⁂ The above division of districts is the one adopted by the Commissioners of Sewers, but the districts of the Flushermen are more numerous than those above given, being as follows:—

Holborn and Finsbury districts are under one contractor, and so are the two divisions of Westminster. The same men who flush Holborn flush the Finsbury district also, 17 being the average number employed; but the Finsbury district requires rather more men than the Holborn; and the same men who work on the western division of Westminster flush also the eastern, the number of flushers in the western district being more, on account of its being the larger division.

The inspector receives 80l. per annum.

The table on p. 429 shows the number of clerks of the works, inspectors of flushing, flap and sluice keepers, gangers, and flushermen employed in the several districts throughout the metropolis, as well as the salaries and wages of each and the whole.

None of the flushermen can be said to have been “brought up to the business,” for boys are never employed in the sewers. Neither had the labourers been confined in their youth to any branch of trade in particular, which would appear to be consonant to such employment. There are now among the flushermen men who have been accustomed to “all sorts of ground work:” tailors, pot-boys, painters, one jeweller (some time ago there was also one gentleman), and shoemakers. “You see, sir,” said one informant, “many of such like mechanics can’t live above ground, so they tries to get their bread underneath it. There used to be a great many pensioners flushermen, which weren’t right,” said one man, “when so many honest working men haven’t a penny, and don’t know which way to turn theirselves; but pensioners have often good friends and good interest. I don’t hear any complaints that way now.”

Among the flushermen are some ten or twelve men who have been engaged in sewer-work of one kind or another between 20 and 30 years. The cholera, I heard from several quarters, did not (in 1848) attack any of the flushermen. The answer to an inquiry on the subject generally was, “Not one that I know of.”

“It is a somewhat singular circumstance,” says Mr. Haywood, the City Surveyor, in his Report, dated February, 1850, “that none of the men employed in the City sewers in flushing and cleansing, have been attacked with, or have died of, cholera during the past year; this was also the case in 1832-3. I do not state this to prove that the atmosphere of the sewers is not unhealthy—I by no means believe an impure atmosphere is healthy—but I state the naked fact, as it appears to me a somewhat singular circumstance, and leave it to pathologists to argue upon.”

“I don’t think flushing work disagrees with my husband,” said a flusherman’s wife to me, “for he eats about as much again at that work as he did at the other.” “The smell underground is sometimes very bad,” said the man, “but then we generally take a drop of rum first, and something to eat. It wouldn’t do to go into it on an empty stomach, ’cause it would get into our inside. But in some sewers there’s scarcely any smell at all. Most of the men are healthy who are engaged in it; and when the cholera was about many used to ask us how it was we escaped.”

The following statement contains the history of an individual flusherman:—

“I was brought up to the sea,” he said, “and served on board a man-of-war, the Racer, a 16-gun brig, laying off Cuba, in the West Indies, and there-away, watching the slavers. I served seven years. We were paid off in ’43 at Portsmouth, and a friend got me into the shores. It was a great change from the open sea to a close shore—great; and I didn’t like it at all at first. But it suits a married man, as I am now, with a family, much better than being a seaman, for a man aboard a ship can hardly do his children justice in their schooling and such like. Well, I didn’t much admire going down the man-hole at first—the ‘man-hole’ is a sort of iron trap-door that you unlock and pull up; it leads to a lot of steps, and so you get into the shore—but one soon gets accustomed to anything. I’ve been at flushing and shore work now since ’43, all but eleven weeks, which was before I got engaged.

“We work in gangs from three to five men.” [Here I had an account of the process of flushing, such as I have given.] “I’ve been carried off my feet sometimes in the flush of a shore. Why, to-day,” (a very rainy and windy day, Feb. 4,) “it came down Baker-street, when we flushed it, 4 foot plomb. It would have done for a mill-dam. One couldn’t smoke or do anything. Oh, yes, we can have a pipe and a chat now and then in the shore. The tobacco checks the smell. No, I can’t say I felt the smell very bad when I first was in a shore. I’ve felt it worse since. I’ve been made innocent drunk like in a shore by a drain from a distiller’s. That happened me first in Vine-street shore, St. Giles’s, from Mr. Rickett’s distillery. It came into the shore like steam. No, I can’t say it tasted like gin when you breathed it—only intoxicating like. It was the same in Whitechapel from Smith’s distillery. One night I was forced to leave off there, the steam had such an effect. I was falling on my back, when a mate caught me. The breweries have something of the same effect, but nothing like so strong as the distilleries. It comes into the shore from the brewers’ places in steam. I’ve known such a steam followed by bushels of grains; ay, sir, cart-loads washed into the shore.

“Well, I never found anything in a shore worth picking up but once a half-crown. That was in the Buckingham Palace sewer. Another time I found 16s. 6d., and thought that was a haul; but every bit of it, every coin, shillings and sixpences and joeys, was bad—all smashers. Yes, of course it was a disappointment, naturally so. That happened in Brick-lane shore, Whitechapel. O, somebody or other had got frightened, I suppose, and had shied the coins down into the drains. I found them just by the chapel there.”

