remembered that they were taken between seven and eight years ago. The observations were made, moreover, during fine summer weather, generally, while the greatest discharge is during rainy weather. There has been, also, an increase of sewers in the metropolis, because an increase of streets and inhabited houses. The approximate proportion of the increase of sewers (and there is no precise account of it) is pretty nearly that of the streets, lineally. Another matter has too, of late years, added to the amount of sewage—the abolition of cesspoolage in a considerable degree, owing to the late Building and Sanitary Acts, so that fæcal and culinary matters, which were drained into the cesspool (to be removed by the nightmen), are now drained into the sewer. Altogether, I am assured, on good authority, the daily discharge of the sewers extending over 58 square miles of the metropolis may be now put at 10,000,000 cubic feet, instead of rather more than nine and a half millions. And this gives, as

So that the 3,650,000,000 cubic feet of sewage annually removed from 58 square miles of the metropolis refer to only one-half of the entire area of the true metropolis; but it refers, at the same time, to that part of London which is the most crowded with houses, and since, in the suburbs, the buildings average about 2 to the acre, and, in the densest parts of London, about 30, it is but fair to assume that the refuse would be, at least, in the same proportion, and this is very nearly the fact; for if we suppose the 58 miles of the suburban districts to yield twenty times less sewage than the 58 miles of the urban districts, we shall have 182,500,000 cubic feet to add to the 3,650,000,000 cubic feet before given, or 3,832,500,000 for the sewage of the entire metropolis.

It does not appear that the sewage has ever been weighed so as to give any definite result, but calculating from the weight of water (a gallon, or 10 lbs. of water, comprising 277·274 cubic inches, and 1 ton of liquid comprising 36 cubic feet) the total, from the returns of the investigation in 1844, would be

In September, 1849, Mr. Banfield, at one time a Commissioner of Sewers, put the yearly quantity of sewage discharged into the Thames at 45,000,000 tons; but this is widely at variance with the returns as to quantity.

Of Ancient Sewers.

The traverser of the London streets rarely thinks, perhaps, of the far extended subterranean architecture below his feet; yet such is indeed the case, for the sewers of London, with all their imperfections, irregularities, and even absurdities, are still a great work; certainly not equal, in all respects, to what once must have existed in Rome, but second, perhaps, only to the giant works of sewerage in the eternal city.

The origin of these Roman sewers seems to be wrapped in as great a mystery as the foundation of the city itself. The statement of the Roman historians is that these sewers were the works of the elder Tarquin, the fifth (apocryphal) king of Rome. Tarquin’s dominions, from the same accounts, did not in any direction extend above sixteen miles, and his subjects could be but banditti, foragers, and shepherds. One conjecture is, that Rome stands on the site of a more ancient city, and that to its earlier possessors may be attributed the work of the sewers. To attribute them to the rudeness and small population of Tarquin’s day, it is contended, is as feasible as it would be to attribute the ruins of ancient Jerusalem, or any others in Asia Minor, to the Turks, or the ruins of Palmyra to the Arabs, because these people enjoy the privilege of possession.

The main sewer of Rome, the Cloaca Maxima, is said to have been lofty and wide enough for a waggon load of hay to pass clear along it. Another, and more probable account, however, states that it was proposed to enlarge the great sewer to these dimensions, but it does not appear to have been so enlarged. Indeed, when Augustus “made Rome marble,” it was one of his great works also, under the direction of Agrippa, to reconstruct, improve, and enlarge the sewers. It was a project in the days of Rome’s greatness to turn seven navigable rivers into vast subterraneous passages, larger sewers, along which barges might pass, carrying on the traffic of Imperial Rome. In one year the cost of cleansing, renewing, and repairing the sewers is stated to have been 1000 talents of gold, or upwards of 192,000l. Of the average yearly cost we have no information. Some accounts represent these sewers as having been rebuilt after the irruption of the Gauls. In Livy’s time they were pronounced not to be accommodated to the plan of Rome. Some portions of these ancient structures are still extant, but they seem to have attracted small notice even from professed antiquarians; their subterranean character, however, renders such notice little possible. In two places they are still kept in repair, and for their original purpose, to carry off the filth of the city, but only to a small extent.

Our legislative enactments on the subject of sewers are ancient and numerous. The oldest is that of 9 Henry III., and the principal is that of 23 Henry VIII., commonly called the “Statute of Sewers.” These and many subsequent statutes, however, relate only to watercourses, and are silent as regards my present topic—the Refuse of London.

It is remarkable how little is said in the London historians of the sewers. In the two folio volumes of the most searching and indefatigable of all the antiquarians who have described the old metropolis, John Stow, the tailor, there is no account of what we now consider sewers, inclosed and subterranean channels for the conveyance of the refuse filth of the metropolis to its destination—the Thames. Had covered sewers been known, or at any rate been at all common, in Stow’s day, and he died full of years in 1604, and had one of them presented but a crumbling stone with some heraldic, or apparently heraldic, device at its outlet, Stow’s industry would certainly have ferreted out some details. Such, however, is not the case.

This absence of information I hold to be owing to the fact that no such sewers then existed. Our present system of sewerage, like our present system of street-lighting, is a modern work; but it is not, like our gas-lamps, an original English work. We have but followed, as regards our arched and subterraneous sewerage, in the wake of Rome.

As I have said, the early laws of sewers relate to watercourses, navigable communications, dams, ditches, and such like; there is no doubt, however, that in the heart of the great towns the filth of the houses was, by rude contrivances in the way of drainage, or natural fall, emptied into such places. Even in the accounts of the sewers of ancient Rome, historians have stated that it is not easy, and sometimes not possible, to distinguish between the sewers and the aqueducts, and Dr. Lemon, in his English Etymology, speaks of sewers as a species of aqueducts. So, in some of our earlier Acts of Parliament, it is hardly possible to distinguish whether the provisions to be applied to the management of a sewer relate to a ditch to which house-filth was carried—to a channel of water for general purposes—or to an open channel being a receptacle of filth and a navigable stream at the same time.

That the ditches were not sewers for the conveyance of the filth from the houses to any very great, or rather any very general extent, may very well be concluded, because (as I have shown in my account of the early scavagers) the excrementitious matter was deposited during the night in the street, and removed by the proper functionaries in the morning, or as soon as suited their convenience. Though this was the case generally, it is evident that the filth, or a portion of it, from the houses which were built on the banks of the Fleet River (as it was then called, as well as the Fleet Ditch), and on the banks of the other “brooks,” drained into the current stream. The Corporation accounts contain very frequent mention of the cleansing, purifying, and “thorough” cleansing of the Fleet Ditch, the Old Bourne (Holborn Brook), the Wall Brook, &c.

Of all these streams the most remarkable was Fleet Ditch, which was perhaps the first main sewer of London. I give from Stow the following curious account of its origin. It is now open, but only for a short distance, offending the air of Clerkenwell. At one period it was to afford a defence to the City! as the Tower-moat was a defence to the Tower, and fortress.

“The Ditch, which partly now remaineth and compassed the Wall of the City, was begun to be made by the Londoners, in the year 1211, and finished 1213, the 15th of K. John. This Ditch being then made of 200 foot broad, caused no small hindrance to the Canons of the Holy Trinity, whose Church stood near Ealdgate, for that the said Ditch passed through their Ground from the Tower unto Bishopsgate.

“The first Occasion of making a Ditch about the City seems to have been this: William, Bishop of Ely, Chancellor of England, in the Reign of King Richard I., made a great Ditch round about the Tower, for the better Defence of it against John the King’s Brother, the King being then out of the Realm. Then did the City also begin a Ditch to encompass and strengthen their Walls [which happened between the Years 1190 and 1193.] So the Book Dunthorn. Yet the Register of Bermondsey writes that the Ditch was begun, Oct. 15, 1213, which was in the Reign of King John that succeeded to Richard.

“This Ditch being originally made for the Defence of the City, was also a long time together carefully cleansed and maintained, as Need required; but now of late neglected, and forced either to a very narrow, and the same a filthy Channel.

“In the Year of Christ, 1354, 28 Ed. 3, the Ditch of this City flowing over the Bank into the Tower-ditch, the King commanded the said Ditch of the City to be cleansed, and so ordered, that the overflowing thereof should not force any Filth into the Tower-ditch.

“Anno, 1379, John Philpot, Maior of London, caused this Ditch to be cleansed, and every Houshold to pay 5d., which was a Day’s Work toward the Charges thereof.

“Ralph Joseline, Maior, 1477, caused the whole Ditch to be cast and cleansed.... In 1519, the 10th of Henry 8, for cleansing and scouring the common Ditch, between Aldgate, and the Postern next the Tower-ditch; the chief Ditcher had by the day 7d., the Second Ditcher, 6d., the other Ditchers, 5d. And every Vagabond (for as they were then termed) 1d. the Day, Meat and Drink, at the Charges of the City. Sum 95l. 3s. 4d.

“Fleet Ditch was again cleansed in the Year 1549,” Stow continues, “Henry Ancoates being Maior, at the Charges of the Companies. And again 1569, the 11th of Queen Elizabeth; for cleansing the same Ditch between Ealdgate and the Postern, and making a new Sewer and Wharf of Timber, from the Head of the Postern into the Tower-ditch, 814l. 15s. 8d. (was disbursed). Before the which Time the said Ditch lay open, without either Wall or Pall, having therein great Store of very good Fish, of divers Sorts, as many men yet living, who have taken and tasted them, can well witness. But now no such matter, the Charge of Cleansing is spared, and great Profit made by letting out the Banks, with the Spoil of the whole Ditch.”

The above information appeared, but I am unable to specify the year (for Stow’s works went through several editions, though it is to be feared he died very poor) between 1582 and 1590. So did the following:—

“At this Day there be no Ditches or Boggs in the City except the said Fleet-ditch, but instead thereof large common Dreins and Sewers, made to carry away the water from the Postern-Gate, between the two Tower-hills to Fleet-bridge without Ludgate.”

Great, indeed, is the change in the character of the capital of England, from the times when the Fleet Ditch was a defence to the city (which was then the entire capital); and from the later era, when “great store of very good fish of divers sorts,” rewarded the skill or the patience of the anglers or netters; but this, it is evident, was in the parts near the river (the Tower postern, &c.), and at that time, or about that time, there was salmon-fishing in the Thames, at least as far up as Hungerford Wharf.

The Fleet Ditch seems always to have had a sewery character. It was described, in 1728, as

the silver flood being, in Queen Anne’s and the First George’s days, the London Thames. This silver has been much alloyed since that time.

Until within these 40 or 50 years, open sewer-ditches, into which drains were emptied, and ordure and refuse thrown, were frequent, especially in the remoter parts of Lambeth and Newington, and some exist to this day; one especially, open for a considerable distance, flowing along the back of the houses in the Westminster-road, on the right-hand side towards the bridge, into which the neighbouring houses are drained. The “Black Ditch,” a filthy sewer, until lately was open near the Broadwall, and other vicinities of the Blackfriars-road. The open ditch-sewers of Norwood and Wandsworth have often been spoken of in Sanitary Reports. Indeed, some of our present sewers, in addition to Fleet River and Wall Brook, are merely ditches rudely arched over.

The first covered and continuous street sewer was erected in London—I think, without doubt—when Wren rebuilt the capital, after the great fire of 1666. Perhaps there is no direct evidence of the fact, for, although the statutes and Privy Council and municipal enactments, consequent on the rebuilding of the capital, required, more or less peremptorily, “fair sewers, and drains, and watercourses,” it is not defined in these enactments what was meant by a “sewer;” nor were they carried out.

I may mention, as a further proof that open ditches, often enough stagnant ditches also, were the first London sewers, that, after 1666, a plan, originally projected, it appears, by Sir Leonard Halliday, Maior, 60 years previously, and strenuously supported at that time by Nic Leate, “a worthy and grave citizen,” was revived and reconsidered. This project, for which Sir Leonard and Nic Leate “laboured much,” was “for a river to be brought on the north of the city into it, for the cleansing the sewers and ditches, and for the better keeping London wholesome, sweet, and clean.” An admirable intention; and it is not impossible nor improbable that in less than two centuries hence, we, of the present sanitary era, may be accounted, for our sanitary measures, as senseless as we now account good Sir Leonard Halliday and the worthy and grave Nic Leate. These gentlemen cared not to brook filth in their houses, nor to be annoyed by it in the nightly pollution of the streets, but they advocated its injection into running water, and into water often running slowly and difficultly, and continually under the eyes and noses of the citizens. We, I apprehend, go a little further. We drink, and use for the preparation of our meals, the befouled water, which they did not; for, more than seven-eighths of our water-supply from the companies is drawn from the Thames, the main sewer of the greatest city in the world, ancient or modern, into which millions of tons of every description of refuse are swept yearly.

Of the Kinds and Characteristics of Sewers.

