Naturally the air of a cold country is clearer of obnoxious vapours than that of tropical and subtropical climes, but in spite of that, the first whiff of a Tibetan monastery, like that of an Eskimo hut, grips the throat, they say, like the air over a brewing vat.
So that, after making every allowance for the favour of Nature, we are still entitled to claim that the relative purity of England, and of English cities, towns and even villages, is an artificial achievement.
I may therefore, with justice, raise a song of praise to our fathers who have had our country thus swept and garnished, swept of noxious vapours and emanations, and garnished with the perfume of pure and fresh air, to the delight and invigoration of our souls.
And yet the change has only recently been brought about. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the city of London
“was certainly as foul as could be. The streets were unpaved or paved only with rough cobble stones. There were no side walks. The houses projected over the roadway, and were unprovided with rain-water gutters, and during a shower rain fell from the roofs into the middle of the street. These streets were filthy from constant contributions of slops and ordure from animals and human beings. There were no underground drains, and the soil of the town was soaked with the filth of centuries. This sodden condition of the soil must have affected the wells to a greater or less extent.” (“London, Sanitary and Medical,” by G. V. Poore. 1889.)
Moreover, the nineteenth century was well on its way before the last of the private cesspools disappeared from the dwelling-houses of London.
Edinburgh during the Middle Ages was, we are told, fresher and cleaner upon its wind-swept ridge than London, but with the erection of lofty houses in the High Street and Haymarket of the northern capital its atmosphere became much worse than that of London. The reason for this was that while the London houses remained low, and the population therefore, for a city, widely distributed, in those of Edinburgh, on the other hand, a large community of all classes of society was concentrated, from the noble lord and lady to the beggarly caddie and quean. And the whole stew was quite innocent of what we call drainage. Quite. Yet the waste-products of life, the lees and offscourings of humanity, all that housemaids call “slops,” had to be got rid of. Very simple problem this to our worthy Edinburgh forefathers. After dark the windows up in these “lands” were thrust open, and with a shrill cry of “Gardy-loo” (Gardez l’eau) the cascade of swipes and worse fell into the street below with a splash and an od—. “Ha! ha!” laughed Dr. Johnson to little Boswell; “I can smell you there in the dark!”
The hygienic reformation of Britain, although adumbrated by sundry laws made at intervals from the fifteenth century onwards, was not seriously taken in hand until as late as the sixties of last century, and Disraeli’s famous Act defining a bad smell as a “nuisance” became law in 1875.
But although we may justly congratulate ourselves upon the hygienic achievements of England, one result of which has been the minimising of unpleasant odours, nevertheless, as a wider consideration of the facts will show us, the task of cleansing the air of England is not yet entirely completed. It is doubtless true that what we may term domestic stenches have for the most part been dispelled, but as regards public fœtors there are still, I regret to say, a few that abide with us, seemingly as nasty as ever they were.
One deplorable instance you will encounter at the Paddington terminus of the Great Western Railway no less, at a certain platform of which station, lying in wait for our fresh country cousins on their arrival in London, there lurks a livid concoction of ancient milk, horse-manure, live stock, dead stock, and, in the month of July, fermenting strawberries, as aggressive and unashamed as the worst Lucerne has to offer. I commend it to the attention of the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington.