Of the Cesspoolage and Nightmen of the Metropolis.
I have already shown—it may be necessary to remind the reader—that there are two modes of removing the wet refuse of the metropolis: the one by carrying it off by means of sewers, or, as it is designated, sewerage; and the other by depositing it in some neighbouring cesspool, or what is termed cesspoolage.
The object of sewerage is “to transport the wet refuse of a town to a river, or some powerfully current stream, by a series of ducts.” By the system of cesspoolage, the wet refuse of the household is collected in an adjacent tank, and when the reservoir is full, the contents are removed to some other part.
LONDON NIGHTMEN.
[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]
The gross quantity of wet refuse annually produced in the metropolis, and which consequently has to be removed by one or other of the above means, is, as we have seen,—liquid, 24,000,000,000 gallons; solid, 100,000 tons; or altogether, by admeasurement, 3,820,000,000 cubic feet.
The quantity of this wet refuse which finds its way into the sewers by street and house-drainage is, according to the experiments of the Commissioners of Sewers (as detailed at p. [388]), 10,000,000 cubic feet per day, or 3,650,000,000 cubic feet per annum, so that there remain about 170,000,000 cubic feet to be accounted for. But, as we have before seen, the extent of surface from which the amount of so-called Metropolitan sewage was removed was only 58 square miles, whereas that from which the calculation was made concerning the gross quantity of wet refuse produced throughout the metropolis was 115 square miles, or double the size. The 58 miles measured by the Commissioners, however, was by far the denser moiety of the town, and that in which the houses and streets were as 15 to 1; so that, allowing the remaining 58 miles of the suburban districts to have produced 20 times less sewage than the urban half of the metropolis, the extra yield would have been about 180,500,000 cubic feet. But the greater proportion, if not the whole, of the latter quantity of wet house-refuse would be drained into open ditches, where a considerable amount of evaporation and absorption is continually going on, so that a large allowance must be made for loss by these means. Perhaps, if we estimate the quantity of sewage thus absorbed and evaporated at between 10 and 20 per cent of the whole, we shall not be wide of the truth, so that we shall have to reduce the 182,000,000 cubic feet of suburban sewage to somewhere about 150,000,000 cubic feet.
This gives us the quantity of wet refuse carried off by the sewers (covered and open) of the metropolis, and deducted from the gross quantity of wet house-refuse, annually produced (3,820,000,000 cubic feet), leaves 20,000,000 cubic feet for the gross quantity carried off by other means than the sewers; that is to say, the 20,000,000 cubic feet, if the calculation be right, should be about the quantity deposited every year in the London cesspools. Let us see whether this approximates to anything like the real quantity.
To ascertain the absolute quantity of wet refuse annually conveyed into the metropolitan cesspools, we must first ascertain the number and capacity of the cesspools themselves.
Of the city of London, where the sewer-cesspool details are given with a minuteness highly commendable, as affording statistical data of great value, Mr. Heywood gives us the following returns:—
“House-Drainage of the City.
| “The total number of premises drained during the year was | 310 |
| “The approximate number of premises drained at the expiration of the year 1850 was | 10,923 |
| “The total number of premises which may now therefore be said to be drained is | 11,233 |
| “And undrained | 5,067 |
“I am induced,” adds Mr. Heywood, “to believe, from the reports of the district inspectors, that a very far larger number of houses are already drained than are herein given. Indeed my impression is, that as many as 3000 might be deducted from the 5067 houses as to the drainage of which you have no information.
“Now, until the inspectors have completed their survey of the whole of the houses within the city,” continues the City surveyor, “precise information cannot be given as to the number of houses yet undrained; such information appears to me very important to obtain speedily, and I beg to recommend that instructions be given to the inspectors to proceed with their survey as rapidly as possible.”
Hence it appears, that out of the 16,299 houses comprised within the boundaries of the City, rather less than one-third are reported to have cesspools. Concerning the number of cesspools without the City, the Board of Health, in a Report on the cholera in 1849, put forward one of its usual extraordinary statements.