The sewers of London may be arranged into two distinct groups—according to the side of the Thames on which they are situate.

Now the essential difference between these two classes of sewers lies in the elevation of the several localities whence the sewers carry the refuse to the Thames.

The chief differences in the circumstances of the people north and south of the river are shown in the annexed table from the Registrar-General’s returns:—

Here, it will be seen, that while the houses on the north side of the river stand, on an average, 51 feet above the high-water mark of the Thames, those on the south side are only 5 feet above it. The effect of this is shown most particularly in the deaths from cholera in 1849, which were nearly three times as many on the south as on the north side of the Thames. It is said, officially, that “of the 15 square miles of the Urban district on the south side of the river Thames, three miles are from six to seven feet below high-water mark, so that the locality may be said to be drained only for four hours out of the twelve, and during these four hours very imperfectly.... When the tide rises above the orifices of the sewers, the whole drainage of the district is stopped until the tide recedes again, rendering the whole system of sewers in Kent and Surrey only an articulation of cesspools.”

That this is but the fact, the following table of the elevation in feet above the Trinity high-water mark, as regards the several districts on the Surrey side of the Thames, may be cited as evidence.

From these returns, made by Capt. Dawson, R.E., the difficulty, to use no stronger word, attending the sewerage of the Surrey district is shown at once. There is no flow to be had, or—the word more generally used, no run for the sewage. In parts of the north of England it used to be a general, and still is a partial, saying among country-people who are figuratively describing what they account impossible. “Ay, when? When water runs up bank.” This is a homely expression of the difficulties attending the Surrey sewerage.

There is, as regards these Surrey, more than the Kent, sewers, another evil which promotes the “articulation of cesspools.” Some of these sewers have “dead-ends,” like places which in the streets (a parallel case enough) are known as “no thoroughfare,” and in these sewers it is seldom, in any state of the tide, that flushing can be resorted to; consequently these cesspool-like sewers remain uncleansed, or have to be cleansed by manual labour, the matter being drawn up into the street or road.

The refuse conduits of the metropolis are of two kinds:—

• 1. Sewers.
• 2. Drains.

These two classes of refuse-charts are often confounded, even in some official papers, the sewer being there designated the “main drain.” All sewerage is undoubtedly drainage, but there is a manifest distinction between a sewer and a drain.

The First-Class Sewers, which are generally termed “main sewers,” and run along the centres of the first-class streets (first-class alike from the extent or populousness of such streets), may be looked upon as underground rivers of refuse, to which the drains are tributary rivulets. No sewer exists unconnected with the drains from the streets and houses; but many house-drains are constructed apart from the sewers, communicating only with the cesspools. Even where houses are built in close contiguity to a public sewer, and built after the new mode without cesspools, there is always a drain to the sewer; no house so situated can get rid of its refuse except by means of a drain; unless, indeed, the house be not drained at all, and its filth be flung down a gullyhole, or got rid of in some other way.

These drains, all with a like determination, differ only in their forms. They are barrel-shaped, made of rounded bricks, or earthenware pipeage, and of an interior between a round and an oval, with a diameter of from 2 to 6 inches, although only a few private houses, comparatively, are so drained. The barrel drain of larger dimensions, is used in the newer public buildings and larger public mansions, when it represents a sort of house or interior sewer as well as a house main drain, for smaller drains find their issue into the barrel-drain. There is the barrel-drain in the new Houses of Parliament, and in large places which cover the site of, and are required for the purposes of several houses or offices. The tubular drain is simply piping, of which I have spoken fully in my account of the present compulsory mode of house drainage. The third drain, one more used to carry refuse to the cesspool than the sewer, but still carrying such refuse to the sewers, is the old-fashioned brick drain, generally 9 inches square.

I shall first deal with the sewerage, and then with the house and street drainage.

The sewer is a twofold receptacle of refuse; into it are conveyed the wet refuse not only of many of the houses, but of all the streets.

The slop or surface water of the streets is conveyed to the sewer by means of smaller sewers or street-drains running from the “kennel” or channel to the larger sewers.

