The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Sanitary Evolution of London, by Henry Lorenzo Jephson

Transcriber’s Notes

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

For a complete list of corrections, other changes, and notes, please see the [end of this document.]

Clickable links to page numbers in the Table of Contents, and the Index, appear as [155] or [213–4] rather than [155] or [213–4].

Similarly, links to footnotes in the text appear like this[3] rather than being underlined like this[3].

On some devices, clicking the sketch map image below will display a larger version of it.

THE SANITARY EVOLUTION
OF LONDON

THE
SANITARY EVOLUTION
OF LONDON

BY

HENRY JEPHSON, L.C.C.

AUTHOR OF
“THE PLATFORM: ITS RISE AND PROGRESS”

“The discovery of the laws of public health, the determination of the conditions of cleanliness, manners, water supply, food, exercise, isolation, medicine, most favourable to life in one city, in one country, is a boon to every city, to every country, for all can profit by the experience of one.”

G. Graham, Registrar-General, 1871.

A. WESSELS COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

BROOKLYN, N. Y.

MCMVII

DEDICATED

TO

THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL

BY ONE OF ITS MEMBERS

THE AUTHOR

4, Cornwall Gardens,
S.W.

CONTENTS

[SKETCH MAP OF LOCAL DISTRICTS IN LONDON.]

REFERENCE TO NAMES OF PARISHES AND DISTRICTS NUMBERED ON THE MAP.

1. Clerkenwell. 2. Holborn. 3. St. Giles’. 4. Strand.

5. St. Martin-in-the-Fields. 6. Whitechapel. 7. St. James’, Westminster.

8. Westminster. 9. St. Saviour’s, Southwark. 10. St. Olave’s, Southwark.

11. St. George the Martyr, Southwark.

The Sanitary Evolution of London

CHAPTER I

The health of the people of a country stands foremost in the rank of national considerations. Upon their health depends their physical strength and energy, upon it their mental vigour, their individual happiness, and, in a great degree, their moral character. Upon it, moreover, depends the productivity of their labour, and the material prosperity and commercial success of their country. Ultimately, upon it depends the very existence of the nation and of the Empire.

The United Kingdom can claim no exemption from this general principle; rather, indeed, is it one which, in the present period of our history, affects us more vitally than it has ever done before, and in a more crucial manner than it does many other nations.

The more imperative is it, therefore, that every effort should be made to raise the health of our people to the highest attainable level, and to maintain it at the loftiest possible standard.

The subject is so vast and complicated that it is impossible, within reasonable limits, to treat more than a portion of it at a time.

London, the great metropolis, the capital of the Empire itself, constitutes, by the number of its inhabitants, so large a portion of the United Kingdom, that the health of its people is a very material factor in that of the kingdom. It has a population greater than either Scotland or Ireland, greater than any of our Colonies, except Canada and Australasia, greater than that of many foreign States— “the greatest aggregate of human beings that has ever existed in the history of the world in the same area of space.”

And, in a measure too, it is typical of other of our great cities.

A narrative of the sanitary history and conditions of life of the people of London, therefore, would be a material contribution to the consideration of the general subject in its national aspect, whilst it cannot but be of special interest to those more immediately concerned in the amelioration of the existing condition of the masses of the people of the great capital.

Such a narrative is attempted in the following pages.

It is, in the main, based upon the experiences, and inferences, and conclusions, of men who, more than any others, were in a position closely to observe the circumstances in which the people lived, their sanitary condition, and the causes leading thereto and influencing the same.

It includes the principal measures from time to time passed by the Legislature to create local governing authorities in sanitary matters—the various measures designed and enacted to improve the condition of the people—and the administration of those measures by the local authorities charged with their administration.

It is a narrative, in fact, of the sanitary—and, therefore, to a great extent of the social—evolution of this great city.

It is doubtful how long a time would have elapsed before the condition of the people came into real prominence had it not been for the oft-recurring invasions of the country by epidemic disease of the most dreaded and fatal forms. Ever-present diseases, disastrous and devastating though they were, did not strike the imagination or appeal to the fears of the public as did the sudden onslaught of an awe-inspiring disease such as cholera.

An epidemic of that dreaded disease swept over London in 1832, and there were over 10,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths in the districts then considered as metropolitan—the population of those districts being close upon 1,500,000.

For the moment, the dread of it stimulated the people, and such governing authorities as there were, to inspection, and cleansings, and purifications, and to plans for vigorous sanitary reform; but the instant the cholera departed the good resolutions died down, and the plans disappeared likewise.

There were, however, some persons upon whom this visitation made more abiding impression; and they, struck by the waste of human life, by the frequent recurrence of epidemics which swept away thousands upon thousands of victims, and distressed by the perpetual prevalence and even more deadly destructiveness of various other diseases among the people, bethought themselves of investigating the actual existing facts, and the causes of them—so far at least as London, their own city, was concerned.

And then slowly the curtain began to be raised on the appalling drama of human life in London, and dimly to be revealed the circumstances in which the great masses of the working and labouring classes of the great metropolis lived, moved, and came to the inevitable end, and the conditions and surroundings of their existence.

The slowness with which England as a nation awoke to the idea that the public health was a matter of any concern whatever is most strange and remarkable. It seems now so obvious a fact that one marvels that it did not at all times secure for itself recognition and acknowledgment. But men and women were growing up amidst the existing surroundings, foul and unwholesome though those were, and some, at least, were visibly living to old age; population was increasing at an unprecedented rate; wealth was multiplying and accumulating; the nation was reaching greater heights of power and fame. What, then, was there, what could there be wrong with the existing state of affairs?

Real social evils, however, sooner or later, force themselves into prominence. For long they may be ignored, or treated with indifference by the governing classes; for long they may be endured by the victims in suffering and silence; but ultimately they compel recognition, and have to be investigated and grappled with, and, if possible, remedied.

The real beginning of such investigations was not until near the close of the fourth decade of the nineteenth century. Information then for the first time was collected, of necessity very limited in extent, crude in form, and of moderate accuracy, but none the less illuminating in its character—information from which one can piece together in a hazy sort of way a general impression of the condition of the working and poorer classes in London at that period.

Foremost among the diseases which worked unceasing and deadly havoc among the people was fever. By its wide and constant prevalence and great fatality, it was the first upon which attention became fixed. The returns which were collected as regarded it related to twenty metropolitan unions or parishes, and in them only to the pauper population, some 77,000 in number. But they showed that in the single year of 1838, out of those 77,000 persons, 14,000, or very nearly one-fifth, had been attacked by fever, and nearly 1,300 had died.[1]

Being limited to the technically pauper population this information related only to one section of the community; but it nevertheless afforded the means of forming a rough estimate of the amount of fever among the community as a whole.

And another fact also at once became apparent, namely, that certain parts of London were more specially and persistently haunted or infested by fever than others. In Whitechapel, Holborn, Lambeth, and numerous other parishes or districts, fever of the very worst forms was always prevalent—“typhus, and the fevers which proceed from the malaria of filth.” The sanitary condition of those districts was fearful, every sanitary abomination being rampant therein, whilst certain localities in them were so bad that “it would be utterly impossible for any description to convey to the mind an adequate conception of their state.” And most marvellous and deplorable of all was the fact that this fearful condition of things was allowed, not merely to continue, but to flourish without any attempt being made to remedy, or even to mitigate, some of the inevitable and most disastrous consequences.

