The subjoined, then adds the same work, founded on the preceding details, may be regarded as exhibiting an approximate estimate of the present amount of the local taxes in England and Wales, being, however, obviously below the actual total.

“The annual amount of the local taxation of England and Wales may at the present time be stated, in round numbers, at not less than £12,000,000;” or we may say that the local taxation of the country is one-fourth of the amount of the general taxation.

RETURN OF THE COST OF MANAGEMENT PER ANNUM ON THE TOTAL RATEABLE ANNUAL VALUE OF THE DISTRICTS.

August 7, 1851.

G. S. HATTON,
Accountant.

Of the Cleansing of the Sewers—Ventilation.

There are two modes of purifying the sewers; the one consists in removing the foul air, the other in removing the solid deposits. I shall deal first with that mode of purification which consists in the mechanical removal or chemical decomposition of the noxious gases engendered within the sewers.

This is what is termed the Ventilation of the Sewers, and forms a very important branch of the inquiry into the character and working of the underground refuse-channels, for it relates to the risk of explosions and the consequent risk of destruction to men’s lives; while, if the sewer be ill-ventilated, the surrounding atmosphere is often prejudicially affected by the escape of impure air from the subterranean channels.

A survey as to the ventilation, &c., of the sewers was made by Mr. Hawkins, Assistant-Surveyor, and Mr. Jenkins, Clerk of the Works. Four examinations took place of sewers; of those in Bloomsbury; those from Tottenham-court-road to Norfolk-street, Strand; from the Guard-room in Buckingham Palace to the Horseferry-road, Millbank; and in Grosvenor-square and the streets adjacent. There were difficulties attending the experiment. From Castle-street to Museum-street there was a drop of 4 feet in the levels, so that the examiners had to advance on their hands and knees, and it was difficult to make observations. In some places in Westminster also the water and silt were knee deep, and the lamps (three were used) splashed all over. In Bloomsbury the sewers gave no token of the presence of any gas, but in the other places its presence was very perceptible, especially in a sewer on the west side of Grosvenor-square, a very low one, in which the gas was ignited within the wire shade of one of the lamps, but without producing any effect beyond that of immediately extinguishing the light. There was also during the route, in the neighbourhood of Sir Henry Meux’s brewery and of an adjoining distillery in Vine-street, a considerable quantity of steam in the sewer, but it had no material effect upon the light.

The examiners came to the conclusion that where there was any liability to an explosion from the presence of carburetted hydrogen, or other causes, the Improved Davy Lamp afforded an almost certain protection.

The attention of the Commissioners seems to have been chiefly given of late, as regards ventilation and indeed general improvement, to the sewers on the Surrey side of the metropolis. Among these a new sewer along Friar-street, running from the Blackfriars to the Southwark-bridge-road, is one of the most noticeable.

Friar-street is one of the smaller off thoroughfares, the character of which is, perhaps, little suspected by those who pass along the open Blackfriars-road. As you turn out of that road to the left hand, advancing from the bridge, almost opposite the Magdalen Hospital, is Friar-street. On its left hand, as you proceed along it, are gas-works, and the factories, or work places, of tradesmen in the soap-boiling, tallow-melting, cat and other gut manufacturing, bone-boiling, and other noisome callings. On the right hand are a series of short and often neatly-built streets, but the majority of them have the look of unmistakable squalor or poverty, though not of the poverty of the industrious. Across Flint-street, Green-street, and other ways, few of them horse thoroughfares, hang, on a fair day, lines of washed clothes to dry. Yellow-looking chemises and petticoats are affixed alongside men’s trowsers and waistcoats; coarse-featured and brazen-looking women, with necks and faces reddened, as if with brick-dust, from exposure to the weather, stand at their doors and beckon to the passers by. Perhaps in no part of the metropolis is there a more marked manifestation of moral obsceneness on the one hand, and physical obsceneness on the other. With the low prostitution of this locality is mixed the low and the bold crime of the metropolis. Some of the off-shoots from Friar-street communicate with places of as nefarious a character. Hackett, whom his newspaper admirers seem to wish to elevate into the fame of a second Jack Sheppard, resided in this quarter. The gang who were last winter repulsed in their burglarious attack on Mr. Holford’s villa in the Regent’s-park favoured the same locality, and were arrested in their old haunts. Public-houses may be seen here and there—houses, perhaps, not greatly discouraged by the police—which are at once the rendezvous and the trap of offenders, for to and from such resorts they can be readily traced. And all over this place of moral degradation extends the stench of offensive manufactures and ill-ventilated sewers. Certainly there is now an improvement, but it is still bad enough.

A Report of the 21st September, 1848, shows that a new sewer, 1500 feet in length, had been “put in along Friar-street, with a fall of 15 inches from the level of the sewer in Blackfriars-road to Suffolk-street. The sewer,” states the Report, “with which it communicates at its upper end in the Blackfriars-road contains nearly 2 feet in depth of soil; it in consequence has silted up to that level with semi-fluid black filth, principally from the factories, of the most poisonous and sickening description, forming an elongated cesspool 1500 feet in length, the filth at its lower end being upwards of 3 feet in depth. Since the building of this sewer, the foul matter so discharged into it has been in a state of decomposition, constantly giving off pestilential and poisonous gases, which have spread into and filled the adjoining sewers; thence they are being drawn into the houses by the house-drains, and into the streets by the street-drains, to such a fearful extent as to infect the whole atmosphere of the neighbourhood, and so to cause the very offensive odour so generally complained of there. Sulphuretted hydrogen is present in these sewers in large quantities, as metals, silver and copper, are attacked and blackened by it; and the smell from it is so sickening as to be almost unbearable.”

On the question of how best to deal with sewers such as the Friar-street, Messrs. John Roe and John Phillips (surveyors) and Mr. Henry Austin (consulting engineer) have agreed in the following opinion:—

“The most simple and convenient method would be by placing large strong fires in shafts directly over the crown of the sewers. The expense of each furnace, with the inclosure around it, will be about 20l. The fires would be fed almost constantly, by which little smoke would be generated. The heat to be produced from these fires would rarefy the air so much as to create rapidly ascending currents in the shafts, and strong draughts through the sewers, the foul air in which would then be drawn to the fires and there consumed; and as it was being destroyed fresh air would be drawn in at all the existing inlets of house and street drains, pushing forward and supplying the place of the foul air.”

Concerning the explosions of, or deaths in, the sewers from the impure gases, there is, I believe, no statistical account. The most remarkable catastrophe of this kind was the death of five persons in a sewer in Pimlico, in October, 1849; of these, three were regular sewer-men, and the others were a policeman and Mr. Wells, a surgeon, who went into the sewer in the hopes of giving assistance. Mr. Phillips, the then chief surveyor of the Commission of Sewers, stated that the cause of these deaths in the sewers was entirely an exceptional case, and the gas which had caused the accident inquired into was not a sewer gas. “There is often,” he said, “a great escape of gas from the mains, which found its way into the sewers. The gas, however, which has done the mischief in the present instance would not explode.”

Dr. Ure’s opinion was, that the deceased men died from asphixia, caused by inhaling sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid gas in mixture with prussic vapour, and that these noxious emanations were derived from the refuse lime of gas-works thrown in with other rubbish to make up the road above the sewer. Other scientific gentlemen attributed the five deaths to the action of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, or, according to Dr. Lyon Playfair, to be chemically correct, hydro-sulphate of ammonia. The coroner (Mr. Bedford), in summing up, said that Mr. Phillips wished it to be supposed that gas lime was the cause of the foul gas; and Dr. Ure said that gas lime had to do with the calamity. But Dr. Miller, Mr. Richard Phillips, Mr. Campbell, and Dr. Playfair, more especially the latter, were perfectly sure that lime had nothing to do with it. The verdict was the following:—“We find that Daniel Pert, Thomas Gee, and John Attwood died from the inhalation of noxious gas generated in a neglected and unventilated sewer in Kenilworth-street. And we find that Henry Wells and John Walsh met their deaths from the same cause, in their laudable endeavours to save the lives of the first three sufferers. The jury unanimously consider the commissioners and officers of the Metropolitan Sewers are much to blame for having neglected to avail themselves of the unusual advantages offered, from the local situation of the Grosvenor-canal, for the purpose of flushing the sewers in this district.”

Of “Flushing” and “Plonging,” and other Modes of Washing the Sewers.

The next step in our inquiry—and that which at present concerns us more than any other—is the mode of removing the solid deposits from the sewers, as well as the condition of the workmen connected with that particular branch of labour. The sewers are the means by which a larger proportion of the wet refuse of the metropolis is removed from our houses, and we have now to consider the means by which the more solid part of this refuse is removed from the sewers themselves. The latter operation is quite as essential to health and cleanliness as the former; for to allow the filth to collect in the channels which are intended to remove it, and there to remain decomposing and vitiating the atmosphere of the metropolis, is manifestly as bad as not to remove it at all; and since the more solid portions of the sewage will collect and form hard deposits at the bottom of each duct, it becomes necessary that some means should be devised for the periodical purgation of the sewers themselves.

There have been two modes of effecting this object. The one has been the carting away of the more solid refuse, and the other the washing of it away, or, as it is termed, flushing in the case of the covered sewers, and plonging in the case of the open ones. Under both systems, whether the refuse be carted or flushed away, the hard deposit has to be first loosened by manual labourers—the difference consisting principally in the means of after-removal.

The first of these systems—viz., the cartage method—was that which prevailed in the metropolis till the year 1847. I shall therefore give a brief description of this mode of cleansing the sewers before proceeding to treat of the now more general mode of “flushing.”

Under the old system, the clearing away of the deposit was a “nightman’s” work, differing little, except in being more toilsome, offensive to the public, and difficult. A hole was made from the street down into the sewer where the deposit was thickest, and the deposit was raised by means of a tub, filled below, drawn up to the street, and emptied into a cart, or spread in mounds in the road to be shovelled into some vehicle. A nightman told me that this mode of work was sometimes a great injury to his trade, because “when it was begun on a night many of the householders sleeping in the neighbourhood used to say to themselves, or to their missusses, as they turned in their beds, ‘It’s them ere cussed cesspools again! I wish they was done away with.’ An’ all the time, sir, the cesspools was as hinnocent and as sweet as a hangel.”

This clumsy and filthy process is now but occasionally resorted to. A man who had superintended a labour of this kind in a narrow, but busy thoroughfare in Southwark, told me that these sewer labourers were the worst abused men in London. No one had a good word for them.

But there have been other modes of removing the indurated sewage, besides that of cartage; and which, though not exactly flushing, certainly consisted in allowing the deposit to be washed away. Some of these contrivances were curious enough.

I learn from a Report printed in 1849, that the King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer, in the city of Westminster, running near the Abbey, contained a continuous bed of deposit, of soil, sand, and filth, from 10 to 30 inches in depth, and this for a mile and a half next the river—the first mile yielding more than 6000 loads of matter. This sewer was to be cleansed.

“We first used a machine,” says Mr. J. Lysander Hale, “in the form of a plough and harrow combined; a horse dragged it through the deposit in the sewer; one man attended the horse, and another guided the plough. The work done by this machine, in cutting a channel through the soil and causing the water to move through it quickly, was effectual to remove the deposit; but as the sewer is a tidal sewer, and its sole entrance for a horse being its outlet, the machine could only be used for a small part of any day. Sometimes with a strong breeze up the river, the tide would not recede sufficiently to permit the horse to get in at all (and it did not appear advisable to incur the expense of 50l. to build a sideway entrance for the animal), so that under these circumstances we were obliged to discontinue the use of the horse and plough; which, under other circumstances, would have been very effective.” From this time, I understand, the sewers of London have remained unploughed by means of horse labour.

But the plough was not altogether abandoned, and as horse-power was not found very easily applicable, water-power was resorted to. The plough and harrow were attached to a barge, which was introduced into the sewer. The sluice gates were kept shut until the ebb of the tide made the difference of level between the contents of the sewer and the surface of the Thames equal to some eight feet. “The gates were then suddenly opened, and the rapid and deep current of water following, was then sufficient to bring the barge and plough down the sewer with a force equal to five or six horse-power.”

This last-mentioned method was also soon abandoned. We now come to the more approved plan of “flushing.”

“The term ‘flushing sewers’ implies,” says Mr. Haywood, in his Report, “cleansing by the application of bodies of water in the sewers; this is periodically effected, varying in intervals according to the necessities of the sewerage or other circumstances.”

The flushing system has a two-fold object, viz., to remove old deposits and prevent the accumulation of new. When the deposit is not allowed to accumulate and harden, “flushing consists,” says Mr. Haywood, “simply in heading back and letting off flush at once” (hence the origin of the term) “that which has been delivered into the sewers in a certain number of hours by the various houses draining into them, diluted with large quantities of water specially employed for the purpose.”

Though the operation of “flushing” is one of modern introduction, as regards the metropolis—one, indeed, which may be said to have originated in the modern demand for improved sanitary regulations—it has been practised in some country parts since the days of Henry VIII.

Flushing was practised also by those able engineers, the ancient Romans. One of the grand architectural remains of that people, the best showing their system of flushing, is in the Amphitheatre at Nismes, in France. The site of the ruined amphitheatre presents a large elliptical area, 114,251 superficial feet comprising its extent. Around the arena ran a large sewer 3 feet 6 inches in width, and 4 feet 9 inches in height. With this sewer, elliptical in shape, 348 pipes communicated, carrying into it the rain-fall and the refuse caused by the resort of 23,000 persons, for the seats alone contained that number. “The system of flushing, practised here,” says Mr. Cresy, “with such advantage, deserves to be noticed, there being means of driving through this elliptical sewer a volume of water at pleasure, with such force that no solid matter could by any possibility remain within any of the drains or sewers. An aqueduct, 2 feet 8 inches in width, and 6 feet in height, brought this water from the reservoirs of Nismes, not only to fill but to purge the whole of these sewers; after traversing the arena, it deviated a little to the south-west, where it was carried out at the sixth arcade, east of the southern entrance. Man-holes and steps to descend into this capacious vaulted aqueduct were introduced in several places; and there can be no doubt that by directing for some hours such a stream of water through it, the greatest cleanliness was preserved throughout all the sewers of the building.”

The flushing of sewers appears to have been introduced into the metropolis by Mr. John Roe in the year 1847, but did not come into general use till some years later. There used to be a partial flushing of the London sewers twelve years ago. The mode of flushing as at present practised is as follows:—

In the first instance the inspector examines and reports the condition of the sewer, and receives and issues his orders accordingly. When the sewer is ordered to be flushed—and there is no periodical or regular observance of time in the operation—the men enter the sewers and rake up the deposit, loosening it everywhere, so as to render the whole easy to be swept along by the power of the volume of water. The sewers generally are, in their widest part, provided with grooves, or, as the men style them, “framings.” Into these framings are fitted, or permanently attached, what I heard described as “penstocks,” but which are spoken of in some of the reports as “traps,” “gates,” or “sluice gates.” They are made both of wood and iron. By a series of bolts and adjustments, the penstocks can be fixed ready for use when the tide is highest in the sewer, and the volume of water the greatest. They then, of course, are in the nature of dams, the water having accumulated in consequence of the stoppage. The deposit having been loosened, the bolts are withdrawn, when the gates suddenly fly back, and the accumulated water and stirred-up sewage sweeps along impetuously, while the men retreat into some side recesses adapted for the purpose. The same is done with each penstock until the matter is swept through the outlet. The men always follow the course of this sewage-current when the sewer is of sufficient capacity to enable them to do so, throwing or pushing forward any more solid matter with their shovels.