In the streets, at such uncertain distances as the traffic and circumstances of the locality may require, are gully-holes. These are openings into the sewer, and were formerly called, as they were, simply gratings, a sort of iron trap-doors of grated bars, clumsily made, and placed almost at random. On each side of the street was, even into the present century, a very formidable channel, or kennel, as it was formerly written, into which, in heavy rains, the badly-scavaged street dirt was swept, often demanding a good leap from one who wished to cross in a hurry. These “kennels” emptied themselves into the gratings, which were not unfrequently choked up, and the kennel was then an utter nuisance. At the present time the channel is simply a series of stone work at the edge of the footpaths, blocks of granite being sloped to meet more or less at right angles, and the flow from the inclination from the centre of the street to the channel is carried along without impedimen or nuisance into the gully-hole.

The gully-hole opens into a drain, running, with a rapid slope, into the sewer, and so the wet refuse of the streets find its vent.

In many courts, alleys, lanes, &c., inhabited by the poor, where there is imperfect or no drainage to the houses, all the slops from the houses are thrown down the gully-holes, and frequently enough blood and offal are poured from butchers’ premises, which might choke the house drain. There have, indeed, been instances of worthless street dirt (slop) collected into a scavager’s vehicle being shot down a gully-hole.

The sewers, as distinct from the drains, are to be divided principally into three classes, all devoted to the same purpose—the conveyance of the underground filth of the capital to the Thames—and all connected by a series of drains, afterwards to be described, with the dwelling-houses.

The first-class sewers are found in the main streets, and flow at their outlets into the river.

The second-class sewers run along the second-class streets, discharging their contents into a first-class sewer; and

The third-class sewers are for the reception of the sewage from the smaller streets, and always communicate, for the voidance of their contents, with a sewer of the second or first description.

As regards the destination of the sewers, there is no difference between the Middlesex and Surrey portions of the metropolis. The sewage is all floated into the river.

The first-class sewers of the modern build rarely exceed 50 inches by 30 in internal dimensions; the second class, 40 inches by 24; the third, 30 inches by 18.

Smaller class or branch sewers, from No. 4 to No. 8 inclusive, also form part of the great subterranean filth-channels of the metropolis. It is only, however, the three first-mentioned classes which can be described as in any way principal sewers; the others are in the capacity of branch sewers, the ramifications being in many places very extensive, while pipes are often used. The dimensions of these smaller sewers, when pipes are not used, are—No. 4, 20 inches by 12; No. 5, 17½ inches by 10½; No. 6, 15 inches by 9; No. 7, 12 inches by 7½; and No. 8, 9 inches by 6.

These branch sewers may, from their circumscribed dimensions, be looked upon as mere channels of connection with the larger descriptions; but they present, as I have intimated, an important part of the general system. This may be shown by the fact, that in the estimates for building sewers for the improvement of the drainage of the city of Westminster (a plan, however, not carried out), the estimated, or indeed surveyed, run of the first class was to be 8118 feet; of the second class, 4524 feet; of the third, but 2086 feet; while of the No. 5 and No. 6 description, it was, respectively, 18,709 and 53,284 feet. The branch sewers may, perhaps, be represented in many instances as public drains connecting the sewer of the street with the issue from the houses, but I give the appellation I find in the reports.

The dimensions I have cited are not to be taken as an average size of the existing sewers of the metropolis on either side of the Thames, for no average size and no uniformity of shape can be adduced, as there has been no uniformity observed. The sewers are of all sizes and shapes, and of all depths from the surface of the streets. I was informed by an engineering authority that he had often seen it asserted that the naval authorities of the kingdom could not build a war-steamer, and it might very well be said that the sanitary authorities of the metropolis could not build a sewer, as none of the present sewers could be cited as in all respects properly fulfilling all the functions required. But it must be remembered that the present engineers have to contend with great difficulties, the whole matter being so complicated by the blunderings and mismanagement of the past.

The dimensions I have cited (because they appear officially) exceed the medium size of the newer sewerage, the average height of the first class being in such sewers about 3 feet 9 inches.

Of the width of the sewers, as of the height, no precise average can be drawn. Perhaps that of the New Palace main, or first-class sewer, 3 feet 6 inches, may be nearest the average, while the smaller classes diminish in their width in the proportions I have shown. The sewers of the older constructions nearly all widen and deepen as they near the outlet, and this at no definite distance from the river, but from a quarter of a mile or somewhat less to a mile and more. Some such sewers are then 14 feet in width; some 20 feet, and no doubt of proportionate height, but I do not find that the height has been ascertained. For flushing purposes there are recesses of greater or less width, according to the capacity of the sewer, where sluice-gates, &c., can be fixed, and water accumulated.

Under the head of “Subterranean Survey of the Sewers,” will be found some account of the different dimensions of the sewers.

The form of the interior of the sewers (as shown in the illustrations I have given) is irregularly elliptical. They are arched at the summits, and more or less hollowed or curved, internally, at the bottom. The bottom of the sewer is called the “invert,” from a general resemblance in the construction to an “inverted” arch. The best form of invert is a matter which has attracted great engineering attention. It is, indeed, the important part of the sewer, as the part along which there is the flow of sewage; and the superior or inferior formation of the invert, of course, facilitates or retards the transmission of the contents.

A few years back, the building of egg-shaped, or “oviform” sewers, was strongly advocated. It was urged that the flow of the sewage and the sewer-water was accelerated by the invert (especially) being oviform, as the matter was more condensed when such was the shape adopted, while the more the matter was diffused, as in some of the inverts of the more usual form of sewers, the less rapid was its flow, and consequently the greater its deposit.

What extent of egg-shaped sewers are now, so to speak, at work, I could not ascertain. One informant thought it might be somewhere about 50 miles.

The following interesting account of the velocities of streams, with a relativeness to sewers, is extracted from the evidence of Mr. Phillips:—

“The area of surface that a sewer will drain, and the quantity of water that it will discharge in a given time, will be greater or less in proportion as the channel is inclined from a horizontal to a vertical position. The ordinary or common run of water in each sewer, due from house drainage alone, and irrespective of rain, should have sufficient velocity to prevent the usual matter discharged into the sewer from depositing. For this purpose, it is necessary that there should be in each sewer a constant velocity of current equal to 2½ feet per second, or 1¾ mile per hour.” Mr. Phillips then states that the inclinations of all rivulets, &c., diminish as they progress to their outfalls. “If the force of the waters of the river Rhone,” he has said, “were not absorbed by the operation of some constant retardation in its course, the stream would have shot into the Bay of Marseilles with the tremendous velocity of 164 miles every hour. Even if the Thames met with no system of impediments in its course, the stream would have rushed into the sea with a velocity of 80 feet per second, or 54½ miles in an hour.... The inclinations of the sewers of a natural district should be made to diminish from their heads to their outfalls in a corresponding ratio of progression, so that as the body of water is increased at each confluence, one and the same velocity and force of current may be kept up throughout the whole of them.”

Mr. Phillips advocates a tubular system of sewerage and drainage.

The main sewer, which has lately called forth the most public attention and professional controversy, is that connected with the new Houses of Parliament, or as they are called in divers reports and correspondence, the “New Palace at Westminster.”

The workmanship in the building of the sewers is of every quality. The material of which some of the older sewers are constructed is a porous sort of brick, which is often found crumbling and broken, and saturated with damp and rottenness, from the exhalations and contact of their contents. The sewers erected, however, within the last twenty, and more especially within the last ten years, are sometimes of granite, but generally of the best brick, with an interior coating of enduring cement, and generally with concrete on their exterior, to protect them from the dampness and decaying qualities of the superincumbent or lateral soil.

The depth of the sewers—I mean from the top of the sewer to the surface of the street—seems to vary as everything else varies about them. Some are found forty feet below the street, some two feet, some almost level! These, however, are exceptions; and the average depth of the sewers on the Middlesex side is from twelve to fourteen feet; on the Surrey side, from six to eight feet. The reason is that the north shores of the metropolis are above the tide level, the south shores are below it.

An authority on the subject has said, “The Surrey sewers are bad, owing principally to the land being below tide level. They were the most expensively constructed, because, perhaps, in that Commission the surveyors were paid by percentage on the cost of works. When it was proposed, in the Westminster Commission, to effect a reduction of four-fifths in the cost, it was like a proposition to return the officers’ salaries to that extent, if they had been paid in that way.”

The reader may have observed that the official intelligence I have given all, or nearly all, refers to the “Westminster and part of Middlesex” Commission, and to that of the “Surrey and Kent.” This is easily accounted for. In the metropolitan districts, up to 1847, the only Commission which published its papers was the Westminster, of which Mr. L. C. Hertslet had the charge as clerk; when the Commissions were consolidated in 1847, he printed the Westminster and Surrey only, the others being of minor importance.

I may observe that one of the engineers, in showing the difficulty or impossibility of giving any description of a system of sewerage, as to points of agreement or difference, represents the whole mass as but a “detached parcel of sewers.”