As regarded the districts in which the wealthier classes resided, systematic efforts had been made on a considerable scale to widen the streets, to remove obstructions to the circulation of free currents of air, and to improve the drainage—an acknowledgment and appreciation of the fact that these things did deleteriously affect people’s health. But nothing whatever had been attempted to improve the condition of the districts inhabited by the poor. Those districts were not given a thought to, though in them annually thousands and tens of thousands of victims suffered or died from diseases which were preventable.

Reports such as these attracted some degree of attention, and awakened a demand for further information, and in 1840 the House of Commons appointed a Select Committee to inquire as to the health, not only of London, but of the large towns throughout the country. Their report[2] enlarged upon the evils previously in part portrayed, and emphasised them.

“Your Committee,” they wrote, “would pause, from the sad statements they have been obliged to make, to observe that it is painful to contemplate in the midst of what appears an opulent, spirited, and flourishing community, such a vast multitude of our poorer fellow-subjects, the instruments by whose hands these riches were created, condemned for no fault of their own to the evils so justly complained of, and placed in situations where it is almost impracticable for them to preserve health or decency of deportment, or to keep themselves and their children from moral and physical contamination. To require them to be clean, sober, cheerful, contented under such circumstances would be a vain and unreasonable expectation. There is no building Act to enforce the dwellings of these workmen being properly constructed; no drainage Act to enforce their being properly drained; no general or local regulation to enforce the commonest provisions for cleanliness and comfort.”

Lurid as were the details thus made public of the condition in which the vast masses of the people in London were living, neither Parliament nor the Government took any action beyond ordering successive inquiries by Poor Law Commissioners, or Committees of the House of Commons, or Royal Commissions.

Before one of these Commissions[3] the following striking evidence was given—evidence which it might reasonably be expected would have moved any Government to immediate action:—

“Every day’s experience convinces me,” deposed the witness,[4] “that a very large proportion of these evils is capable of being removed; that if proper attention were paid to sanitary measures, the mortality of these districts would be most materially diminished, perhaps in some places one-third, and in others even a half.

“The poorer classes in these neglected localities and dwellings are exposed to causes of disease and death which are peculiar to them; the operation of these peculiar causes is steady, unceasing, sure; and the result is the same as if twenty or thirty thousand of these people were annually taken out of their wretched dwellings and put to death—the actual fact being that they are allowed to remain in them and die. I am now speaking of what silently but surely takes place every year in the metropolis alone.”

But the Government took no action—beyond a Building Act which did little as regarded the housing of the people. No local bodies took action, and years were to pass before either Government or Parliament stirred in the matter.

In dealing historically with matters relating to London as a whole, it is to be remembered that for a long time there had been practically two Londons—that defined and described as the “City,” and the rest of London—that which had no recognised boundaries, no vestige of corporate existence, and which can best be described by the word “metropolis.”

The “City” was virtually the centre of London—the centre of its wealth, its industry, its geographical extent—a precisely defined area of some 720 acres, or about one square mile in extent, and originally surrounded by walls. Its boundaries had been fixed at an early period of our history, and had never been extended or enlarged. So densely was it covered with houses at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and so fully peopled, that there was practically no room for more, either of houses or people; and from then to the middle of that century its population was stationary—being close upon 128,000 at each of those periods.

Apart altogether from political influences, there were in the “City” powerful economic forces at work which profoundly affected the condition and circumstances of the people, not only of the “City,” but of London.

These, which were by no means so evident at one time, became more and more pronounced as time went on.

All through the earlier part of the nineteenth century England was attaining to world pre-eminence by her commerce, her manufactures, and her wealth. The end of the great war with France saw her with a firm grip of all the commercial markets of the world. Her merchants pushed their trade in every quarter of the globe—her ships enjoyed almost a monopoly of the carrying trade of the world.

In this progress to greatness London took the foremost part, and became the greatest port and trade emporium of the kingdom, a great manufacturing city, and the financial centre of the world’s trade.

It was upon this commerce that the prosperity and glory of London were built: it was by this commerce that the great bulk of the people gained their livelihood, and that a broad highway was opened to comfort, to opulence, and power. And so the commercial spirit—the spirit of acquiring and accumulating wealth—got ever greater possession of London.

That spirit had long been a great motive power in London; it became more and more so as the century wore on, until almost everything was subordinated to it.

That indisputable fact must constantly be borne in mind as one reviews the sanitary and social condition of the people of London at and since that time. Other constant factors there were, also exercising vast influence—the constant factors of human passions and human failings—but widespread as were their effects, they were second to the all-powerful, the all-impelling motive and unceasing desire—commercial prosperity and success.

Synchronous with the rise in importance of the port of London, and with its trade and business assuming ever huger volume and variety, a noteworthy transformation took place.

The “City,” by the very necessities of its enormous business, became gradually more and more a city of offices and marts, of warehouses and factories, of markets and exchanges, and houses long used as residences were pulled down, and larger and loftier ones erected in their place for business purposes.

In some places, moreover, ground was entirely cleared of houses for the construction of docks, or for the erection of great railway termini.

How marked were the effects of these changes is evidenced by the fact that from 17,190 inhabited houses in the “City” in 1801, the number had sunk to 14,575 in 1851.

The explanation was the simple economic one, that land in the “City” yielded a much larger income when let for business than for residential purposes. Offices and warehouses were absolutely essential in the “City” for business. What did it matter if people had to look for a residence in some other place? London was large. They could easily find room. And the process, without control of any sort or kind, and wholly unimpeded by legislation or governmental regulation, went on quite naturally—entailing though it did consequences of the very gravest character, then quite unthought of, or, if thought of, ignored or regarded as immaterial.

This then was, at that time, and still is, one of the great, if not indeed the greatest of the economic forces at work which has unceasingly dominated the housing of the people not only in the “City,” but in the metropolis outside and surrounding the “City,” and, in dominating their housing, powerfully affected also their sanitary and social condition.

The “City” was in the enjoyment of a powerful local governing body—namely, the Lord Mayor and Corporation, or Common Council, elected annually by the ratepayers; and numerous Acts of Parliament and Royal Charters had conferred sundry municipal powers upon them.

For that important branch of civic requirements—the regulation of the thoroughfares and the construction of houses and buildings—they had certain powers. The vastly more important sphere of civic welfare—namely, the matters affecting the sanitary condition of the inhabitants—was delegated by the Corporation to a body called the Commissioners of Sewers, annually elected by the Common Council out of their own body, some ninety in number. And these Commissioners had, in effect, authority in the City, directly or indirectly, over nearly every one of the physical conditions which were likely to affect the health or comfort of its inhabitants. They could also appoint a Medical Officer of Health to inform and advise them upon public health matters, and Inspectors to enforce the laws and regulations.

The “City” was thus in happy possession of a powerful local authority, and a large system of local government. And it stood in stately isolated grandeur, proud of, and satisfied with, its dignity, and privileges, and wealth; glorying in its own importance and splendour; content with its own system of government, and its powers for administering its municipal affairs, and indifferent to the existence of the greater London which had grown up around it, and which was ever becoming greater.

Greater indeed. The population of the “City” in 1851 was 128,000; that of the metropolis not far short of 2,500,000.

The number of inhabited houses in the “City” was hundreds short of 15,000. In the metropolis it was over 300,000.

The “City” was 720 acres in extent: what in 1855 was regarded as the metropolis was about 75,000 acres in extent.