“At the last census in 1841,” runs the Report, “there were 270,859 houses in the metropolis. It is KNOWN that there is scarcely a house without a cesspool under it, and that a large number have two, three, four, and MORE under them; so that the number of such receptacles in the metropolis may be taken at 300,000. The exposed surface of each cesspool measures on an average 9 feet, and the mean depth of the whole is about 6½ feet; so that each contains 58½ cubic feet of fermenting filth of the most poisonous, noisome, and disgusting nature. The exhaling surface of all the cesspools (300,000 × 9) = 2,700,000 feet, or equal to 62 acres nearly; and the total quantity of foul matter contained within them (300,000 × 58½) = 17,550,000 cubic feet; or equal to one enormous elongated stagnant cesspool 50 feet in width, 6 feet 6 inches in depth, and extending through London from the Broadway at Hammersmith to Bow-bridge, a length of 10 miles.
“This,” say the Metropolitan Sanitary Commissioners, a body of functionaries so intimately connected with the Board, that the one is ever ready to swear to what the other asserts, “there is reason to believe is an under estimate!”
Let us now compare this statement, which declares it to be known that there is scarcely a house in London without a cesspool, and that many have two, three, four, and even more under them—let us compare this, I say, with the facts which were elicited by the same functionaries by means of a house-to-house inquiry in three different parishes—a poor, a middle-class, and a rich one—the average rental of each being 22l., 119l., and 128l.
RESULTS OF A HOUSE-TO-HOUSE INQUIRY IN THE PARISHES OF ST. GEORGE THE MARTYR, SOUTHWARK, ST. ANNE’S, SOHO, AND ST. JAMES’S, AS TO THE STATE OF THE WORKS OF WATER SUPPLY AND DRAINAGE.
| CONDITION OF THE HOUSES. | PARISHES. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| St George the Martyr, Southwark. | St. Anne’s, Soho. | St. James’s. | ||
| From which replies have been received | (Number) | 5,713 | 1,339 | 2,960 |
| With supply of Water— | ||||
| To the house or premises | (Per cent) | 80·97 | 95·56 | 96·48 |
| Near the privy | „ | 48·87 | 38·99 | 43·42 |
| Butts or cisterns, covered | (Number) | 1,879 | 776 | 1,621 |
| „ „ uncovered | „ | 2,074 | 294 | 393 |
| With a sink | (Per cent) | 48·31 | 89·29 | 86·70 |
| With a Well— | ||||
| On or near premises | „ | 5·32 | 13·97 | 13·85 |
| Well tainted or foul | „ | 46·92 | 3·71 | 7·36 |
| Houses damp in lower parts | „ | 52·13 | 30·90 | 26·67 |
| Houses with stagnant water on premises | „ | 18·54 | 7·95 | 2·95 |
| Houses flooded in times of storm | „ | 18·15 | 5·04 | 4·05 |
| Houses with Drain— | ||||
| To premises | „ | 87·56 | 97·12 | 96·42 |
| Houses with drains emitting offensive smells | „ | 45·11 | 37·62 | 21·41 |
| Houses with drains stopped at times | „ | 22·37 | 28·50 | 13·97 |
| Houses with dust-bin | „ | 42·69 | 92·34 | 89·80 |
| Houses receiving offensive smells from adjoining premises | „ | 27·82 | 22·54 | 16·74 |
| Houses with privy | „ | 97·03 | 70·63 | 62·53 |
| Houses with cesspool | „ | 82·12 | 47·27 | 36·62 |
| Houses with water-closet | „ | 10·06 | 45·99 | 65·86 |
In this minute and searching investigation there is not only an official guide to an estimation of the number of cesspools in London, but a curious indication of the character of the houses in the respective parishes. In the poorer parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, the cesspools were to every 100 houses as 82·12; in the aristocratic parish of St. James, Westminster, as only 36·62; while in what may be represented, perhaps, as the middle-class parish of St. Anne, Soho, the cesspools were 47·27 per cent. The number of wells on or near the premises, and the proportion of those tainted; the ratio of the dampness of the lower parts of the houses, of the stagnant water on the premises, and of the flooding of the houses on occasions of storms, are all significant indications of the difference in the circumstances of the inhabitants of these parishes—of the difference between the abodes of the rich and the poor, the capitalists and the labouring classes. But more significant still, perhaps, of the domestic wants or comforts of these dwellings, is the proportion of water-closets to the houses in the poor parish and the rich; in the one they were but 10·06 per cent; in the other 65·86 per cent.