The course of the sewers is in no direct or uniform line, with the exception of one characteristic—all their bearings are towards the river as regards the main sewers (first-class), and all the bearings of the second-class sewers are towards the main sewers in the main streets. The smaller classes of sewers fill up the great area of London sewerage with a perfect network of intersection and connection, and even this network is increased manyfold by its connection with the house-drains.

There is no map of the general sewerage of the metropolis, merely “sections” and “plans” of improvements making or suggested, in the reports of the surveyors, &c., to the Commissioners; but did a map of subterranean London exist, with its lines of every class of sewerage and of the drainage which feeds the sewers; with its course, moreover, of gas-pipes and water-pipes, with their connection with the houses, the streets, the courts, &c., it would be the most curious and skeleton-like map in the world.

Of the Subterranean Character of the Sewers.

In my inquiries among that curious body of men, the “Sewer Hunters,” I found them make light of any danger, their principal fear being from the attacks of rats in case they became isolated from the gang with whom they searched in common, while they represented the odour as a mere nothing in the way of unpleasantness. But these men pursued only known and (by them) beaten tracks at low water, avoiding any deviation, and so becoming but partially acquainted with the character and direction of the sewers. And had it been otherwise, they are not a class competent to describe what they saw, however keen-eyed after silver spoons.

The following account is derived chiefly from official sources. I may premise that where the deposit is found the greatest, the sewer is in the worst state. This deposit, I find it repeatedly stated, is of a most miscellaneous character. Some of the sewers, indeed, are represented as the dust-bins and dung-hills of the immediate neighbourhood. The deposit has been found to comprise all the ingredients from the breweries, the gas-works, and the several chemical and mineral manufactories; dead dogs, cats, kittens, and rats; offal from slaughter-houses, sometimes even including the entrails of the animals; street-pavement dirt of every variety; vegetable refuse; stable-dung; the refuse of pig-styes; night-soil; ashes; tin kettles and pans (pansherds); broken stoneware, as jars, pitchers, flower-pots, &c.; bricks; pieces of wood; rotten mortar and rubbish of different kinds; and even rags. Our criminal annals of the previous century show that often enough the bodies of murdered men were thrown into the Fleet and other ditches, then the open sewers of the metropolis, and if found washed into the Thames, they were so stained and disfigured by the foulness of the contents of these ditches, that recognition was often impossible, so that there could be but one verdict returned—“Found drowned.” Clothes stripped from a murdered person have been, it was authenticated on several occasions in Old Bailey evidence, thrown into the open sewer ditches, when torn and defaced, so that they might not supply evidence of identity. So close is the connection between physical filthiness in public matters and moral wickedness.

The following particulars show the characteristics of the underground London of the sewers. The subterranean surveys were made after the commissions were consolidated.

“An old sewer, running between Great Smith-street and St. Ann-street (Westminster), is a curiosity among sewers, although it is probably only one instance out of many similar constructions that will be discovered in the course of the subterranean survey. The bottom is formed of planks laid upon transverse timbers, 6 inches by 6 inches, about 3 feet apart. The size of the sewer varies in width from 2 to 6 feet, and from 4 to 5 feet in height. The inclination of the bottom is very irregular: there are jumps up at two or three places, and it contains a deposit of filth averaging 9 inches in depth, the sickening smell from which escapes into the houses and yards that drain into it. In many places the side walls have given way for lengths of 10 and 15 feet. Across this sewer timbers have been laid, upon which the external wall of a workshop has been built; the timbers are in a decaying state, and should they give way, the wall will fall into the sewer.”

From the further accounts of this survey, I find that a sewer from the Westminster Workhouse, which was of all shapes and sizes, was in so wretched a condition that the leveller could scarcely work for the thick scum that covered the glasses of the spirit-level in a few minutes after being wiped. “At the outfall into the Dean-street sewer, it is 3 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 8 inches for a short length. From the end of this, a wide sewer branches in each direction at right angles, 5 feet 8 inches by 5 feet 5 inches. Proceeding to the eastward about 30 feet, a chamber is reached about 30 feet in length, from the roof of which hangings of putrid matter like stalactites descend three feet in length. At the end of this chamber, the sewer passes under the public privies, the ceilings of which can be seen from it. Beyond this it is not possible to go.”