And here, with no visible boundary of separation between them, were what were still “Parishes,” but what were in reality great towns; not merely merged or rapidly merging into each other, but already merged into one great metropolis. Some of them even had a greater population than the “City” itself. St. Pancras, for instance, with 167,000 persons; St. Marylebone with 157,000, and Lambeth with 139,000.

Of that greater London—or, in effect, of London itself—there is a complicated and tangled story to tell.

Long before the middle of the nineteenth century had been reached, the time had passed when the “City” could contain the trade, and commerce, and manufactures, and business, which had grown up. They had overflowed into London outside the walls, and just as in the “City” the great economic forces produced certain definite changes in the circumstances and sanitary condition of the people living therein, so, in the greater London, the commercial spirit radiating gradually outwards, produced precisely similar results, only on a far wider scale, and with more potent effect.

Trade, and commerce, and wealth, and population, were increasing by leaps and bounds; and like the rings which year by year are added to the trunk of a tree, so year by year, decade by decade, London—the metropolis—spread out, and grew, and grew. From something under one million of inhabitants in 1801, the population increased to nearly two and a half millions in 1851, partly by natural increase, due to the number of those who were born being greater than of those who died, partly by immigration from the country.

This was London, in the large sense of the title—London, the great metropolis which had never received recognition by the law as one great entity, and whose boundaries had never been fixed, either by enactment, charter, or custom.[5]

Dependent as is the public health, or sanitary and social condition of the people, upon the circumstances in which they find themselves placed, and the economic forces which are constantly at work moulding those circumstances, it is in as great a degree dependent on the system of local government in existence at the time, upon the scope and efficacy of the laws entrusted to the local authorities to administer, and upon the administration of those laws by those authorities.

As for local government—unlike the “City”—this greater London was without form and almost void. With the exception of the Poor Law Authority—the Boards of Guardians—whose sphere of duty was distinctly limited, there was, outside the boundaries of the “City,” not even the framework of a system of such government; and the confusion and chaos became ever greater as years went on and London grew.

There was no authority so important as to have any extended area for municipal purposes under its control and management except certain bodies, five in number, entitled “Commissioners of Sewers,” charged with duties in connection with the sewerage of their districts.

In some parishes some of the affairs of the parish were managed by the parishioners in open vestry assembled, at which assembly Churchwardens, Overseers of the Poor, and Surveyors of Highways were appointed to carry out certain limited classes of work. In others, the parishioners elected a select vestry to do the work of the parish.

But for many of the vitally important municipal affairs there were no authorities at all.

As the non-City and out-districts became more thickly peopled, and streets and houses increased in number, the inconvenience of there being practically no local government at all made itself felt.

In some cases, the owners of the estates which were being so rapidly absorbed into London and being built upon, applied to Parliament for powers to regulate those estates.

In other cases, persons with interests in a special locality associated themselves together and obtained a private Act of Parliament giving them authority, under the name of Commissioners or Trustees, to tax and in a very limited way to govern a particular district or group of streets forming part of a parish. Thus it happened that a large number of petty bodies of all sorts and kinds came into existence. Any district, however small, was suffered to obtain a local Act of Parliament for the purpose of managing some of its affairs, and this, too, without any reference to the interests of the immediate neighbours, or of the metropolis as a whole. Most of the limited and somewhat primitive powers possessed by them were derived from an Act passed in 1817,[6] and related to the paving of streets and the prevention of nuisances therein. Some of these bodies were authorised to appoint surveyors or inspectors; also “scavengers, rakers, or cleaners” to carry away filth from streets and houses, but the exercise of such powers was, of course, purely optional. Indeed, there were scarcely any two parishes in London governed alike.

What the exact number of these various petty authorities was is unknown. Of paving boards alone, it is said that about the middle of the last century there were no less than eighty-four in the metropolis—nineteen of them being in one parish. The lighting of the parish of Lambeth was under the charge of nine local trusts. The affairs of St. Mary, Newington, were under the control of thirteen Boards or trusts, in addition to two turnpike trusts.[7]

In Westminster:—

“The Court of Burgesses and the Vestry retained general jurisdiction over the whole parish for certain purposes; but the numerous local Acts so effectually subdivided the control and distributed it among boards, commissioners, trustees, committees, and other independent bodies, that uniformity, efficiency, and economy in local administration had become impossible.”[8]

There were authorities exclusively for paving; authorities for street improvements; authorities for lighting; even authorities for a bridge across the river. In the course of years, several hundred such bodies had been created, without any relation one to the other, and without any central controlling authority, good, bad, or indifferent, by as many Acts of Parliament. They were mostly self-elected, or elected for life, or both; and were wholly irresponsible to the ratepayers, or indeed to any one else; nor were their proceedings in any way open to the public. Many of them had large staffs of well paid officials; and there were perpetual conflicts of jurisdiction between them, and an absolute want of anything approaching to municipal administration.

It has been roughly stated—roughly because there are no reliable figures—that there were about three hundred such bodies in London—“jostling, jarring, unscientific, cumbrous, and costly”—the very nature of many of them being “as little known to the rest of the community as that of the powers of darkness.”

Add to these numerous, clashing, and incompetent authorities, various great public companies or corporations—the water companies, and gas companies, and dock companies, each with its own special rights—which were far more favourably and generously regarded by Parliament than were the rights of the public, and one has fairly enumerated the local governing bodies then existing in London.

In fact, in no parish of the great metropolis of London was there a local authority possessed of powers to deal in its own area with the multitudinous affairs affecting the health and well-being of the people.

Nor was there in the metropolis any central authority—no single body, representative or even otherwise—to attend to the great branches of municipal administration which affected and concerned the metropolis as a whole, and which could only be dealt with efficiently by the metropolis being treated as a whole.

The consequences to the inhabitants of London of the absence of any efficient form of local government were dire in character, terrible in extent, and unceasing in operation. The higher grades of society suffered in some degree, as disease, begotten in filth and nurtured in poverty, often invaded with disastrous consequences the homes of the well-to-do; but it was by the great mass of the industrial classes and the poorer people that the terrible burden of insanitation had to be borne, and upon them that it fell with the deadliest effect.

The non-existence of a central authority, or of any capable local authorities whose function it would have been to protect them from the causes of disease, had resulted in an insanitary condition which year after year entailed the waste of thousands upon thousands of lives. And the people, in the cruel circumstances of their position, were absolutely powerless to help themselves, and had no possible means of escape from the ever-present, all-surrounding danger.

The first absolute necessity of any sanitation whatever is the getting rid by deportation or destruction of all the filth daily made or left by man or beast, for such filth or refuse breeds all manner of disease, from the mildest up to the very worst types and sorts, and promptly becomes not only noxious to health, but fatal to life. The more rapidly and thoroughly, therefore, this riddance is effected, the better is it in every way for the general health of the public.

So far as the metropolis was concerned, this necessity had for generation after generation been very lightly regarded; and when at last it so forced itself upon public notice that it could no longer be ignored, the measures taken were wholly inadequate and ineffective.

What system there was in London as to the disposal of sewage throughout the earlier half of last century was based upon a Statute dating so far back as Henry VIII.’s reign, amended by another in William and Mary’s reign. Under these Statutes certain bodies had been constituted by the Crown as Commissioners of Sewers for certain portions of London, and charged with the duty of providing sewers and drains in their respective districts, and maintaining the same in proper working order.

But what might have been good enough for London in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries was certainly not adequate in the nineteenth, when London had extended her borders in every direction, and her population had reached almost two and a half millions. Successive Parliaments had not troubled themselves about such a matter; and this neglect, which now appears almost incredible, was typical of the habitual attitude of the governing classes to the sanitary requirements of the masses of the population of the metropolis.

In the eighteen hundred and forties, five such bodies of Commissioners were in existence in London, each with a separate portion of the metropolis under its charge and exercising an independent sway in its own district; and when we collect the best testimony of that time as to their work and that of their predecessors, we have the clearest demonstration of their glaring incapacity, and of the utter inadequacy and inefficiency of the sewerage in their respective districts.

Many miles of sewers had, it is true, in process of time been constructed, and did exist, but much of the work had been so misdone that the cure was little better than the disease.

A river is always a great temptation to persons to get rid of things they want to get rid of, particularly when the things are nasty and otherwise not easily disposed of. Londoners only followed the general practice when they constructed their sewers so that they discharged their contents direct into the Thames. The majority of these sewers emptied themselves only at the time of low water; for as the tide rose the outlets of the sewers were closed, and the sewage was dammed back and became stagnant. When the tide had receded sufficiently to afford a vent for the pent-up sewage, it flowed out and deposited itself along the banks of the river, evolving gases of a foul and offensive character. And then the sewage was not only carried up the river by the rising tide, but it was brought back again into the heart of the metropolis, there to mix with each day’s fresh supply of sewage; the result being that “the portion of the river within the metropolitan district became scarcely less impure and offensive than the foulest of the sewers themselves.”

This was bad enough, but there were miles of sewers which, through defects of construction or disrepair, did not even carry off the sewage from the houses and streets to the river, but had become “similar to elongated cesspools,” and, as such, actual sources and creators of disease.

Incredible almost were the stupidities perpetrated by these Commissioners in regard to the construction of the sewers. At even so late a date as 1845 no survey had been made of the metropolis for the purposes of drainage; there was a different level in each of the districts, and no attempt was made to conform the works of the several districts to one general plan. Large sewers were made to discharge into smaller sewers. Some were higher than the cesspools which they were supposed to drain, whilst others had been so constructed that to be of any use the sewage would have had to flow uphill!

It might reasonably have been expected that in the nineteenth century, at least, the twenty parishes which formed the district of the Westminster Commissioners of Sewers would have been equal to producing an enlightened and capable body as Commissioners, but the Westminster Court of Sewers was certainly not such. Even their own chief surveyor, in 1847, stigmatised it as a body “totally incompetent to manage the great and important works committed to their care and control.”

Upon it were builders, surveyors, architects, and district surveyors—a class of persons whose opinions “might certainly be biassed with relation to particular lines of drains and sewers.”

Of another of the courts—namely, the Finsbury Court of Sewers—one of the Commission had been outlawed; another was a bankrupt.

It was stated at the time that “jobbery and favouritism and incompetence were rampant,” and that the system was “radically wrong and rotten to the core.” Certain it is that these bodies failed completely to cope with the requirements of the time. London was spreading out in all directions, and the increase of houses and population was very rapid. Practically no effort, however—certainly no adequate effort—was made by the various bodies of Commissioners to provide these new and growing districts with the means of getting rid of their sewage. And then, inasmuch as the sewage had somehow or other to be got rid of, and some substitute for sewers devised, the surface drains, and millstreams, and ditches were appropriated to use and converted into open sewers or “stagnant ponds of pestilential sewage.”

London was “seamed with open ditches.”

According to contemporary reports there were in Lambeth numerous open ditches of the most horrible description. Bermondsey was intersected by ditches of a similar character, and abounded with fever nests. Rotherhithe was the same. Hackney Brook, formerly “a pure stream,” had become “a foul open sewer.”[9] In St. Saviour’s Union the sewers were in a dreadful condition … “the receptacle of all kinds of refuse, such as putrid fish, dead dogs, cats, &c. Greenwich was not drained or sewered.”

What certainly was conclusively demonstrated was that the existence of several bodies of Commissioners, each with a district to itself, presented an insuperable obstacle to any general system of sewerage for greater London; and that one capable central authority was the first essential of an adequate and efficient system for London as a whole.

Thus, then, in this first essential of all sanitation—one might say of civilisation—no adequate provision was made by Parliament for the safety of the metropolis; whilst as to other essentials of sanitation, there were no laws for the prevention of the perpetration of every sanitary iniquity; and such authorities as there were failed absolutely to use even the few powers they possessed.

The defective and inefficient sewerage of the metropolis precluded the possibility of any proper system of house drainage, for there being few sewers there were few drains, and consequently instead of drains from the houses to the sewers there were cesspools under almost every house. At the census of 1841 there were over 270,000 houses in the metropolis. It was known, then, that most houses had a cesspool under them, and that a large number had two, three, or four under them. Some of them were so huge that the only name considered adequate to describe them was “cess-lake.” In many districts even the houses in which the better classes lived had neither drain nor sewer—nothing but cesspools; and many of the very best portions of the West End were “literally honeycombed” with them. And so jealous was the law as regarded the rights of private property that so late as 1845 owners were not to be interfered with as regarded even their cesspools, no matter how great the nuisance might be to their neighbours, no matter how dangerous to the community at large. Indeed, the Commissioners of Sewers had no power to compel landlords or house-owners to make drains into the sewers, and of their own motion the landlords would take no action.

In the lower part of Westminster the Commissioners of Sewers had actually carried sewers along some of the streets, but they found “very little desire on the part of the landlords” to use them. “So long as the owners get their rent they do not care about drainage…. The landlords will not move; their property pays them very well; they will not put themselves to any expense; they are satisfied with it as it stands.”

Strange level of satisfaction! when one reads the following evidence given two years later before the Metropolitan Sewers Commission:—

“There are hundreds, I may say thousands, of houses in this metropolis which have no drainage whatever, and the greater part of them have stinking, overflowing cesspools. And there are also hundreds of streets, courts, and alleys, that have no sewers; and how the drainage and filth is cleared away, and how the poor miserable inhabitants live in such places it is hard to tell.

“In pursuance of my duties, from time to time, I have visited very many places where filth was lying scattered about the rooms, vaults, cellars, areas, and yards, so thick, and so deep, that it was hardly possible to move for it. I have also seen in such places human beings living and sleeping in sunk rooms with filth from overflowing cesspools exuding through and running down the walls and over the floors…. The effects of the stench, effluvia, and poisonous gases constantly evolving from these foul accumulations were apparent in the haggard, wan, and swarthy countenances, and enfeebled limbs, of the poor creatures whom I found residing over and amongst these dens of pollution and wretchedness.”[10]

And this witness was unable to refrain from passing a verdict upon what he had seen:—

“To allow such a state of things to exist is a blot upon this scientific and enlightened age, an age, too, teeming with so much wealth, refinement, and benevolence. Morality, and the whole economy of domestic existence, is outraged and deranged by so much suffering and misery. Let not, therefore, the morality, the health, the comfort of thousands of our fellow creatures in this metropolis be in the hands of those who care not about these things, but let good and wholesome laws be enacted to compel houses to be kept in a cleanly and healthy condition.”

There were, it was said, “a formidable host of difficulties” as regarded the execution of improved works of house drainage.

There was the opposition of the proprietors on the ground of expense; there were the provisions of the Act of Parliament,[11] which were so intricate as to be almost unintelligible and unworkable; there was the want of a proper outfall for the sewage; and the want of a supply of water to wash away the filth—a possible explanation for the existing state of abomination, but certainly not a justification for the prolonged inaction of successive Parliaments and Governments in allowing affairs to reach so frightful a pass, and for dooming the people to a condition of things which it was entirely beyond their power to remedy even as regarded the single house they inhabited.

Just as everything connected with sewerage and drainage was so placidly neglected, and so fearfully bad, so also was it as regarded another matter of even more vital necessity, namely, the supply of water to the inhabitants of London for drinking, or for domestic, trade, or sanitary purposes.

“Water is essential as an article of food. Water is necessary to personal cleanliness. Water is essential to external cleansing, whether of houses, streets, closets, or sewers.”

Manifestly, the supply of water was not a matter which the individual in a large community such as London could in any way make provision for by his own independent effort. And yet there was no public body in London, central or local, representative or otherwise, charged with the duty of securing to the people even the minimum quantity necessary for life.

Early in the seventeenth century the New River Company was formed for the supply of water to London. And as years went on Parliament evidently considered it fulfilled its obligations in this respect by making over to sundry private companies the right of supplying to the citizens of London this vital requirement, or, as it has been termed, this “life-blood of cities”; and Parliament had done this without even taking any guarantee or security for a proper distribution to the people, or for the purity of the water, or the sufficiency of its supply.

Practically, a generous Parliament had bestowed as a free gift upon these Water Companies the valuable monopoly, so far as London was concerned, of this necessity of life.

Although by the middle of the nineteenth century there was no portion of the metropolis into which the mains and pipes of some of the companies had not been carried, yet, as the companies were under no compulsion to supply it to all houses, large numbers of houses, and particularly those of the poorer classes, received no supply. Indeed, in many parts of London there were whole streets in which not a single house had water laid on to the premises.

In the district supplied by the New River Company, containing about 900,000 persons, about one-third of the population were unsupplied; and in the very much smaller area of the Southwark Company’s district about 30,000 persons had no supply.

Even in 1850 it was computed that 80,000 houses in London, inhabited by 640,000 persons, were unsupplied with water.

A very large proportion of the people could only obtain water from stand-pipes erected in the courts or places, and that only at intermittent periods, and for a very short time in the day; sometimes, indeed, only on alternate days, and not at all on Sunday.

“To these pipes,” wrote a contemporary, “the inhabitants have to run, leaving their occupation, and collecting their share of this indispensable commodity in vessels of whatever kind might be at hand. The water is then kept in the close, ill-ventilated tenements they occupy until it is required for use.”[12]

The quality of the water which was supplied by the companies left much to be desired. That supplied by the New River Company was, as a rule, fairly good in quality; but that supplied by the other companies was very much the reverse. Financial profit being their first and principal consideration, they got it from where it was obtainable at least capital outlay or cost, regardless of purity or impurity; and almost without exception took it from the Thames—“the great sewer of London”—took it, too, from precisely the places where the river was foulest and most contaminated by sewage and other filth; and as there were no filtering beds in which it could have been to some extent purified before its distribution to householders, its composition can best be imagined.

Looking at the great river even now in its purified state, as it sweeps under Westminster Bridge, any one would shudder at the idea of being compelled to drink its water in its muddy and unfiltered state, and of one’s health and life being dependent on the supply from such a source. How infinitely more repugnant it must have been when the river was “the great sewer” of the metropolis.

The great shortage of company-supplied water compelled large numbers of people to have recourse to the pumps which still existed in considerable numbers in many parts of London, the water from which was drawn from shallow wells.

The water of these “slaughter wells,” as they have been termed, appears to have combined all the worst features of water, and to have contained all the ingredients most dangerous to health.

“If,” wrote a Medical Officer of Health some years later, “the soil through which the rain passes be composed of the refuse of centuries, if it be riddled with cesspools and the remains of cesspools, with leaky gas-pipes and porous sewers, if it has been the depository of the dead for generation after generation, the soil so polluted cannot yield water of any degree of purity.”[13]

As all these “ifs” were grim actualities, the water of such wells was revolting in its impurity and deadly in its composition.

Of Clerkenwell it was indeed stated positively that “the shallow-well water of the parish received the drainage water of Highgate cemetery, of numerous burial grounds, and of the innumerable cesspools in the district.”

On the south side of the river the water in most of the shallow wells was tidal—from the Thames, which is a sufficient description of the quality thereof—and where people did not live close enough to the river to draw water from it for their daily wants, they took it from these tidal wells. Vile as it was, it had to be used in default of any better.

Where such wells were not available, the water for all household consumption was taken from tidal ditches which were to all intents and purposes only open sewers. A contemporary report gives a graphic picture of this form of supply[14]:—

“In Jacob’s Island (in Bermondsey) may be seen at any time of the day women dipping water, with pails attached by ropes to the backs of the houses, from a foul, fœtid ditch, its banks coated with a compound of mud and filth, and with offal and carrion—the water to be used for every purpose, culinary ones not excepted.”

An adequate supply of wholesome water has for very long been recognised as of primary sanitary importance to all populations, but with a densely crowded town population the need of care as to the quality of the supplies is peculiarly urgent. And yet, through the indifference of successive Governments, the people of the great metropolis of London were most inadequately supplied with water, and what water was supplied to the great mass of them, or was available for them, was of the foulest and most dangerous description. The inadequacy of supply not alone put a constant premium upon dirt and uncleanliness, both in house and person, but it intensified the evils of the existing sewers and drains, as without water efficient drainage was impossible. And the horrible impurity of the water affected disastrously and continuously the health of the great mass of the people.

Many dire lessons, costing thousands upon thousands of lives, were needed before it was borne in on the Government of the country that the arrangements regarding the supply of water for the people of London required radical amendment.

Much of the health of a city depends upon the width of its thoroughfares, the free circulation of air in its streets and around its buildings, and the sound and sanitary construction of its houses.

In every one of these respects all the central parts of London were remarkably defective. The great metropolis had grown, and had been permitted to grow, mostly at haphazard. Large parks and open spaces there were in the richer and more well-to-do parts, and some handsome thoroughfares; but “there were districts in London through which no great thoroughfares passed, and which were wholly occupied by a dense population composed of the lowest class of persons, who, being entirely secluded from the observation and influence of better educated neighbours, exhibited a state of moral degradation deeply to be deplored.”[15]

Parliament had taken some interest as to the width of the streets, and had shown some anxiety for improvements in them. Hence, much local and general legislation was from time to time directed to control the erection of buildings beyond the regular lines of buildings. Thus the Metropolitan Paving Act, 1817, contained stringent provisions as to projections which might obstruct the circulation of air and light, or be inconvenient or incommodious to passengers along carriage or foot ways in certain parts of the metropolis.

In 1828 the Act for Consolidating the Metropolis Turnpike Trusts, also, contained certain restrictive provisions, but these were rendered futile by the construction put upon its terms by the magistrates.

Again, in 1844, further enactments were made by the Metropolitan Building Act to restrain projections from buildings; but after a short administration of its provisions it was found that shops built on the gardens in front of the houses, or on the forecourts of areas, did not come within the terms of the Act. And so the Act, in that very important respect, was useless.

The action of Parliament had been mainly prompted by the necessity for increased facilities of communication, and by the desire to safeguard house property from destruction by fire; whilst the most important of all aspects of the housing of the people—namely, the sanitary aspect—received no consideration, and was completely ignored as a thing of no consequence.