A second man gave me the following account of his experience in flushing:—

“You remember, sir, that great storm on the 1st August, 1848. I was in three shores that fell in—Conduit-street and Foubert’s-passage, Regent-street. There was then a risk of being drowned in the shores, but no lives were lost. All the house-drains were blocked about Carnaby-market—that’s the Foubert’s-passage shore—and the poor people was what you might call houseless. We got in up to the neck in water in some places, ’cause we had to stoop, and knocked about the rubbish as well as we could, to give a way to the water. The police put up barriers to prevent any carts or carriages going that way along the streets. No, there was no lives lost in the shores. One man was so overcome that he was falling off into a sort of sleep in Milford-lane shore, but was pulled out. I helped to pull him. He was as heavy as lead with one thing or other—wet, and all that. Another time, six or seven year ago, Whitechapel High-street shore was almost choked with butchers’ offal, and we had a great deal of trouble with it.”

Of the Rats in the Sewers.

I will now state what I have learned from long-experienced men, as to the characteristics of the rats in the sewers. To arrive even at a conjecture as to the numbers of these creatures—now, as it were, the population of the sewers—I found impossible, for no statistical observations have been made on the subject; but all my informants agreed that the number of the animals had been greatly diminished within these four or five years.

In the better-constructed sewers there are no rats. In the old sewers they abound. The sewer rat is the ordinary house or brown rat, excepting at the outlets near the river, and here the water-rat is seen.

The sewer-rat is the common brown or Hanoverian rat, said by the Jacobites to have come in with the first George, and established itself after the fashion of his royal family; and undoubtedly such was about the era of their appearance. One man, who had worked twelve years in the sewers before flushing was general, told me he had never seen but two black (or old English) rats; another man, of ten years’ experience, had seen but one; others had noted no difference in the rats. I may observe that in my inquiries as to the sale of rats (as a part of the live animals dealt in by a class in the metropolis), I ascertained that in the older granaries, where there were series of floors, there were black as well as brown rats. “Great black fellows,” said one man who managed a Bermondsey granary, “as would frighten a lady into asterisks to see of a sudden.”

The rat is the only animal found in the sewers. I met with no flusherman or other sewer-worker who had ever seen a lizard, toad, or frog there, although the existence of these creatures, in such circumstances, has been presumed. A few live cats find their way into the subterranean channels when a house-drain is being built, or is opened for repairs, or for any purpose, and have been seen by the flushermen, &c., wandering about, looking lost, mewing as if in misery, and avoiding any contact with the sewage. The rats also—for they are not of the water-rat breed—are exceedingly averse to wetting their feet, and “take to the sewage,” as it was worded to me, only in prospect of danger; that is, they then swim across or along the current to escape with their lives. It is said that when a luckless cat has ventured into the sewers, she is sometimes literally worried by the rats. I could not hear of such an attack having been witnessed by any one; but one intelligent and trustworthy man said, that a few years back (he believed about eight years) he had in one week found the skeletons of two cats in a particular part of an old sewer, 21 feet wide, and in the drains opening into it were perfect colonies of rats, raging with hunger, he had no doubt, because a system of trapping, newly resorted to, had prevented their usual ingress into the houses up the drains. A portion of their fur adhered to the two cats, but the flesh had been eaten from their bones. About that time a troop of rats flew at the feet of another of my informants, and would no doubt have maimed him seriously, “but my boots,” said he, “stopped the devils.” “The sewers generally swarms with rats,” said another man. “I runs away from ’em; I don’t like ’em. They in general gets away from us; but in case we comes to a stunt end where there’s a wall and no place for ’em to get away, and we goes to touch ’em, they fly at us. They’re some of ’em as big as good-sized kittens. One of our men caught hold of one the other day by the tail, and he found it trying to release itself, and the tail slipping through his fingers; so he put up his left hand to stop it, and the rat caught hold of his finger, and the man’s got an arm now as big as his thigh.” I heard from several that there had been occasionally battles among the rats, one with another.

“Why, sir,” said one flusherman, “as to the number of rats, it ain’t possible to say. There hasn’t been a census (laughing) taken of them. But I can tell you this—I was one of the first flushermen when flushing came in general—I think it was before Christmas, 1847, under Mr. Roe—and there was cart-loads and cart-loads of drowned rats carried into the Thames. It was in a West Strand shore that I saw the most. I don’t exactly remember which, but I think Northumberland-street. By a block or a hitch of some sort, there was, I should say, just a bushel of drowned rats stopped at the corner of one of the gates, which I swept into the next stream. I see far fewer drowned rats now than before the shores was flushed. They’re not so plenty, that’s one thing. Perhaps, too, they may have got to understand about flushing, they’re that ’cute, and manage to keep out of the way. About Newgate-market was at one time the worst for rats. Men couldn’t venture into the sewers then, on account of the varmint. It’s bad enough still, I hear, but I haven’t worked in the City for a few years.”

The rats, from the best information at my command, do not derive much of their sustenance from the matter in the sewers, or only in particular localities. These localities are the sewers neighbouring a connected series of slaughter-houses, as in Newgate-market, Whitechapel, Clare-market, parts adjoining Smithfield-market, &c. There, animal offal being (and having been to a much greater extent five or six years ago) swept into the drains and sewers, the rats find their food. In the sewers, generally, there is little food for them, and none at all in the best-constructed sewers, where there is a regular and sometimes rapid flow, and little or no deposit.