“To flush we generally go and draw a slide up and let a flush of water down,” said one man to me, “and then we have iron rakers to loosen the stuff. We have got another way that we do it as well; one man stands here, when the flush of water’s coming down, with a large board; then he lets the water rise to the top of this board, and then there’s two or three of us on ahead, with shovels, loosening the stuff—then he ups with this board and lets a good heavy flush of water come down. Precious hard work it is, I can assure you. I’ve had many a wet shirt. We stand up to our fork in the water, right to the top of our jack-boots, and sometimes over them.” “Ah, I should think you often get over the top of yours, for you come home with your stockings wet enough, goodness knows,” exclaimed his wife, who was present. “When there’s a good flush of water coming down,” he resumed, “we’re obligated to put our heads fast up against the crown of the sewer, and bear upon our shovels, so that we may not be carried away, and taken bang into the Thames. You see there’s nothing for us to lay hold on. Why, there was one chap went and lifted a slide right up, when he ought to have had it up only 9 or 10 inches at the furthest, and he nearly swamped three of us. If we should be taken off our legs there’s a heavy fall—about 3 feet—just before you comes to the mouth of the sewer, and if we was to get there, the water is so rapid nothing could save us. When we goes to work we nails our lanterns up to the crown of the sewer. When the slide is lifted up the rush is very great, and takes all before it. It roars away like a wild beast. We’re always obliged to work according to tide, both above and below ground. When we have got no water in the sewer we shovels the dirt up into a bank on both sides, so that when the flush of water comes down the loosened dirt is all carried away by it. After flushing, the bottom of the sewer is as clean as this floor, but in a couple of months the soil is a foot to 15 inches deep, and middling hard.”

“Flushing-gates,” an engineer has reported, “are chiefly of use in sewers badly constructed and without falls, but containing plenty of water; and they are of very little use where the gate has to be shut 24 hours and longer, before a head of water has accumulated; but where intermittent flushing is practised, strong smells are often caused solely by the stagnation of the water or sewage while accumulating behind the gate.”

The most general mode of flushing at present adopted is not to keep in the water, &c., which has flowed into the sewer from the streets and houses, as well as the tide of the river, but to convey the flushing water from the plugs of the water companies into the kennels, and so into the sewers. I find in one of the Reports acknowledgments of the liberal supplies granted for flushing by the several companies. The water of the Surrey Canal has been placed, for the same object, at the disposal of the Sewer Commissioners.

It is impossible to “flush” at all where a sewer has a “dead-end;” that is, where there is a “block,” as in the case of the Kenilworth-street sewer, Pimlico, in which five persons lost their lives in 1848.

There is no difference in the system of flushing in the Metropolitan and City jurisdictions, except that for the greater facilities of the process, the City provides water-tanks in Newgate-market, where the heads of three sewers meet, and where the accumulation of animal garbage, and the fierceness and numbers of the rats attracted thereby, were at one time frightful; at Leadenhall-market, and elsewhere, such tanks were also provided to the number of ten, the largest being the Newgate-market tank, which is a brick cistern of 8000 gallons capacity. Of these tanks, however, only four are now kept filled, for this collection of water is found unnecessary, the regular system of flushing answering the purpose without them; and I understand that in a little time there will be no tanks at all. The tank is filled, when required, by a water company, and the penstocks being opened, the water rushes into the sewers with great force. There is also another point peculiar to the City—in it all the sewers are flushed regularly twice a week; in the metropolitan sewers, only when the inspector pronounces flushing to be required. The City plan appears the best to prevent the accumulation of deposit.

There still remains to be described the system of “plonging,” or mode of cleansing the open sewers, as contradistinguished from “flushing,” or the cleansing of the covered sewers.

“When we go plonging,” one man said, “we has long poles with a piece of wood at the end of them, and we stirs up the mud at the bottom of the ditches while the tide’s a going down. We has got slides at the end of the ditches, and we pulls these up and lets out the water, mud, and all, into the Thames.” “Yes, for the people to drink,” said a companion drily. “We’re in the water a great deal,” continued the man. “We can’t walk along the sides of all of ’em.”

The difference of cost between the old method of removal and the new, that is to say, between carting and flushing, is very extraordinary.

This cartage work was done chiefly by contract and according to a Report of the surveyors to the Commissioners (Aug. 31, 1848), the usual cost for such work (almost always done during the night) was 7s. the cubic yard; that is, 7s. for the removal of a cubic yard of sewage by manual labour and horse and cart. In February, 1849 (the date of another Report on the subject), the cost of removing a cubic yard by the operation of flushing, was but 8d. This gives the following result, but in what particular time, instance, or locality, is not mentioned:—

“It appears, therefore,” says Mr. Lovick, “that by the adoption of the contract flushing system, a saving has been effected within the comparatively short period of its operation over the filthy and clumsy system formerly practised, of 25,170l., showing the cost of this system to be ten and a half times greater than the cost of flushing by contract.”