But whatever the motive of action by Parliament, the ensuing legislation was in the main inoperative or ineffective. The resolution of landowners to secure the highest prices for their property, and the determination of builders, once they got possession of any land, to utilise every inch of it for building, and so to make the utmost money they could out of it, defeated the somewhat loosely drawn enactments. Means of evading the legislative provisions were promptly discovered, and, in despite of legislation, builders, architects, and surveyors of the metropolis were unrestrained in their encroachments upon areas and forecourts—at times even were successful in breaking the existing lines of buildings in metropolitan streets or roads by encroachments which were only discovered too late to be prevented.

Nor was there anything to prevent houses being built on uncovered spaces at the backs of existing buildings, thus taking up whatever air-space had been left between the previous buildings. Hence, great blocks of ground absolutely covered with buildings, back to back, side to side, any way so long as a building could by any ingenuity be fitted in. Hence the culs-de-sac, the small and stifling courts and alleys. Nor were there any regulations forbidding certain kinds of buildings which would be injurious to the health of their inhabitants. Hence the mean and flimsy and insanitary houses which were being erected in the outer circle of the metropolis, and which wrought havoc with the health and lives of the people. Hence, too, the erection, on areas and forecourts, of buildings which narrowed the streets, diminished the air-spaces and means of ventilation, and destroyed the appearance of the localities.

And once up they had come to stay; for years were to pass before the Legislature created any effective means for securing their amelioration, and for generations they were permitted to exercise their evil and deadly sway over the people, and to scatter broadcast throughout the community the seeds of disease and death.

The then existing actual state of the case was summed up by Dr. Southwood Smith in his evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1840:—

“At present no more regard is paid in the construction of houses to the health of the inhabitants than is paid to the health of pigs in making sties for them. In point of fact there is not so much attention paid to it.”

Legislation against some of the evils which had already reached huge proportions, and which, as London grew, were spreading and developing, was not alone ineffective, but earlier legislation, in one notorious Act, had been the direct incentive to, and cause of evils. This was the Act which imposed a tax upon windows.[16] In effect this Act said to the builder, “Plan your houses with as few openings as possible. Let every house be ill-ventilated by shutting out the light and air, and as a reward for your ingenuity you shall be subject to a less amount of taxation.”[17]

The builder acted upon this counsel, and the tax operated as a premium upon the omission from a building of every window which could by any device be spared; with the result that passages, closets, cellars, and roofs—the very places where mephitic vapours were most apt to lodge—were left almost entirely without ventilation.[18]

In effect, the window duties compelled multitudes to live and breathe in darkened rooms and poisoned air, and with a rapidly increasing population the evils resulting therefrom were being steadily intensified.

Admirable was the comment passed upon the tax in 1843:—

“Health is the capital of the working man, and nothing can justify a tax affecting the health of the people, and especially of the labouring community, whose bodily health and strength constitute their wealth, and, oftentimes, their only possession. It is a tax upon light and air, a tax more vicious in principle and more injurious in its practical consequences than a tax upon food.”

Not until 1851 was the tax abandoned, but its evil consequences, wrought in stone and embodied in bricks and mortar, endured many a long year after.

The existing laws or regulations as to building were wholly inadequate to secure healthy houses. And there was no public authority with power to compel attention to the internal condition of houses so as to prevent their continuance in such a filthy and unwholesome state as to endanger the health of the public. There was no power to compel house owners to make drains and carry them to the common sewer where it existed. No persons were appointed to carry into effect such communication. No persons were authorised to make inspection and to report upon these matters.

The poor, or, indeed, the working classes generally, were powerless to alter or amend the construction of the dwellings in which they were compelled to reside, still less to alter their surroundings. Any improvement in the condition of their dwellings could only be by voluntary action on the part of the landlords, or of interference by Government to compel that measure of justice to the poor, and of economy to the ratepayers.

Parliament failed to interfere with any effect; and as to the landlords or house-owners, their interest ran all the other way.

Few persons of large capital built houses as a speculation, or had anything to do with them. Many, however, who were desirous of making the highest possible interest on their money acquired either freehold or leasehold land, and built cheap and ill-constructed houses upon it without the least regard to the health of the future inmates.

And the small landlords were often the most unscrupulous with regard to the condition of the houses they let, and exacted the highest rents.

Inasmuch as this freedom as regarded house construction had been going on almost from time immemorial, it was not only the newly-built houses which were bad. Earlier built houses had rapidly fallen into disrepair and semi-ruin, and were steadily going from bad to worse, and becoming ever less and less suitable for human dwellings.

The following description[19] of parts of St. Giles’ and Spitalfields shows what, under a state of freedom as to building, had been attained to in 1840, and is typical of what so extensively prevailed in the central parts of London:—

“Those districts are composed almost entirely of small courts, very small and very narrow, the access to them being only under gateways; in many cases they have been larger courts originally, and afterwards built in again with houses back to back, without any outlet behind, and only consisting of two rooms, and almost a ladder for a staircase; and those houses are occupied by an immense number of inhabitants; they are all as dark as possible, and as filthy as it is possible for any place to be, arising from want of air and light.”

Here is another description—that of “Christopher Court,” a cul-de-sac in Whitechapel—given, in 1848, by Dr. Allison, one of the surgeons of the Union:—

“This was one of the dirtiest places which human beings ever visited—the horrible stench which polluted the place seemed to be closed in hermetically among the people; not a breath of fresh air reached them—all was abominable.”

It is needless to multiply instances. There is a dreadful unanimity of testimony from all parts of London as to the miserable character and condition of the houses in which in the middle of the nineteenth century the industrial and the lower classes were forced to live; the deficiency or total absence of drainage, the universal filth and abomination of every kind, the fearful overcrowding, the ravages of every type of disease, and the absolute misery in which masses struggled for existence.

The density of houses upon an area has long been recognised as one of the great contributing causes to the ill-health of a community, but when coupled with the overcrowding of human beings in those houses, the combined results are always disastrous in the extreme.

Overcrowding had been a long-standing evil in London; had existed far back in history.

As London had grown, the evil had grown; and about the middle of the last century it was immeasurably greater than ever before, and its disastrous consequences were on a vastly larger scale.

The great economic forces which resulted, in certain districts of London, in the destruction of houses and great clearances of ground, had largely reduced the available accommodation for dwellings, and the expelled inhabitants, chained to the locality by the fact of their livelihood being dependent upon their residence being close by, were forced to invade the yet remaining places in the neighbourhood suited to their means. As the circle of possible habitations contracted, while the numbers seeking accommodation therein increased, a larger population was crowded into an ever-diminishing number of houses.

It was also a most unfortunate but apparently inevitable consequence that once a beginning was made to improve some of the streets and thoroughfares of London, and to substitute in any district a better class of houses and shops for those actually existing, the improvements necessarily involved increased overcrowding in that particular locality and in those adjoining it. But so it was.

Thus, in the eighteen hundred and forties a new street—New Oxford Street—was formed. It was driven through “a hive of human beings, a locality overflowing with human life.” Evidence given before the Commission in 1847 described the results:—

“The effect has been to lessen the population of my neighbourhood by about 5,000 people, and therefore to improve it at the expense of other parts of London. Some have gone to the streets leading to Drury Lane, some to St. Luke’s, Whitechapel, but more to St. Marylebone and St. Pancras. The vestries of St. Marylebone and St. Pancras disliked this very much. Places in the two latter parishes which were before bad enough are now intolerable, owing to the number of poor who formerly lived in St. Giles’.”