The sewers are these animals’ breeding grounds. In them the broods are usually safe from the molestation of men, dogs, or cats. These “breeding grounds” are sometimes in the holes (excavated by the industry of the rats into caves) which have been formed in the old sewers by a crumbled brick having fallen out. Their nests, however, are in some parts even more frequent in places where old rotting large house-drains or smaller sewers, empty themselves into a first-class sewer. Here, then, the rats breed, and, in spite of precautions, find their way up the drains or pipes, even through the openings into water-closets, into the houses for their food, and almost always at night. Of this fact, builders, and those best informed, are confident, and it is proved indirectly by what I have stated as to the deficiency of food for a voracious creature in all the sewers except a few. One man, long in the service of the Commissioners of Sewers, and in different capacities, gave me the following account of what may be called a rat settlement. The statement I found confirmed by other working men, and by superior officers under the same employment.

“Why, sir, in the Milford-lane sewer, a goodish bit before you get to the river, or to the Strand—I can’t say how far, a few hundred yards perhaps—I’ve seen, and reported, what was a regular chamber of rats. If a brick didn’t fall out from being rotted, the rats would get it out, and send it among other rubbish into the sewer, for this place was just the corner of a big drain. I couldn’t get into the rat-hole, of course not, but I’ve brought my lamp to the opening, and—as well as others—have seen it plain. It was an open place like a lot of tunnels, one over another. Like a lot of rabbit burrows in the country—as I’ve known to be—or like the partitions in the pigeon-houses: one here and another there. The rat-holes, as far as I could tell, were worked one after another. I should say, in moderation, that it was the size of a small room; well, say about 6 yards by 4. I can’t say about the height from the lowest tunnel to the highest. I don’t see that any one could. Bless you, sir, I’ve sometimes heerd the rats fighting and squeaking there, like a parcel of drunken Irishmen—I have indeed. Some of them were rare big fellows. If you threw the light of your lamp on them sudden, they’d be off like a shot. Well, I should say, there was 100 pair of rats there—there might be more, besides all their young-uns. If a poor cat strayed into that sewer, she dursn’t tackle the rats, not she. There’s lots of such places, sir, here, and there, and everywhere.”

“I believe rats,” says a late enthusiastic writer on the subject, under the cognomen of Uncle James, “to be one of the most fertile causes of national and universal distress, and their attendants, misery and starvation.”

From the author’s inquiries among practical men, and from his own study of the natural history of the rat, he shows that these animals will have six, seven, or eight nests of young in the year, for three or four years together; that they have from twelve to twenty-three at a litter, and breed at three months old; and that there are more female than male rats, by ten to six.

The author seems somewhat of an enthusiast about rats, and as the sewerage is often the head-quarters of these animals—their “breeding-ground” indeed—I extract the following curious matter. He says:—

“Now, I propose to lay down my calculations at something less than one-half. In the first place, I say four litters in the year, beginning and ending with a litter, so making thirteen litters in three years; secondly to have eight young ones at a birth, half male and half female; thirdly, the young ones to have a litter at six months old.

“At this calculation, I will take one pair of rats; and at the expiration of three years what do you suppose will be the amount of living rats? Why no less a number than 646,808.

“Mr. Shaw’s little dog ‘Tiny,’ under six pounds weight, has destroyed 2525 pairs of rats, which, had they been permitted to live, would, at the same calculation and in the same time, have produced 1,633,190,200 living rats!

“And the rats destroyed by Messrs. Shaw and Sabin in one year, amounting to 17,000 pairs, would, had they been permitted to live, have produced, at the above calculation and in the same time, no less a number than 10,995,736,000 living rats!

“Now, let us calculate the amount of human food that these rats would destroy. In the first place, my informants tell me that six rats will consume day by day as much food as a man; secondly, that the thing has been tested, and that the estimate given was, that eight rats would consume more than an ordinary man.

“Now, I—to place the thing beyond the smallest shadow of a doubt—will set down ten rats to eat as much as a man, not a child; nor will I say anything about what rats waste. And what shall we find to be the alarming result? Why, that the first pair of rats, with their three years’ progeny, would consume in the night more food than 64,680 men the year round, and leaving eight rats to spare!”

The author then puts forth the following curious statement:—

“And now for the vermin destroyed by Messrs. Shaw and Sabin—34,000 yearly! Taken at the same calculation, with their three years’ progeny—can you believe it?—they would consume more food than the whole population of the earth? Yes, if Omnipotence would raise up 29,573,600 more people, these rats would consume as much food as them all! You may wonder, but I will prove it to you:—The population of the earth, including men, women, and children, is estimated to be 970,000,000 souls; and the 17,000 rats in three years would produce 10,995,736,000: consequently, at ten rats per man, there would be sufficient rats to eat as much food as all the people on the earth, and leaving 1,295,736,000. So that if the human family were increased to 1,099,573,600, instead of 970,000,000, there would be rats enough to eat the food of them all! Now, sirs, is not this a most appalling thing, to think that there are at the present time in the British Empire thousands—nay, millions—of human beings in a state of utter starvation, while rats are consuming that which would place them and their families in a state of affluence and comfort? I ask this simple question: Has not Parliament, ere now, been summoned upon matters of far less importance to the empire? I think it has.”

