Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of London

JOHN SIMON, F.R.S. SURGEON TO ST. THOMAS’S HOSPITAL, AND OFFICER OF HEALTH TO THE CITY.
LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. MDCCCLIV.
LONDON: SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
TO LOUIS MICHAEL SIMON,
OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE, LONDON, AND OF THE PARAGON, BLACKHEATH,
I DEDICATE THIS REPRINT OF MY REPORTS: LOOKING LESS TO WHAT LITTLE INTRINSIC MERIT THEY MAY HAVE, THAN TO THE YEARS OF ANXIOUS LABOUR THEY REPRESENT: DEEMING IT FIT TO ASSOCIATE MY FATHER’S NAME WITH A RECORD OF ENDEAVOURS TO DO MY DUTY: BECAUSE IN THIS HE HAS BEEN MY BEST EXAMPLE;
AND
BECAUSE I COUNT IT THE HAPPIEST INFLUENCE IN MY LOT, THAT, BOUND TO HIM BY EVERY TIE OF GRATEFUL AFFECTION, I HAVE LIKEWISE BEEN ABLE, FROM MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD TILL NOW—THE EVENING OF HIS LIFE, TO REGARD HIM WITH UNQUALIFIED AND INCREASING RESPECT.
The following Reports, officially addressed to the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London, were originally printed only for the use of the Corporation; and although, to my very great pleasure, they have been extensively circulated through the medium of the daily press, there has continued so frequent an application for separate copies that the surplus-stock at Guildhall has long been exhausted. Under these circumstances—believing the Reports may have some future interest, as belonging to an important educational period in the matters to which they refer, I have requested the Commission to allow their collective reprint and publication; and this indulgence having been kindly accorded me, I have gathered into the present volume all my Annual Reports, together with a special Report suggesting arrangements for extramural burial.
From the nature of the work, I have not considered myself at liberty to make those extensive alterations of text which usually belong to a second edition. I have restricted myself to a few verbal corrections, and to rectifying or omitting some unimportant paragraph, here or there, in case its matter has been more fully or more correctly stated in parts of a subsequent Report. Frequently, where I have wished to explain or qualify passages in the text, I have added foot-notes; but these are distinguished as interpolations by the mark—J. S., 1854.