And a year or so later, from across the river, came the complaint from Lambeth that “owing to the number of houses pulled down in Westminster and other places, there had been a great influx of Irish and other labourers which necessarily caused a great overcrowding of the miserable domiciles already overfull.”

This Lambeth complaint is specially interesting, as it refers to another great cause of overcrowding—the constant immigration into London of labourers and poor people in search of work or food.

Owing to the ever increasing and urgent demand for house accommodation for the working and poorer classes, it became a very remunerative proceeding for the occupier of a house to sub-let it in portions to separate families or individuals, and the practice gradually extended to and absorbed streets hitherto belonging to the better class. The owner of a property let his whole house to a tenant; this tenant, seeing an easy way of making money, sub-let the rooms in it in twos or threes, or even separately, at a very profitable rate to individual tenants. Nor did the sub-letting end here, for these tenants let off even the sides or corners of their room or rooms to individuals or families who were unable to bear the expense of a whole room. And so the house sank at once into being a “tenement house”—that prolific source of the very worst evils, sanitary, physical, and moral, to those who inhabited them.

Even the underground kitchens and cellars, which were never intended for human habitation, were let to tenants, and thus turned to financial profit.[20] It mattered not that they were without air or ventilation, or even light; it mattered not that they were damp, or sometimes even inundated with the overflow of cesspools; it mattered not that they were inhabited contrary to the provisions of Section 53 of the Building Act of 1844, for that section was of no operative effect whatever. It is true that “Overseers” were to report to the “Official Referees,” who were to give notice to and inform the owners and occupiers of such dwellings as to the consequences of disobeying the Statute, and the “District Surveyor” was to carry out the directions of the Referees. But nothing was ever done—Overseers, District Surveyors, and Referees, all neglected their duties.

Overcrowding was usually at its worst in one-room tenements, and in an immense number of cases in the metropolis one room served for a family of the working or of the labouring classes. It was their bedroom, their kitchen, their wash-house, their sitting-room, their eating-room, and, when they did not follow any occupation elsewhere, it was their workroom and their shop. In this one room they were born, and lived, and slept, and died amidst the other inmates.

And still worse, in innumerable cases, more than one family lived in one room.

When this one room was in a badly drained, damp, ill-constructed, and unventilated house, reeking with a polluted atmosphere, and that house was in a narrow and hemmed-in, unventilated “court” or “place” or “alley”—as an immense number of them were—the maximum of evil consequences was attained.

The evils of overcrowding cannot be summed up in a phrase, nor be realised by the description, however graphic, of instance upon instance. The consequences to the individual living in an overcrowded room or dwelling were always disastrous, and, through the disastrous consequences to great masses of individuals, the whole community was affected in varying degree.

Physically, mentally, and morally, the overcrowded people suffered. Not a disease, not a human ill which flesh is heir to, but was nurtured and rendered more potent in the human hothouse of the overcrowded room; and the ensuing ill-health and diseases not alone doubled the death rate, but increased from ten to twenty-fold, at least, the number of victims of disease of one sort or another—diseases dealing rapid death, or slowly but surely sapping human strength and vitality.

In the report of the London Fever Hospital for 1845 a certain overcrowded room in the neighbourhood was described—a room which was filled to excess every night, sometimes from 90 to 100 men being in it; a room 33 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 7 feet high. From that one room alone no fewer than 130 persons affected with fever were received into the hospital in the course of the year.[21]

One, whose very close experience of the conditions of life and circumstances of the poorer classes of London at the time of the cholera epidemic of 1848–9 entitled him to speak with special authority on the subject, thus summed up his views and conclusions:—

“The members of the medical profession, in the presence of these physical evils, when they are, as so often happens, concentrated, find their science all but powerless; the minister of religion turns from these densely crowded and foul localities almost without hope; whilst the administrators of the law, especially the chaplains and governors of prisons, see that crime of every complexion is most rife where material degradation is most profound.”[22]

And he quoted from the report of the Governors of the Houses of Correction at Coldbath Fields and Westminster the following passage:—

“The crowning cause of crime in the metropolis is, in my opinion, to be found in the shocking state of the habitations of the poor, their confined and fœtid localities, and the consequent necessity for consigning children to the streets for requisite air and exercise. These causes combine to produce a state of frightful demoralisation. The absence of cleanliness, of decency, of all decorum—the disregard of any needful separation of the sexes—the polluting language and the scenes of profligacy hourly occurring, all tend to foster idleness and vicious abandonment. Here I beg emphatically to record my conviction that this constitutes the monster mischief.”

And then he himself adds:—

“If to considerations like these regarding the moral and religious aspect of this great question, be added those suggested by the indescribable physical sufferings inflicted on the labouring classes by the existing state of the public health in the metropolis, the conviction must of necessity follow, that the time is come when efforts in some degree commensurate with these great and pervading evils can no longer with safety be deferred.”[23]

This opinion was expressed three years after the Royal Commissioners of 1847 had said in their report:—

“There appears to be no available (legal) means for the immediate prevention of overcrowding; all we can do is to point it out as a source of evil to be dealt with hereafter.”

One gets a clue to the unceasing insanitary condition of the greater part of London and to the inhuman conduct of so many tenement house-owners when one realises that there was no legal punishment whatever for the perpetration and perpetuation of the insanitary abominations, no matter how noxious or dangerous they were, nor how rapidly or directly they led to disease or death. An order to abate a nuisance (which usually was not obeyed) appears to have been the only penalty, and it was only obtainable at great trouble and after great delays; and, even if obtained and the nuisance abated, there was nothing to prevent the offender at once starting the nuisance again. Offences of the most heinous description—amounting morally to deliberate murder—were perpetrated with absolute impunity. Houses which were scarcely ever free from fever cases were allowed to continue year after year levying their heavy death tax from the unfortunate inhabitants.

In Whitechapel one house, inhabited by twelve or fourteen families, was mentioned as scarcely free from fever cases for as many years.

“It is also a fearful fact that in almost every instance where patients die from fever, or are removed to the hospital or workhouse, their rooms are let as soon as possible to new tenants, and no precautions used, or warning given; and in some houses, perfect hotbeds of fever probably, where a patient dies or is removed, the first new-comer is put into the sick man’s bed.”

Sanitary improvement was almost a hopeless task. There was a dead weight of opposition to it in the ignorance and recklessness and indifference of the poorer classes, the very hopelessness of being able to improve their condition. And there was an active and bitter opposition from those house-owners or lessees who for their own financial profit exploited the poorer classes.

“There is one house in Spitalfields,” said Dr. Lynch, “which has been the constant habitation of fever for fifteen years. I have enforced upon the landlord the necessity of cleansing and lime-washing it, but it has never been done!!… There are many landlords with whom nothing but immediate interest has any effect.”[24]

The favourite principle that an Englishman’s house was his castle was used as a defence against any suggestion that the malpractices committed therein should be curbed.

Others argued, “I am entitled to do what I like with my own.”

“We everywhere find people ready to declare in respect to every evil: There is not any law that could compel its removal, the place complained of being private property.”

All sorts of far-fetched and strained arguments were devised by them in the efforts to evade responsibility for the infamous condition of their property, and to defend and justify inaction.

Fortunately some voices began to be raised as to the persons upon whom both equitably and morally the responsibility lay of improving the condition of things.

“I would suggest,” said a voice in 1837, “the idea of the landlords of many of the wretched filthy tenements being held responsible for their being tenantable, healthy, and cleanly.”