The author then advocates the repeal of the “rat-tax,” that is, the tax on what he calls the “true friend of man and remorseless destroyer of rats,” the well-bred terrier dog. “Take the tax off rat-killing dogs” he says, “and give a legality to rat-killing, and let there be in each parish a man who will pay a reward per head for dead rats, which are valuable for manure (as was done in the case of wolves in the old days), and then rats would be extinguished for ever!” Uncle James seems to be a perfect Malthus among rats. The over-population and over-rat theories are about equal in reason.

Of the Cesspoolage and Nightmen of the Metropolis.

I have already shown—it may be necessary to remind the reader—that there are two modes of removing the wet refuse of the metropolis: the one by carrying it off by means of sewers, or, as it is designated, sewerage; and the other by depositing it in some neighbouring cesspool, or what is termed cesspoolage.

The object of sewerage is “to transport the wet refuse of a town to a river, or some powerfully current stream, by a series of ducts.” By the system of cesspoolage, the wet refuse of the household is collected in an adjacent tank, and when the reservoir is full, the contents are removed to some other part.

The gross quantity of wet refuse annually produced in the metropolis, and which consequently has to be removed by one or other of the above means, is, as we have seen,—liquid, 24,000,000,000 gallons; solid, 100,000 tons; or altogether, by admeasurement, 3,820,000,000 cubic feet.

The quantity of this wet refuse which finds its way into the sewers by street and house-drainage is, according to the experiments of the Commissioners of Sewers (as detailed at p. 388), 10,000,000 cubic feet per day, or 3,650,000,000 cubic feet per annum, so that there remain about 170,000,000 cubic feet to be accounted for. But, as we have before seen, the extent of surface from which the amount of so-called Metropolitan sewage was removed was only 58 square miles, whereas that from which the calculation was made concerning the gross quantity of wet refuse produced throughout the metropolis was 115 square miles, or double the size. The 58 miles measured by the Commissioners, however, was by far the denser moiety of the town, and that in which the houses and streets were as 15 to 1; so that, allowing the remaining 58 miles of the suburban districts to have produced 20 times less sewage than the urban half of the metropolis, the extra yield would have been about 180,500,000 cubic feet. But the greater proportion, if not the whole, of the latter quantity of wet house-refuse would be drained into open ditches, where a considerable amount of evaporation and absorption is continually going on, so that a large allowance must be made for loss by these means. Perhaps, if we estimate the quantity of sewage thus absorbed and evaporated at between 10 and 20 per cent of the whole, we shall not be wide of the truth, so that we shall have to reduce the 182,000,000 cubic feet of suburban sewage to somewhere about 150,000,000 cubic feet.

This gives us the quantity of wet refuse carried off by the sewers (covered and open) of the metropolis, and deducted from the gross quantity of wet house-refuse, annually produced (3,820,000,000 cubic feet), leaves 20,000,000 cubic feet for the gross quantity carried off by other means than the sewers; that is to say, the 20,000,000 cubic feet, if the calculation be right, should be about the quantity deposited every year in the London cesspools. Let us see whether this approximates to anything like the real quantity.

To ascertain the absolute quantity of wet refuse annually conveyed into the metropolitan cesspools, we must first ascertain the number and capacity of the cesspools themselves.

Of the city of London, where the sewer-cesspool details are given with a minuteness highly commendable, as affording statistical data of great value, Mr. Heywood gives us the following returns:—

“House-Drainage of the City.

“I am induced,” adds Mr. Heywood, “to believe, from the reports of the district inspectors, that a very far larger number of houses are already drained than are herein given. Indeed my impression is, that as many as 3000 might be deducted from the 5067 houses as to the drainage of which you have no information.

“Now, until the inspectors have completed their survey of the whole of the houses within the city,” continues the City surveyor, “precise information cannot be given as to the number of houses yet undrained; such information appears to me very important to obtain speedily, and I beg to recommend that instructions be given to the inspectors to proceed with their survey as rapidly as possible.”

Hence it appears, that out of the 16,299 houses comprised within the boundaries of the City, rather less than one-third are reported to have cesspools. Concerning the number of cesspools without the City, the Board of Health, in a Report on the cholera in 1849, put forward one of its usual extraordinary statements.

“At the last census in 1841,” runs the Report, “there were 270,859 houses in the metropolis. It is KNOWN that there is scarcely a house without a cesspool under it, and that a large number have two, three, four, and MORE under them; so that the number of such receptacles in the metropolis may be taken at 300,000. The exposed surface of each cesspool measures on an average 9 feet, and the mean depth of the whole is about 6½ feet; so that each contains 58½ cubic feet of fermenting filth of the most poisonous, noisome, and disgusting nature. The exhaling surface of all the cesspools (300,000 × 9) = 2,700,000 feet, or equal to 62 acres nearly; and the total quantity of foul matter contained within them (300,000 × 58½) = 17,550,000 cubic feet; or equal to one enormous elongated stagnant cesspool 50 feet in width, 6 feet 6 inches in depth, and extending through London from the Broadway at Hammersmith to Bow-bridge, a length of 10 miles.