“In the Lucas-street sewer, where a portion of new work begins and the old terminates, a space of about 10 feet has been covered with boards, which, having broken, a dangerous chasm has been caused immediately under the road.”

“The West-street sewer had one foot of deposit. It was flushed while the levelling party was at work there, and the stream was so rapid that it nearly washed them away, instrument and all.”

There are further accounts of “deposit,” or of “stagnant filth,” in other sewers, varying from 6 to 14 inches, but that is insignificant compared to what follows.

The foregoing, then, is the pith of the first authentic account which has appeared in print of the actually surveyed condition of the subterranean ways, over which the super-terranean tides of traffic are daily flowing.

The account I have just given relates to the (former) Westminster and part of Middlesex district on the north bank of the Thames, as ascertained under the Metropolitan Commission. I now give some extracts concerning a similar survey on the south bank, in different and distant directions in the district, once the “Surrey and Kent.” The Westminster, &c., survey took place in 1848; the Kent and Surrey in 1849. In the one case, 72 miles of sewers were surveyed; in the other, 69⅛ miles.

“The surveyors (in the Surrey and Kent sewers) find great difficulty in levelling the sewers of this district (I give the words of the Report); for, in the first place, the deposit is usually about two feet in depth, and in some cases it amounts to nearly five feet of putrid matter. The smell is usually of the most horrible description, the air being so foul that explosion and choke damp are very frequent. On the 12th January we were very nearly losing a whole party by choke damp, the last man being dragged out on his back (through two feet of black fœtid deposits) in a state of insensibility.... Two men of one party had also a narrow escape from drowning in the Alscot-road sewer, Rotherhithe.

“The sewers on the Surrey side are very irregular; even where they are inverted they frequently have a number of steps and inclinations the reverse way, causing the deposit to accumulate in elongated cesspools.

“It must be considered very fortunate that the subterranean parties did not first commence on the Surrey side, for if such had been the case, we should most undoubtedly have broken down. When compared with Westminster, the sewers are smaller and more full of deposit; and, bad as the smell is in the sewers in Westminster, it is infinitely worse on the Surrey side.”

Several details are then given, but they are only particulars of the general facts I have stated.

The following, however, are distinct facts concerning this branch of the subject.

In my inquiries among the working scavagers I often heard of their emptying street slop into sewers, and the following extract shows that I was not misinformed:—

“The detritus from the macadamized roads frequently forms a kind of grouting in the sewers so hard that it cannot be removed without hand labour.

“One of the sewers in Whitehall and another in Spring-gardens have from three to four feet of this sort of deposit; and another in Eaton-square was found filled up within a few inches of the ‘soffit,’ but it is supposed that the scavengers (scavagers) emptied the road-sweepings down the gully-grate in this instance;” and in other instances, too, there is no doubt—especially at Charing Cross, and the Regent Circus, Piccadilly.

Concerning the sewerage of the most aristocratic parts of the city of Westminster, and of the fashionable squares, &c., to the north of Oxford-street, I glean the following particulars (reported in 1849). They show, at any rate, that the patrician quarters have not been unduly favoured; that there has been no partiality in the construction of the sewerage. In the Belgrave and Eaton-square districts there are many faulty places in the sewers which abound with noxious matter, in many instances stopping up the house drains and “smelling horribly.” It is much the same in the Grosvenor, Hanover, and Berkeley-square localities (the houses in the squares themselves included). Also in the neighbourhood of Covent-garden, Clare-market, Soho and Fitzroy-squares; while north of Oxford-street, in and about Cavendish, Bryanstone, Manchester, and Portman-squares, there is so much rottenness and decay that there is no security for the sewers standing from day to day, and to flush them for the removal of their “most loathsome deposit” might be “to bring some of them down altogether.”

One of the accounts of a subterranean survey concludes with the following rather curious statement:—“Throughout the new Paddington district the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Gardens, and the costly squares and streets adjacent, the sewers abound with the foulest deposit, from which the most disgusting effluvium arises; indeed, amidst the whole of the Westminster District of Sewers the only little spot which can be mentioned as being in at all a satisfactory state is the Seven Dials.”

I may point out also that these very curious and authenticated accounts by no means bear out the zymotic doctrine of the Board of Health as to the cause of cholera; for where the zymotic influences from the sewers were the worst, in the patrician squares of what has been called Belgravia and Tyburnia, the cholera was the least destructive. This, however, is no reason whatever why the stench should not be stifled.