Part 8

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

[29] Perhaps, to make these passages intelligible, the reader should be apprised that the business of the Corporation is considered in a great variety of Committees, which thus have their several and particular provinces. Of the many matters adverted to, as foreign to the ordinary functions of the Commission of Sewers, some might belong to the _City-Lands_ Committee, some to the _Improvement_, some to the _Finance_, some to the _Navigation_, some to the _Markets_ Committee, and so on. Obviously it would have been out of my place to touch on these details of jurisdiction; and I therefore urged only the essentially _municipal_ character of the several improvements I advocated.--J. S., 1854.

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

I have the honour,

&c., &c.

FURTHER REMARKS ON WATER-SUPPLY.

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

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

_February 21, 1850._

GENTLEMEN,

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

* * * * *

First, I may remind you, that in my report of last November, which still remains under your consideration, I stated the following ‘as the chief conditions in respect of Water-Supply, which peremptorily require to be fulfilled.

‘1. That every house should be separately supplied with water; and that, where the house is a lodging-house, or where the several floors are let as separate tenements, the supply of water should extend to each inhabited floor.

‘2. That every privy should have a supply of water, applicable as often as it may be required, and sufficient in volume to effect at each application a thorough flushing and purification of the discharge-pipe of the privy.

‘3. That in every court, at the point remotest from the sewer-grating, there should be a stand-cock for the cleansing of the court; and

‘4. That at all these points there should always and uninterruptedly be a sufficiency of water to fulfil all reasonable requirements of the population.’

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

* * * * *

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

The average of requirement (estimated from the consumption of large communities) would probably be about 12 gallons per person per diem; making an amount, for the total population of the City, of about 1½ million gallons per diem. Assuming this estimate to be correct, a point which I would beg you to observe is the following: that, although there might be very little fluctuation in the _total quantity consumed_, and although it might remain constant at the figure I have given, yet in the items of individual consumption, making up this gross amount, there would be almost infinite varieties. One family would habitually consume twice as much water as another family of the same size: one family would consume six gallons per person on five days of the week, and would require all its remaining quota on the other two days; and so forth. These differences and caprices of individual requirement do not sensibly affect the total quantity consumed in a given week by a population of 130,000 persons; one consuming more, another less, the first counterbalances the last in forming the materials for a fair personal average; and a source of supply calculated from such an average for a large population would, practically speaking, be unlimited to each individual consumer, provided only that it were so distributed, that each consumer could draw from the common stock at his own time and according to his own necessity. This advantage is obviously lost under the present system of intermittent supply, which compels a larger total distribution than would else be requisite, entails the expensive and unwholesome necessity for storage, and yet is notoriously fraught with the inconveniences of a restricted source, or a defective supply.

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

I have, &c. &c.

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT.

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

_November 26th, 1850._

GENTLEMEN,

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

I. MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.

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

[30] With the required correction for increase of population, the death-rate was probably about 21·25 _per_ 1000.

Last year it was my painful duty to record the ravages of pestilence, then indeed hardly terminated, under the pressure of which our general death-rate had arisen to the alarming height of thirty in the thousand. On this present occasion, I have the happier task of laying before you the evidences of a mortality lessened considerably below its habitual average; and I rejoice in congratulating your Hon. Court on the testimony thus borne to the success of your sanitary exertions. For although, without question, some large share of this striking improvement may have depended on circumstances beyond our cognizance or control; although it may in part be but an instance of that tendency to periodical alternations of activity and repose which we recognise in disease, as in other operations of nature; although I should be over-sanguine if I believed, and premature if I stated, that your sanitary measures during the past twelve months had wrought such a change in the City as to ensure a continuance of this year’s comparative healthfulness; yet I may venture without hesitation to assure you, that the labours of the Commission have been fruitful of real and demonstrable advantage to the health of the people; that a sensible diminution has occurred in the physical causes of disease; and that, from various and disinterested sources, I hear grateful mention of improvements which you have effected.

In confirmation of this assurance, I may inform your Hon. Court that, in collecting my materials for the present statement, I solicited from the Union-Surgeons of the whole City of London certain particulars of information which they were peculiarly able to furnish; I inquired of them, namely, whether, during the past year, there had prevailed among the poorer classes in their several districts more or less than the ordinary pressure of epidemic, endemic, and infectious disease; and whether, in case of such difference having been observed, they could refer it, either for better or worse, to any changes recently wrought in the physical conditions of their respective neighbourhoods. They have had the kindness to furnish me with the information requested of them; and their replies testify with remarkable uniformity, both to the abatement of disease within their several provinces of practice, and to the considerable dependence of that improved condition of health on sanitary works effected under your auspices.

* * * * *

In order to form a correct estimate of the average mortality in any district, it is indispensable that one’s records should extend over many years. Thus only is it that fallacies can be avoided which arise from the alternate pressure and remittance of epidemic disease. The havoc effected by a periodical visitation of influenza, cholera, or plague, varies, in like manner as the ordinary death-rate varies, in different localities; and its variation contributes importantly to fix the healthiness or unhealthiness of such localities. But obviously, if we wish for practical purposes to calculate an annual rate of mortality, and to decide, in respect of any district, what are the chances of life for its population, we must distribute the peculiar mortality of the pestilence-period over those years which intervene between visitations of the pestilence.

Hitherto, in respect of the City of London, I have the record of only two years; two years differing from one another in the proportion of 30 to 22, and the mean mortality deduced from that biennial period would be 26 per thousand per annum.[31] I am, of course, unable to tell you with certainty whether that ratio be the true average death-rate of the City; but I incline to believe that an average calculated from a longer period, with less abrupt fluctuations, would give a lower figure as the accurate one.

[31] On account of corrections already adverted to, this mean death-rate should be reduced, probably to 25.2.

In future years, so long as I may have the honour of reporting to the Commission, I purpose proceeding, step by step, to the construction of a cyclical average from the materials which will constantly be increasing; and I trust that many years may elapse before any approach shall again be made to the high death-rate with which the cycle commenced.

It may be useful, for the sake of comparison, that I should remind your Hon. Court of some of the more important differences which prevail throughout the country, in regard to the local rates of mortality. The extreme rates recorded in the Registrar-General’s last publication, relating to the septennial period 1838-44, give 14 per thousand per annum as the lowest average, and 33½ as the highest average, for a population male and female in equal proportion. The low average belongs to a district in Northumberland, numbering 27-28,000 inhabitants; the high average is assigned to Liverpool. For the whole south-east division of England (comprising more than a million and a half of inhabitants) the death-rate is but 19; while in parts of the division it falls very considerably below this average. I have thrown these and some similar comparisons into a tabular form, which may perhaps be interesting to you.[32]

[32] Vide page 84.