“This,” say the Metropolitan Sanitary Commissioners, a body of functionaries so intimately connected with the Board, that the one is ever ready to swear to what the other asserts, “there is reason to believe is an under estimate!”

Let us now compare this statement, which declares it to be known that there is scarcely a house in London without a cesspool, and that many have two, three, four, and even more under them—let us compare this, I say, with the facts which were elicited by the same functionaries by means of a house-to-house inquiry in three different parishes—a poor, a middle-class, and a rich one—the average rental of each being 22l., 119l., and 128l.

RESULTS OF A HOUSE-TO-HOUSE INQUIRY IN THE PARISHES OF ST. GEORGE THE MARTYR, SOUTHWARK, ST. ANNE’S, SOHO, AND ST. JAMES’S, AS TO THE STATE OF THE WORKS OF WATER SUPPLY AND DRAINAGE.

In this minute and searching investigation there is not only an official guide to an estimation of the number of cesspools in London, but a curious indication of the character of the houses in the respective parishes. In the poorer parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, the cesspools were to every 100 houses as 82·12; in the aristocratic parish of St. James, Westminster, as only 36·62; while in what may be represented, perhaps, as the middle-class parish of St. Anne, Soho, the cesspools were 47·27 per cent. The number of wells on or near the premises, and the proportion of those tainted; the ratio of the dampness of the lower parts of the houses, of the stagnant water on the premises, and of the flooding of the houses on occasions of storms, are all significant indications of the difference in the circumstances of the inhabitants of these parishes—of the difference between the abodes of the rich and the poor, the capitalists and the labouring classes. But more significant still, perhaps, of the domestic wants or comforts of these dwellings, is the proportion of water-closets to the houses in the poor parish and the rich; in the one they were but 10·06 per cent; in the other 65·86 per cent.

These returns are sufficient to show the extravagance of the Board’s previous statement, that there is “scarcely a house in London without a cesspool under it,” while “a large number have two, three, four, and more,” for we find that even in the poorer parishes there are only 82 cesspools to 100 houses. Moreover, the engineers, after an official examination and inquiry, reported that in the “fever-nest, known as Jacob’s-island, Bermondsey,” there were 1317 dwelling-houses and 648 cesspools, or not quite 50 cesspools to 100 houses.

In rich, middle-class, and poor parishes, the proportion of cesspools, then, it appears from the inquiries of the Board of Health (their guesses are of no earthly value), gives us an average of something between 50 or 60 cesspools to every 100 houses. A subordinate officer whom I saw, and who was engaged in the cleansing and the filling-up of cesspools when condemned, or when the houses are to be drained anew into the sewers and the cesspools abolished, thought from his own experience, the number of cesspools to be less than one-half, but others thought it more.

On the other hand, a nightman told me he was confident that every two houses in three throughout London had cesspools; in the City, however, we perceive that there is, at the utmost, only one house in every three undrained. It will, therefore, be safest to adopt a middle course, and assume 50 per cent of the houses of the metropolis to be still without drainage into the sewers.

Now the number of houses being 300,000, it follows that the number of cesspools within the area of the metropolis are about 150,000; consequently the next step in the investigation is to ascertain the average capacity of each, and so arrive at the gross quantity of wet house-refuse annually deposited in cesspools throughout London.

The average size of the cesspools throughout the metropolis is said, by the Board of Health, to be 9 feet by 6½, which gives a capacity of 58½ cubic feet, and this for 150,000 houses = 8,775,000 cubic feet. But according to all accounts these cesspools require on an average two years to fill, so that the gross quantity of wet refuse annually deposited in such places can be taken at only half the above quantity, viz. in round numbers, 4,500,000 cubic feet. This by weight, at the rate of 35·9 cubic feet to the ton, gives 125,345 tons. This, however, would appear to be of a piece with the generality of the statistics of the Board of Health, and as wide of the truth as was the statement that there was scarcely a house in London without a cesspool, while many had three, four, and even more. But I am credibly informed that the average size of a cesspool is rather more than 5 feet square and 6½ deep, so that the ordinary capacity would be 5¾ × 5¼ × 6½ = 197 cubic feet, and this multiplied by 150,000 gives an aggregate capacity of 29,550,000 cubit feet. But as the cesspools, according to all accounts, become full only once in two years, it follows that the gross quantity of cesspoolage annually deposited throughout the metropolis must be only one-half that quantity, or about 14,775,000 cubic feet.

The calculation may be made another way, viz. by the experience of the nightmen and the sewer-cesspoolmen as to the average quantity of refuse removed from the London cesspools whenever emptied, as well as the average number emptied yearly.

The contents of a cesspool are never estimated for any purpose of sale or labour by the weight, but always, as regards the nightmen’s work, by the load. Each night-cart load of soil is considered, on an average, a ton in weight, so that the nightmen readily estimate the number of tons by the number of cart-loads obtained. The men employed in the cleansing of the cesspools by the new system of pumping agree with the nightmen as to the average contents of a cesspool.