An official Report states: “When the accumulations of years had to be removed from the sewers, the rate of cost per lineal mile has varied from about 40l. to 58l., or from 6d. to 8d. per lineal yard. The works in these cases (excepting those in the City) have not exceeded nine lineal miles.”

“On an average of weeks,” says Mr. Lovick, in his Report on flushing operations, a few months after the introduction of the contract system, in Sept., 1848, “under present arrangements, about 62 miles of sewers are passed through each week, and deposit prevented from accumulating in them by periodic (weekly) flushing. The average cost per lineal mile per week is about 2l. 10s.

“The nature of the agreements with the contractors or gangers are now for the prevention of accumulations of deposit in a district. For this purpose the large districts are subdivided, each subdivision being let to one man. In the Westminster district there are four, in the Holborn and Finsbury two, in the Surrey and Kent, seven subdivisions.

“The Tower Hamlets and Poplar districts are each let to one man.

“In the Tower Hamlets it will be perceived that a reduction of 8l. has been effected for the performance of precisely the same work as that heretofore performed; the rates of charge standing thus:—

“In those portions specially contracted for, the work has been let by the lineal measure of the sewer, in preference to the amount of deposit removed.

“In the Surrey and Kent districts the open ditches have been cleansed thrice as often as formerly.

“A large proportion of the deposit removed is from the open ditches; in these the accumulations are rapid and continuous, caused chiefly by their being the receptacles for the ashes and refuse of the houses, the refuse of manufactories, and the sweepings of the roads.

“In the covered sewers one of the chief sources of accumulation is the detritus and mud from the streets, swept into the sewers.

“The accumulations from these sources will not, I think, be over-estimated at two-thirds of the whole amount of deposit removed.

“The contracts in operation, February, 1849, with the districts which they embrace, are as follows:—

“Table No. I.

“The weekly cost prior to the contract system was in the several districts as follows:—

“Table No. II.

Hence there would appear to have been a saving of 25l. 12s. effected. But by what means was this brought about? It is the old story, I regret to say—a reduction of the wages of the labouring men. But this, indeed, is the invariable effect of the contract system. The wages of the flushermen previous to Sept., 1848, were 24s. to 27s. a week; under the present system they are 21s. to 22s. Here is a reduction of 4s. per week per man, at the least; and as there were about 150 hands employed at this period, it follows that the gross weekly saving must have been equal to 30l., so that, according to the above account, there would have been about 5l. left for the contractors or middlemen. It is unworthy of gentlemen to make a parade of economy obtained by such ignoble means.

The engineers, however, speak of flushing as what is popularly understood as but “a make-shift”—as a system imperfect in itself, but advantageously resorted to because obviating the evils of a worse system still.

“With respect to these operations,” says Mr. Lovick, in a Report on the subject, in February, 1849, “I may be permitted to state that, although I do not approve of the flushing as an ultimate system, or as a system to be adopted in the future permanent works of sewerage, or that its use should be contemplated with regulated sizes of sewers, regulated supplies of water, and proper falls, it appears to be the most efficacious and economical for the purpose to which it is adapted of any yet introduced.”

A gentleman who was at one time connected professionally with the management of the public sewerage, said to me,—

“Mr. John Roe commenced the general system of flushing sewers in London in 1847. It is, however, but a clumsy expedient, and quite incompatible with a perfect system of sewerage. It has, nevertheless, been usefully applied as an auxiliary to the existing system, though the cost is frightful.”

Of the Working Flushermen.

When the system of sewer cleansing first became general, as I have detailed, the number of flushermen employed, I am assured, on good authority, was about 500. The sewers were, when this process was first resorted to, full of deposit, often what might be called “coagulated” deposit, which could not be affected except by constantly repeated efforts. There are now only about 100 flushermen, for the more regularly flushing is repeated, the easier becomes the operation.

Until about 18 months ago, the flushermen were employed directly by the Court of Sewers, and were paid (“in Mr. Roe’s time,” one man said, with a sigh) from 24s. to 27s. a week; now the work is all done by contract. There are some six or seven contractors, all builders, who undertake or are responsible for the whole work of flushing in the metropolitan districts (I do not speak of the City), and they pay the working flushermen 21s. a week, and the gangers 22s. This wage is always paid in money, without drawbacks, and without the intervention of any other middleman than the contractor middleman. The flushermen have no perquisites except what they may chance to find in a sewer. Their time of labour is 6½ hours daily.