These returns are sufficient to show the extravagance of the Board’s previous statement, that there is “scarcely a house in London without a cesspool under it,” while “a large number have two, three, four, and more,” for we find that even in the poorer parishes there are only 82 cesspools to 100 houses. Moreover, the engineers, after an official examination and inquiry, reported that in the “fever-nest, known as Jacob’s-island, Bermondsey,” there were 1317 dwelling-houses and 648 cesspools, or not quite 50 cesspools to 100 houses.
In rich, middle-class, and poor parishes, the proportion of cesspools, then, it appears from the inquiries of the Board of Health (their guesses are of no earthly value), gives us an average of something between 50 or 60 cesspools to every 100 houses. A subordinate officer whom I saw, and who was engaged in the cleansing and the filling-up of cesspools when condemned, or when the houses are to be drained anew into the sewers and the cesspools abolished, thought from his own experience, the number of cesspools to be less than one-half, but others thought it more.
On the other hand, a nightman told me he was confident that every two houses in three throughout London had cesspools; in the City, however, we perceive that there is, at the utmost, only one house in every three undrained. It will, therefore, be safest to adopt a middle course, and assume 50 per cent of the houses of the metropolis to be still without drainage into the sewers.
Now the number of houses being 300,000, it follows that the number of cesspools within the area of the metropolis are about 150,000; consequently the next step in the investigation is to ascertain the average capacity of each, and so arrive at the gross quantity of wet house-refuse annually deposited in cesspools throughout London.
The average size of the cesspools throughout the metropolis is said, by the Board of Health, to be 9 feet by 6½, which gives a capacity of 58½ cubic feet, and this for 150,000 houses = 8,775,000 cubic feet. But according to all accounts these cesspools require on an average two years to fill, so that the gross quantity of wet refuse annually deposited in such places can be taken at only half the above quantity, viz. in round numbers, 4,500,000 cubic feet. This by weight, at the rate of 35·9 cubic feet to the ton, gives 125,345 tons. This, however, would appear to be of a piece with the generality of the statistics of the Board of Health, and as wide of the truth as was the statement that there was scarcely a house in London without a cesspool, while many had three, four, and even more. But I am credibly informed that the average size of a cesspool is rather more than 5 feet square and 6½ deep, so that the ordinary capacity would be 5¾ × 5¼ × 6½ = 197 cubic feet, and this multiplied by 150,000 gives an aggregate capacity of 29,550,000 cubit feet. But as the cesspools, according to all accounts, become full only once in two years, it follows that the gross quantity of cesspoolage annually deposited throughout the metropolis must be only one-half that quantity, or about 14,775,000 cubic feet.
The calculation may be made another way, viz. by the experience of the nightmen and the sewer-cesspoolmen as to the average quantity of refuse removed from the London cesspools whenever emptied, as well as the average number emptied yearly.
The contents of a cesspool are never estimated for any purpose of sale or labour by the weight, but always, as regards the nightmen’s work, by the load. Each night-cart load of soil is considered, on an average, a ton in weight, so that the nightmen readily estimate the number of tons by the number of cart-loads obtained. The men employed in the cleansing of the cesspools by the new system of pumping agree with the nightmen as to the average contents of a cesspool.
As a general rule, a cesspool is filled every two years, and holds, when full, about five tons. One man, who had been upwards of 30 years in the nightman’s business, who had worked at it more or less all that time himself, and who is now foreman to a parish contractor and master-nightman in a large way, spoke positively on the subject. The cesspools, he declared, were emptied, as an average, by nightmen, once in two years, and their average contents were five loads of night-soil, it having been always understood in the trade that a night-cartload was about a ton.[72] The total of the cesspool matter is not affected by the frequency or paucity of the cleansing away of the filth, for if one cesspool be emptied yearly, another is emptied every second, third, fourth, or fifth year, and, according to the size, the fair average is five tons of cesspoolage emptied from each every other year. One master-nightman had emptied as much as fourteen tons of night-soil from a cesspool or soil-tank, and a contractor’s man had once emptied as many as eighteen tons, but both agreed as to the average of five tons every two years from all. Neither knew the period of the accumulation of the fourteen or the eighteen tons, but supposed to be about five or six years.