As a general rule, a cesspool is filled every two years, and holds, when full, about five tons. One man, who had been upwards of 30 years in the nightman’s business, who had worked at it more or less all that time himself, and who is now foreman to a parish contractor and master-nightman in a large way, spoke positively on the subject. The cesspools, he declared, were emptied, as an average, by nightmen, once in two years, and their average contents were five loads of night-soil, it having been always understood in the trade that a night-cartload was about a ton.[72] The total of the cesspool matter is not affected by the frequency or paucity of the cleansing away of the filth, for if one cesspool be emptied yearly, another is emptied every second, third, fourth, or fifth year, and, according to the size, the fair average is five tons of cesspoolage emptied from each every other year. One master-nightman had emptied as much as fourteen tons of night-soil from a cesspool or soil-tank, and a contractor’s man had once emptied as many as eighteen tons, but both agreed as to the average of five tons every two years from all. Neither knew the period of the accumulation of the fourteen or the eighteen tons, but supposed to be about five or six years.

According to this mode of estimate, the quantity of wet house-refuse deposited in cesspools would be equal to 150,000 × 5, or 750,000 tons every two years. This, by admeasurement, at the rate of 35·9 cubic feet to the ton, gives 26,925,000 cubic feet; and as this is the accumulation of two years, it follows that 13,462,500 cubic feet is the quantity of cesspoolage deposited yearly.

There is still another mode of checking this estimate.

I have already given (see p. 385, ante) the average production of each individual to the wet refuse of the metropolis. According to the experiments of Boussingault, confirmed by Liebig, this, as I have stated, amounted to ¼ lb. of solid and 1¼ lb. of liquid excrement from each individual per diem (= 150 lbs. for every 100 persons), while, including the wet refuse from culinary operations, the average yield, according to the surveyor of the Commissioners of Sewers, was equal to about 250 lbs. for every 100 individuals daily. I may add that this calculation was made officially, with engineering minuteness, with a view to ascertain what quantity of water, and what inclination in its flow, would be required for the effective working of a system of drainage to supersede the cesspools.[73] Now the census of 1841 shows us that the average number of inhabitants to each house throughout the metropolis was 7·6, and this for 150,000 houses would give 1,140,000 people; consequently the gross quantity of wet refuse proceeding from this number of persons, at the rate of 250 lbs. to every 100 people daily, would be 464,400 tons per annum; or, by admeasurement, at the rate of 35·9 cubic feet to the ton, it would be equal to 16,670,950 cubic feet.

A small proportion of this amount of cesspoolage ultimately makes its appearance in the sewers, being pumped into them directly from the cesspools when full by means of a special apparatus, and thus tends not only to swell the bulk of sewage, but to decrease in a like proportion the aggregate quantity of wet house-refuse, which is removed by cartage; but though the proportion of cesspoolage which finally appears as sewage is daily increasing, still it is but trifling compared with the quantity removed by cartage.

Here, then, we have three different estimates as to the gross quantity of the London cesspoolage, each slightly varying from the other two.

The mean of these three results is, in round numbers, 15,000,000 cubic feet, so that the statement would stand thus:—

Thus we perceive that the total quantity of wet house-refuse annually removed, corresponds so closely with the gross quantity of wet house-refuse annually produced, that we may briefly conclude the gross sewage of London to be equal to 3,800,000,000 cubic feet, and the gross cesspoolage to be equal to 15,000,000 cubic feet.

The accuracy of the above conclusion may be tested by another process; for, unless the Board of Health’s conjectural mode of getting at facts be adopted, it is absolutely necessary that statistics not only upon this, but indeed any subject, be checked by all the different modes there may be of arriving at the same conclusion. False facts are worse than no facts at all.

The number of nightmen may be summed up as follows:—

The number of cesspools emptied during the past year by these men may be estimated at 50,692; and the quantity of soil removed, 253,460 loads, or tons, and this at the rate of 35·9 cubic ft. to the ton gives a total of 6,099,214 cubic ft.

It might, perhaps, be expected, that from the quantity of fæcal refuse proceeding from the inhabitants of the metropolis, a greater quantity would be found in the existent cesspools; but there are many reasons for the contrary.

One prime cause of the dispersion of cesspoolage is, that a considerable quantity of the night-soil does not find its way into the cesspools at all, but is, when the inhabitants have no privies to their dwellings, thrown into streets, and courts, and waste places.

I cannot show this better than by a few extracts from Dr. Hector Gavin’s work, published in 1848, entitled, “Sanitary Ramblings; being Sketches and Illustrations of Bethnal Green, &c.”

“Digby-walk, Globe-road.—Part of this place is private property, and the landlord of the new houses has built a cesspool, into which to drain his houses, but he will not permit the other houses to drain into this cesspool, unless the parish pay to him 1l., a sum which it will not pay.” Of course the inhabitants throw their garbage and filth into the street or the by-places.

“Whisker’s-gardens.—This is a very extensive piece of ground, which is laid out in neat plots, as gardens. The choicest flowers are frequently raised here, and great taste and considerable refinement are evidently possessed by those who cultivate them. Now, among the cultivators are the poor, even the very poor, of Bethnal-green.... Attached to all these little plots of ground are summer-houses. In the generality of cases they are mere wooden sheds, cabins, or huts. It is very greatly to be regretted that the proprietors of these gardens should permit the slight and fragile sheds in them to be converted into abodes for human beings.... Sometimes they are divided into rooms; they are planted on the damp undrained ground. The privies are sheds erected over holes in the ground; the soil itself is removed from these holes and is dug into the ground to promote its fertility.