And the Commissioners in 1844 reported:—

“There are some points on which the public safety demands the exercise of a power on the part of a public authority to compel attention to the internal condition of houses so as to prevent their continuance in such a filthy and unwholesome state as to endanger the health of the public.”

And they recommended that:—

“On complaint of the parish, medical, or other authorised officer, that any house or premises are in such a filthy and unwholesome state as to endanger the health of the public, the local authority have power to require the landlord to cleanse it properly without delay.”

But ideas or recommendations were alike ignored by the Government and Parliament, and several years were to pass before any legislation was attempted which would make owners responsible for their misdeeds in matters affecting the public health, and would subject them to penalties for their misconduct.

There were many other causes contributing largely to the insanitary condition of the people of the metropolis, prominent, if not most deleterious, amongst them being the widely-prevalent practice of interring the dead in the already overcrowded churchyards or burial grounds in the midst of the most densely populated districts of London—a practice resulting in “the slaughter of the living by the dead.”

Burial grounds long since utilised to their utmost for the disposal of the dead were utilised over and over again for graves which could only be dug in the débris of human remains, until the soil reeked with human decomposition; the surrounding atmosphere was polluted by the horrible process, and they became monstrous foci of infection.

How extensive this evil was may be realised from figures given by Mr. Chadwick in a report to the Government:—

“In the metropolis, on spaces of ground which do not exceed 203 acres, closely surrounded by the abodes of the living, layer upon layer, each consisting of a population numerically equivalent to a large army of 20,000 adults, and nearly 30,000 youths and children, is every year imperfectly interred. Within the period of the existence of the present generation upwards of a million of dead must have been interred in those same spaces.”

And he asserted that:—

“The emanations from human remains are of a nature to produce fatal disease, and to depress the general health of whoever is exposed to them; and interments in the vaults of churches, or in graveyards surrounded by inhabited houses, contribute to the mass of atmospheric and other impurities by which the general health and average duration of life of the inhabitants is diminished.”

Too horribly gruesome and revolting are the descriptions of these graveyards—places where the dead were, so to speak, shovelled in as the filth of the streets is into scavengers’ carts, and which “gave forth the mephitical effluvia of death”; such a one as that in Russell Court, off Drury Lane, where the whole ground, which by constant burials had been raised several feet, was “a mass of corruption” which polluted the air the living had to breathe, and poisoned the well water which in default of other they often had to drink. Or those in Rotherhithe, where “the interments were so numerous that the half-decomposed organic matter was often thrown up to make way for fresh graves, exposing sights disgusting, and emitting foul effluvia.”

The master hand of Dickens has given a more vivid picture of one of these places than any to be found in Parliamentary Blue Books:—

“A hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed…. Into a beastly scrap of ground, which a Turk would reject as a savage abomination, and a Caffre would shudder at, they bring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian burial. With houses looking on on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate—with every villainy of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close on life—here they lower our dear brother down a foot or two; here sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption; an avenging ghost at many a sick bedside; a shameful testimony to future ages, how civilisation and barbarism walked this boastful island together.”

Interments in the vaults of the churches—then a common practice—were also a fruitful source of sickness and death. It mattered not whether or not the bodies were hermetically closed in leaden coffins, for “sooner or later every corpse buried in the vault of a church spreads the products of decomposition through the air which is breathed, as readily as if it had never been enclosed”; thus adding to the contamination of the atmosphere.

The death-roll from this horrible condition of things cannot be gauged, but those most conversant with the matter were firmly convinced that it was the direct cause of fevers, and of all kinds of sickness among the people.

Pollution of the atmosphere which people had to breathe, and upon the purity of which the public health in varying degree depended, was caused also by various businesses and processes of manufacture grouped together under the name of “noxious trades,” such as bone-boilers, india-rubber manufacturers, gut-scrapers, manure manufacturers, slaughterers of cattle, and many others.

In 1849[25] a description had been given of a street in Shoreditch which shows to what extent this evil had attained:—

“It is impossible to believe, passing through this main street, that so great a number of pigsties, bone-boileries, dog-and-cat’s meat manufactories, and tallow-melting establishments, on a large scale … should exist in a densely-crowded and closely-built locality. The noxious trades and occupations which so greatly abound here exerted a most deleterious influence upon the health of the inhabitants.”

Parliament, in 1844, had enacted with regard to several of these that it should not be lawful for any person to establish any such business at a less distance than 40 feet from the public way, or than 50 feet from any dwelling-house; and that it should not be lawful to erect a dwelling-house within 50 feet of such businesses.

But these legislative restraints were utterly inadequate as any sort of check upon the evil; for, even if a nuisance were abated, there was no law to prevent its repetition, and so the evil promptly re-appeared. The stenches did not limit their sphere of action by feet, but distributed their abominations over large areas; and the manufacturers cared not what nuisances they subjected people to, nor how far the horrid smells were wafted by the winds, so long as they themselves could carry on a profitable business. And the intentions of Parliament were wholly frustrated by the District Surveyors, who were charged with the enforcement of the Act, and who wholly failed in their duty.

As for slaughter houses, until 1851 any person could start one who pleased, and practically where he pleased, subject only to the shadowy restriction of the common law as to doing anything which might be considered a nuisance.

And so these numerous and various abominations, mixed with the impurity of the atmosphere caused by the masses of smoke emitted from the chimneys of factories and private houses, and with the sickening smell from the Thames, spread sickness and death throughout great portions of the metropolis, and were one of the great causes of its insanitary condition.

II

Previous to the fifth decade of the last century it was only very rarely that the prevalence of disease, or any subject connected with the health of the community, received recognition by Parliament.

In 1840 the Medical Society of London, in a petition to Parliament, called attention to the increase of smallpox, and to its preventability by vaccination, and to the imperfect means of vaccination throughout the country.

The mortality from this—“one of the greatest pests that ever afflicted humanity”[26]—was very great. In one city in the south of England no less than 500 persons had died of it in one year. In London in 1839 upwards of 1,000 had died of it.

And Parliament, after an unusual amount of discussion, passed an Act[27] for extending the practice of vaccination, and enacted that Boards of Guardians might contract with their Medical Officers or other medical practitioners “for the vaccination of all persons resident in their Union or Parish.”

And at the same time “inoculation” or “otherwise producing smallpox” was made penal—to the extent of one month’s imprisonment.

In 1846 there was a sudden display of Parliamentary energy in health matters.

The total want of baths and wash-houses for the poorer classes of the people in the towns was brought under the notice of the Legislature, and, as it was deemed “desirable for the health, comfort, and welfare of the inhabitants of towns, &c., to encourage the establishment therein of baths, wash-houses, and open bathing places,” an Act was passed giving power to the Parochial Authorities to establish such institutions and to borrow money for the purpose.[28]

Their provision would have tended to an increased degree of cleanliness among the people, and consequently an improved sanitary condition, but it was long before many of these institutions were established, the local authorities being slow in availing themselves of the facilities thus offered, and this piece of legislation—like every other of the sort—being purely permissive or facilitatory.

And in the same year Parliament so far awakened to the fact that certain causes of disease were removable, that in a preamble to an Act[29] it acknowledged that it was “highly expedient for the purposes of preserving the health of Her Majesty’s subjects that better provision should be made for the removal of certain nuisances likely to promote or increase disease.”

The better provision made by the Act did not amount to much. There were two forms of insanitary evil to be combated: one the chronic insanitary condition of the masses of the people, the other the invasion of the country by some exceptional or unusual epidemic disease.