The state of the tide, however, sometimes, as a matter of course, compels the flushermen to work at every hour of the day and night. At all times they carry lights, common oil lamps, with cotton wicks; only the inspectors carry Davy’s safety-lamp. I met no man who could assign any reason for this distinction, except that “the Davy” gave “such a bad light.”

The flushermen wear, when at work, strong blue overcoats, waterproofed (but not so much as used to be the case, the men then complaining of the perspiration induced by them), buttoned close over the chest, and descending almost to the knees, where it is met by huge leather boots, covering a part of the thigh, such as are worn by the fishermen on many of our coasts. Their hats are fan-tailed, like the dustmen’s. The flushermen are well-conducted men generally, and, for the most part, fine stalwart good-looking specimens of the English labourer; were they not known or believed to be temperate, they would not be employed. They have, as a body, no benefit or sick clubs, but a third of them, I was told, or perhaps nearly a third, were members of general benefit societies. I found several intelligent men among them. They are engaged by the contractors, upon whom they call to solicit work.

“Since Mr. Roe’s time,” and Mr. Roe is evidently the popular man among the flushermen, or somewhat less than four years ago, the flushermen have had to provide their own dresses, and even their own shovels to stir up the deposit. To contractors, the comforts or health of the labouring men must necessarily be a secondary consideration to the realization of a profit. New men can always be found; safe investments cannot.

The wages of the flushermen therefore have been not only decreased, but their expenses increased. A pair of flushing-boots, covering a part of the thigh, similar to those worn by sea-side fishermen, costs 30s. as a low price, and a flusherman wears out three pairs in two years. Boot stockings cost 2s. 6d. The jacket worn by the men at their work in the sewers, in the shape of a pilot-jacket, but fitting less loosely, is 7s. 6d.; a blue smock, of coarse common cloth (generally), worn over the dress, costs 2s. 6d.; a shovel is 2s. 6d. “Ay, sir,” said one man, who was greatly dissatisfied with this change, “they’ll make soldiers find their own regimentals next; and, may be, their own guns, a’cause they can always get rucks of men for soldiers or labourers. I know there’s plenty would work for less than we get, but what of that? There always is. There’s hundreds would do the work for half what the surveyors and inspectors gets; but it’s all right among the nobs.”

Nor is the labour of the flushermen at all times so easy or of such circumscribed hours as I have stated it to be in the regular way of flushing. When small branch-sewers have to be flushed, the deposit must first be loosened, or the water, instead of sweeping it away, would flow over it, and in many of these sewers (most frequent in the Tower Hamlets) the height is not more than 3 feet. Some of the flushermen are tall, bulky, strong fellows, and cannot stand upright in less than from 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet, and in loosening the deposit in low narrow sewers, “we go to work,” said one of them, “on our bellies, like frogs, with a rake between our legs. I’ve been blinded by steam in such sewers near Whitechapel Church from the brewhouses; I couldn’t see for steam; it was a regular London fog. You must get out again into a main sewer on your belly; that’s what makes it harder about the togs, they get worn so.”

The division of labour among the flushermen appears to be as follows:—

The Inspector, whose duty it is to go round the several sewers and see which require to be flushed.

The Ganger, or head of the working gang, who receives his orders from the inspector, and directs the men accordingly.

The Lock-keeper, or man who goes round to the sewers which are about to be flushed, and fixes the “penstocks” for retaining the water.

The Gang, which consists of from three to four men, who loosen the deposit from the bottom of the sewer. Among these there is generally a “for’ard man,” whose duty it is to remove the penstocks.

The ganger gets 1s. a week over and above the wages of the men.

TABLE SHOWING THE DISTRICTS UNDER THE MANAGEMENT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS; ALSO THE NUMBER AND SALARIES OF THE CLERKS OF THE WORKS, ASSISTANT CLERKS OF THE WORKS, AND INSPECTORS OF FLUSHING, PAID BY THE COMMISSIONERS, AND THE NUMBER AND WAGES PAID TO THE FLUSHERMEN BY THE GENERAL CONTRACTORS.