“Three Colt-lane.—A deep ditch has been dug on either side of the Eastern Counties Railway by the Company. These ditches were dug by the Company to prevent the foundations of the arches being endangered, and are in no way to be considered as having been dug to promote the health of the neighbourhood. The double privies attached to the new houses (22 in number) are immediately contiguous to this ditch, and are constructed so that the night-soil shall drain into it. For this purpose the cesspools are small, and the bottoms are above the level of the ditch.”

It would be easy to multiply such proofs of night-soil not finding its way into the cesspools, but the subject need not be further pursued, important as in many respects it may be. I need but say, that in the several reports of the Board of Health are similar accounts of other localities. The same deficiency of cesspoolage is found in Paris, and from the same cause.

What may be the quantity of night-soil which becomes part of the contents of the street scavenger’s instead of the nightman’s cart, no steps have been taken, or perhaps can be taken, by the public sanitary bodies to ascertain. Many of the worst of the nuisances (such as that in Digby-street) have been abolished, but they are still too characteristic of the very poor districts. The fault, however, appears to be with the owners of property, and it is seldom they are coerced into doing their duty. The doubt of its “paying” a capitalist landlord to improve the unwholesome dwellings of the poor seems to be regarded as a far more sacred right, than the right of the people to be delivered from the foul air and vile stenches to which their poverty may condemn them.

There is, moreover, the great but unascertained waste from cesspool evaporation, and it must be recollected that of the 2½ lbs. of cesspool refuse, calculated as the daily produce of each individual, 2¼ lbs. are liquid.

The gross cesspoolage of Paris should amount to upwards of 600,000 cubic mètres, or more than 21,000,000 cubic feet, at the estimate of three pints daily per head. The quantity actually collected, however, amounts to only 230,000 cubic mètres, or rather more than 8,000,000 cubic feet, which is 13,000,000 cubic feet less than the amount produced.

In London, the cesspoolage of 150,000 undrained houses should, at the rate of 2½ lbs. to each individual and 15 inhabitants to every two houses, amount to 16,500,000 cubic feet, or about 460,000 loads, whereas the quantity collected amounts to but little more than 250,000 loads, or about 9,000,000 cubic feet. Hence, the deficiency is 210,000 loads, or 7,500,000 cubic feet, which is nearly half of the entire quantity.

In Paris, then, it would appear that only 38 per cent of the refuse which is not removed by sewers is collected in the cesspools, whereas in London about 54½ per cent is so collected. The remainder in both cases is part deposited in by-places and removed by the scavenger’s cart, part lost in evaporation, whereas a large proportion of the deficiency arises from a less quantity of water than the amount stated being used by the very poor.

We have now to see the means by which this 15,000,000 cubic feet of cesspoolage is annually removed, as well as to ascertain the condition and incomes of the labourers engaged in the removal of it.

Of the Cesspool System of London.

A cesspool, or some equivalent contrivance, has long existed in connexion with the structure of the better class of houses in the metropolis, and there seems every reason to believe—though I am assured, on good authority, that there is no public or official record of the matter known to exist—that their use became more and more general, as in the case of the sewers, after the rebuilding of the City, consequent upon the great fire of 1666.

The older cesspools were of two kinds—“soil-tanks” and “bog-holes.”

“Soil-tanks” were the filth receptacles of the larger houses, and sometimes works of solid masonry; they were almost every size and depth, but always perhaps much deeper than the modern cesspools, which present an average depth of 6 feet to 6½ feet.

The “bog-hole” was, and is, a cavity dug into the earth, having less masonry than the soil-tank, and sometimes no masonry at all, being in like manner the receptacle for the wet refuse from the house.

The difference between these old contrivances and the present mode is principally in the following respect: the soil-tank or bog-hole formed a receptacle immediately under the privy (the floor of which has usually to be removed for purposes of cleansing), whereas the refuse is now more frequently carried into the modern cesspool by a system of drainage. Sometimes the soil-tank was, when the nature of the situation of the premises permitted, in some outer place, such as an obscure part of the garden or court-yard; and perhaps two or more bog-holes were drained into it, while often enough, by means of a grate or a trap-door, any kind of refuse to be got rid of was thrown into it.

I am informed that the average contents of a bog-hole (such as now exist) are a cubic yard of matter; some are round, some oblong, for there is, or was, great variation.

Of the few remaining soil-tanks the varying sizes prevent any average being computable.

What the old system of cesspoolage was may be judged from the fact, that until somewhere about 1830 no cesspool matter could, without an indictable offence being committed, be drained into a sewer! Now, no new house can be erected, but it is an indictable offence if the cesspool (or rather water-closet) matter be drained anywhere else than into the sewer! The law, at the period specified, required most strangely, so that “the drains and sewers might not be choked,” that cesspools should “be not only periodically emptied, but made by nightmen.”

