“575. Are your clerks paid by those fees?—No, by fixed salary; the fees are very trifling, for till lately they did not amount to 100l. a-year.
“576. The aggregate of the fees?—Yes, nor to 50l. a-year: if a party applies to communicate with a sewer, and the Commissioners have no objection, they call upon him to pay the estimate of the surveyor, and the charges are made at the contract price, and in addition to that they pay one guinea as a fee.”
In another Commission the surveyor’s fee for the privilege is stated to be one guinea.
Before the Committee Mr. James Peake, the surveyor of the Commissioners for the Tower Hamlets, states (Committee on Health of Towns), “that in making a communication to the common sewers, the parties who have to make the drain, besides doing it at their own expense, have to pay 17s. 6d. for the first three feet of sewer. And they,” the Commissioners of Sewers, “do that for this reason:—if they were not to resort to that measure, the sewers would be destroyed. Every one would make a hole in the sewer,” i. e., every one would use the sewer.
Mr. Samuel Byles, another witness examined before the same Committee, was asked—
“193. You state that a great deal of disease is generated by the want of ventilation and sewerage; is there any power in the Sewer Commissioners to oblige the parties inhabiting the district to communicate with the sewer if they made one?—No; and there is unfortunately a paradox; there is a penalty on any person communicating from his house into the common sewer.
“194. If they are assessed to it that is not the case, is it?—Yes; it appears to be a complete paradox; if privies are known to empty themselves into the common sewer, the person is liable to a penalty.”
No arrangements are made to bring the effects of the absence of drainage to the knowledge of those bodies for their guidance in the performance of their duties, nor does it appear to enter into their conception that the protection of the public health forms any part of the objects of their service. Mr. James Peake, the surveyor of the Commissioners of the Tower Hamlets, was questioned on this point—
“2012. It is stated to the Committee, that ‘in a direct line from Virginia-row to Shoreditch, a mile in extent, all the lanes, courts, and alleys in the neighbourhood pour their contents into the centre of the main street, where they stagnate and putrefy;’ is that the case?—I perceive by an inspection of the plan that there is no sewer about Virginia-row; there is none nearer to it than Princes-street.
“2013. It is stated that in some or other of those houses fever is always prevalent; do you know the district so as to be aware whether that is the case?—I cannot speak as to the state of the inhabitants; I know it is very wretched. The whole of this land was excavated for brick-making, and has been reduced to an unnatural level, so that the sewers are hardly available. I believe many of those houses have ditches round their gardens, and flowers and roots and stems are thrown into the ditches, where they remain and stagnate; we are working up, and shall be able to get the sewer in some parts five feet lower than it was.