Now the class of persons whose feelings, state of intelligence, and modes of action are displayed in the evidence on the drainage redounding to private profit, are the class from amongst whom are necessarily taken the members of the local boards, to whose uncontrolled direction and choice of officer the structural works essential to the public health are confided.
The natural districts for public drainage are so capriciously subdivided and departed from, as frequently to render economical and efficient drainage impracticable.
The municipal authorities who obtained powers for drainage, only thought of the surface drainage of their own jurisdictions. Some towns are at the bottom of basins and others on elevations, and the operations for effectual drainage must often be commenced at a distance. It is stated by persons of competent skill in drainage, as an example, a town situate on one side of a hill will be drained dry by tapping or opening a spring on the other side. The manifest defect in the areas of operations for drainage is noticed in the report of the Committee of the House of Commons, which in the year 1834 inquired into the administration of the sewers’ rate in the metropolis, where perhaps the most money has been expended in imperfect sewerage and cleansing of any part of the kingdom. They reported that a primary defect of their constitution—
“Is the want of system or combination between the different trusts which have now, as before observed, each an independent action. The inconveniences in this are palpable, for where the line of communication with the Thames is not complete within each district, the very improvements in the one trust may prove injurious to the others. It appears by the evidence that a case of this kind occurred not long ago in the city of Loudon, through which a part of the Holborn and Finsbury sewerage is conducted to the river. The sewers of the Holborn and Finsbury division having been greatly improved and enlarged, the city sewers became inadequate to carry off their contents, and a number of houses in the vicinity of the river were inundated after each fall of rain, the contents of their own drains, in addition to the waters from the high lands of the neighbouring trust, being actually forced back into their houses from the volume of water which occupied the main sewer. This has now been remedied at a great expense to the city of London district, and by dint of much labour and time; but if anything like combination had existed previously, the improvements would have been carried on simultaneously, and the inconvenience would never have occurred.”
The surveyor of the City sewers under the management of the corporation, speaks in a tone of grievance and oppression, that the waters of the county would run into the municipal jurisdiction. Speaking of the formation of a particular sewer, he says,—
“The commissioners under the power of the Act of Parliament carried the sewer, in the first instance, along their own pavement and for their own drainage. It was thence continued up to Finsbury-place to Bunhill-fields, then called Tyndal’s burial-ground, and is so described in the Act; the county then communicated with it, and sent their surplus water, or an immense run of it, into that sewer. The city for its own drainage also built a sewer in Whitecross-street; the county somehow or other got possession of that, and the water that runs down Whitecross street is quite overpowering.”
He speaks of some other drains which were formed by the city, and the effects of the waters let in upon them from the county.
“The Commissioners find themselves very much annoyed by the quantity of water poured in from the county, which water communicates with the city in Bishopsgate-street, through Shoreditch. * * * The county then made another sewer, which takes water from the Tower Hamlets, and is continued up the Kingsland-road, so that a very large portion of that water has been thrown into that sewer, and annoyed this Irongate sewer (the only communication with the Thames) very sorely; and the Commissioners had been put to an enormous expense in rebuilding it, and that was increased by houses being built over it with very high stacks of chimneys. In consequence of the immense flood of water that pours down all those different sewers from the county, the inhabitants of the city, in the neighbourhood of Moorfields especially, have been most dreadfully annoyed, so much so that their cellars became useless.
“By the county, you mean the Holborn and Finsbury division?—Yes; everything out of the boundary of the city. In order to meet the difficulty for which there was no other cure, the commissioners have built a sewer for the New London Bridge, which is ten feet by eight feet at the mouth; they are continuing it up to the new street, eight feet six inches by seven feet, and it is intended to take it up the New Road to Moorfields, to continue the sewer along Princes-street and up that new street; and I confidently expect I shall get from eight to ten feet additional depth, and that then the whole of Moorfields will be effectually relieved.
“The necessity for this new sewer of this large dimension, arises from the large quantity of water which flows in upon you from the county?—Certainly.