According to this mode of estimate, the quantity of wet house-refuse deposited in cesspools would be equal to 150,000 × 5, or 750,000 tons every two years. This, by admeasurement, at the rate of 35·9 cubic feet to the ton, gives 26,925,000 cubic feet; and as this is the accumulation of two years, it follows that 13,462,500 cubic feet is the quantity of cesspoolage deposited yearly.
There is still another mode of checking this estimate.
I have already given (see p. [385], ante) the average production of each individual to the wet refuse of the metropolis. According to the experiments of Boussingault, confirmed by Liebig, this, as I have stated, amounted to ¼ lb. of solid and 1¼ lb. of liquid excrement from each individual per diem (= 150 lbs. for every 100 persons), while, including the wet refuse from culinary operations, the average yield, according to the surveyor of the Commissioners of Sewers, was equal to about 250 lbs. for every 100 individuals daily. I may add that this calculation was made officially, with engineering minuteness, with a view to ascertain what quantity of water, and what inclination in its flow, would be required for the effective working of a system of drainage to supersede the cesspools.[73] Now the census of 1841 shows us that the average number of inhabitants to each house throughout the metropolis was 7·6, and this for 150,000 houses would give 1,140,000 people; consequently the gross quantity of wet refuse proceeding from this number of persons, at the rate of 250 lbs. to every 100 people daily, would be 464,400 tons per annum; or, by admeasurement, at the rate of 35·9 cubic feet to the ton, it would be equal to 16,670,950 cubic feet.
A small proportion of this amount of cesspoolage ultimately makes its appearance in the sewers, being pumped into them directly from the cesspools when full by means of a special apparatus, and thus tends not only to swell the bulk of sewage, but to decrease in a like proportion the aggregate quantity of wet house-refuse, which is removed by cartage; but though the proportion of cesspoolage which finally appears as sewage is daily increasing, still it is but trifling compared with the quantity removed by cartage.
Here, then, we have three different estimates as to the gross quantity of the London cesspoolage, each slightly varying from the other two.
| Cubic Feet. | |
| The first, drawn from the average capacity of the London cesspools, makes the gross annual amount of cesspoolage | 14,775,000 |
| The second, deduced from the average quantity removed from each cesspool | 13,462,500 |
| And the third, calculated from the individual production of wet refuse | 16,670,950 |
The mean of these three results is, in round numbers, 15,000,000 cubic feet, so that the statement would stand thus:—
| The quantity of wet house-refuse annually carried off by sewers (chiefly covered) from the urban moiety of the metropolis is (in cubic feet) | 3,650,000,000 |
| The quantity annually carried off by sewers (principally open) from the suburban moiety of the metropolis | 150,000,000 |
| The total amount of wet house-refuse annually carried off by the sewers of the metropolis | 3,800,000,000 |
| The gross amount of wet house-refuse annually deposited in cesspools throughout the metropolis | 15,000,000 |
| The total amount of sewage and cesspoolage of the metropolis | 3,815,000,000 |
Thus we perceive that the total quantity of wet house-refuse annually removed, corresponds so closely with the gross quantity of wet house-refuse annually produced, that we may briefly conclude the gross sewage of London to be equal to 3,800,000,000 cubic feet, and the gross cesspoolage to be equal to 15,000,000 cubic feet.
The accuracy of the above conclusion may be tested by another process; for, unless the Board of Health’s conjectural mode of getting at facts be adopted, it is absolutely necessary that statistics not only upon this, but indeed any subject, be checked by all the different modes there may be of arriving at the same conclusion. False facts are worse than no facts at all.
The number of nightmen may be summed up as follows:—
| Masters | 521 |
| Labourers | 200,000 |
The number of cesspools emptied during the past year by these men may be estimated at 50,692; and the quantity of soil removed, 253,460 loads, or tons, and this at the rate of 35·9 cubic ft. to the ton gives a total of 6,099,214 cubic ft.
It might, perhaps, be expected, that from the quantity of fæcal refuse proceeding from the inhabitants of the metropolis, a greater quantity would be found in the existent cesspools; but there are many reasons for the contrary.
One prime cause of the dispersion of cesspoolage is, that a considerable quantity of the night-soil does not find its way into the cesspools at all, but is, when the inhabitants have no privies to their dwellings, thrown into streets, and courts, and waste places.
I cannot show this better than by a few extracts from Dr. Hector Gavin’s work, published in 1848, entitled, “Sanitary Ramblings; being Sketches and Illustrations of Bethnal Green, &c.”
“Digby-walk, Globe-road.—Part of this place is private property, and the landlord of the new houses has built a cesspool, into which to drain his houses, but he will not permit the other houses to drain into this cesspool, unless the parish pay to him 1l., a sum which it will not pay.” Of course the inhabitants throw their garbage and filth into the street or the by-places.
“Whisker’s-gardens.—This is a very extensive piece of ground, which is laid out in neat plots, as gardens. The choicest flowers are frequently raised here, and great taste and considerable refinement are evidently possessed by those who cultivate them. Now, among the cultivators are the poor, even the very poor, of Bethnal-green.... Attached to all these little plots of ground are summer-houses. In the generality of cases they are mere wooden sheds, cabins, or huts. It is very greatly to be regretted that the proprietors of these gardens should permit the slight and fragile sheds in them to be converted into abodes for human beings.... Sometimes they are divided into rooms; they are planted on the damp undrained ground. The privies are sheds erected over holes in the ground; the soil itself is removed from these holes and is dug into the ground to promote its fertility.
“Three Colt-lane.—A deep ditch has been dug on either side of the Eastern Counties Railway by the Company. These ditches were dug by the Company to prevent the foundations of the arches being endangered, and are in no way to be considered as having been dug to promote the health of the neighbourhood. The double privies attached to the new houses (22 in number) are immediately contiguous to this ditch, and are constructed so that the night-soil shall drain into it. For this purpose the cesspools are small, and the bottoms are above the level of the ditch.”
It would be easy to multiply such proofs of night-soil not finding its way into the cesspools, but the subject need not be further pursued, important as in many respects it may be. I need but say, that in the several reports of the Board of Health are similar accounts of other localities. The same deficiency of cesspoolage is found in Paris, and from the same cause.
What may be the quantity of night-soil which becomes part of the contents of the street scavenger’s instead of the nightman’s cart, no steps have been taken, or perhaps can be taken, by the public sanitary bodies to ascertain. Many of the worst of the nuisances (such as that in Digby-street) have been abolished, but they are still too characteristic of the very poor districts. The fault, however, appears to be with the owners of property, and it is seldom they are coerced into doing their duty. The doubt of its “paying” a capitalist landlord to improve the unwholesome dwellings of the poor seems to be regarded as a far more sacred right, than the right of the people to be delivered from the foul air and vile stenches to which their poverty may condemn them.
There is, moreover, the great but unascertained waste from cesspool evaporation, and it must be recollected that of the 2½ lbs. of cesspool refuse, calculated as the daily produce of each individual, 2¼ lbs. are liquid.
The gross cesspoolage of Paris should amount to upwards of 600,000 cubic mètres, or more than 21,000,000 cubic feet, at the estimate of three pints daily per head. The quantity actually collected, however, amounts to only 230,000 cubic mètres, or rather more than 8,000,000 cubic feet, which is 13,000,000 cubic feet less than the amount produced.
In London, the cesspoolage of 150,000 undrained houses should, at the rate of 2½ lbs. to each individual and 15 inhabitants to every two houses, amount to 16,500,000 cubic feet, or about 460,000 loads, whereas the quantity collected amounts to but little more than 250,000 loads, or about 9,000,000 cubic feet. Hence, the deficiency is 210,000 loads, or 7,500,000 cubic feet, which is nearly half of the entire quantity.
In Paris, then, it would appear that only 38 per cent of the refuse which is not removed by sewers is collected in the cesspools, whereas in London about 54½ per cent is so collected. The remainder in both cases is part deposited in by-places and removed by the scavenger’s cart, part lost in evaporation, whereas a large proportion of the deficiency arises from a less quantity of water than the amount stated being used by the very poor.
We have now to see the means by which this 15,000,000 cubic feet of cesspoolage is annually removed, as well as to ascertain the condition and incomes of the labourers engaged in the removal of it.