The principal means of effecting the change from cesspoolage to sewerage was the introduction of Bramah’s water-closets, patented in 1808, but not brought into general use for some twenty years or more after that date. The houses of the rich, owing to the refuse being drained away from the premises, improved both in wholesomeness and agreeableness, and so the law was relaxed.

There are two kinds of cesspools, viz. public and private.

The public cesspools are those situated in courts, alleys, and places, which, though often packed thickly with inhabitants, are not horse-thoroughfares, or thoroughfares at all; and in such places one, two, or more cesspools receive the refuse from all the houses. I do not know that any official account of public cesspools has been published as to their number, character, &c., but their number is insignificant when compared with those connected with private houses. The public cesspools are cleansed, and, where possible, filled up by order of the Commissioners of Sewers, the cost being then defrayed out of the rate.

The private cesspools are cleansed at the expense of the occupiers of the houses.

Of the Cesspool and Sewer System of Paris.

As the Court of Sewers have recently adopted some of the French regulations concerning cesspoolage, I will now give an account of the cesspool system of France.

When after the ravages of the epidemic cholera of 1848-9, sanitary commissioners under the authority of the legislature pursued their inquiries, it was deemed essential to report upon the cesspool system of Paris, as that capital had also been ravaged by the epidemic. The task was entrusted to Mr. T. W. Rammell, C.E.

Even in what the French delight to designate—and in some respects justly—the most refined city in the world, a filthy and indolent custom, once common, as I have shown, in England, still prevails. In Paris, the kitchen and dry house-refuse (and formerly it was the fæcal refuse also) is deposited in the dark of the night in the streets, and removed, as soon as the morning light permits, by the public scavengers. But the refuse is not removed unexamined before being thrown into the cart of the proper functionary. There is in Paris a large and peculiar class, the chiffonniers (literally, in Anglo-Saxon rendering, the raggers, or rag-finders). These men nightly traverse the streets, each provided with a lantern, and generally with a basket strapped to the back; the poorer sort, however—for poverty, like rank, has its gradations—make a bag answer the purpose; they have also a pole with an iron hook to its end; and a small shovel. The dirt-heaps or mounds of dry house-refuse are carefully turned over by these men; for their morrow’s bread, as in the case of our own street-finders, depends upon something saleable being acquired. Their prizes are bones (which sometimes they are seen to gnaw); bits of bread; wasted potatoes; broken pots, bottles, and glass; old pans and odd pieces of old metal; cigar-ends; waste-paper, and rags. Although these people are known as rag-pickers, rags are, perhaps, the very thing of which they pick the least, because the Parisians are least apt to throw them away. In some of the criminal trials in the French capital, the chiffonniers have given evidence (but not much of late) of what they have found in a certain locality, and supplied a link, sometimes an important one, to the evidence against a criminal. With these refuse heaps is still sometimes mixed matter which should have found its way into the cesspools, although this is an offence punishable, and occasionally punished.

Before the habits of the Parisians are too freely condemned, let it be borne in mind that the houses of the French capital are much larger than in London, and that each floor is often the dwelling-place of a family. Such is generally the case in London in the poorer districts, but in Paris it pervades almost all districts. There, some of the houses contain 70, not fugitive but permanent, inmates. The average number of inhabitants to each house, according to the last census, was upwards of twenty-four (in London the average is 7·6), the extremes being eleven to each house in St. Giles’s and between five and six in the immediate suburbs (see p. 165, ante). Persons who are circumstanced then, as are the Parisians, can hardly have at their command the proper means and appliances for a sufficient cleanliness, and for the promotion of what we consider—but the two words are unknown to the French language—the comforts of a home.

“The greater portion of the liquid refuse,” writes Mr. Rammell, “including water, which has been used in culinary or cleansing processes, is got rid of by means of open channels laid across the court-yards and the foot pavements to the street gutters, along which it flows until it falls through the nearest gully into the sewers, and ultimately into the Seine. If produced in the upper part of a house, this description of refuse is first poured into an external shoot branching out of the rainwater pipe, with one of which every floor is usually provided. Iron pipes have been lately much introduced in place of the open channels across the foot pavements; these are laid level with the surface, and are cast with an open slit, about one inch in width, at the top, to afford facility for cleansing. During the busy parts of the day there are constant streams of such fluids running through most of the streets of Paris, the smell arising from which is by no means agreeable. In hot weather it is the practice to turn on the public stand pipes for an hour or two, to dilute the matter and accelerate its flow.”

“With respect to fæcal refuse,” says Mr. Rammell, “and much of the house-slops, particularly those of bed-chambers, the cesspool is universally adopted in Paris as the immediate receptacle.”

By far the greater proportion of the wet house-refuse of Paris, therefore, is deposited in cesspools.

I shall, then, immediately proceed to show the quantity of matter thus collected yearly, as well as the means by which it is removed.

The aggregate quantity of the cesspool matter of Paris has greatly increased in quantity within the present century, though this might have been expected, as well from the increase of population as from the improved construction of cesspools (preventing leakage), and the increased supply of water in the French metropolis.

The following figures show both the aggregate quantity and the increase that has taken place in the cesspoolage of Paris, from 1810 to the present time:—