Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State For the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry Into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; With Appendices

by Edwin Chadwick

1. The conversion of blind alleys into thoroughfares.

2. The continuation of leading streets through blocks of houses on which at present they abut.

3. The opening of wide and straight streets through the meanest, most complex, and crowded parts of cities; this will prove the most important measure for meeting the object in view; and what merits the next consideration is the preservation of such good and healthy avenues as already exist free from encroachments: for it has happened in the metropolis while exertions were making in some districts to open wide streets, in other districts a contrary system was at work. The New and City Roads, the most commodious avenue in the vicinity of London for length, width, useful and healthy communication, is in a constant process of invasion, as may be noted more particularly in the vicinities of Tottenham-court Road and King’s-cross; and unless some measures are taken to preserve this noble respiratory of the metropolis, it is to be feared in a short time its character will be entirely changed.

4. Another mode of improving the air of towns is to open squares, or public walks, or gardens, by the removal of some of the buildings, by which means a reservoir of pure air is created, and in this manner the city of Seville was essentially benefited; the streets are there numerous, narrow, and dirty, but the city, abounding in large convents, the removal of some of them, and the conversion of their ample sites into piazzas or squares, afforded the air and space so much required for the public health.

In London there are some institutions that might be advantageously removed to the suburbs or skirts of the town, such as the Charter-house School and the Fleet Prison, and their sites converted into open squares; but if such operations are too costly and difficult, we may at least guard against the converse operation, viz., the covering of open sites with masses of buildings. Thus we have seen in recent times the gardens of Lincoln’s-inn and Gray’s-inn invaded; and we had lately a proposition to convert Lincoln’s-inn-square into piles of buildings, and to demolish what no art can supply, the finest reservoir of air which the metropolis offers to a crowded neighbourhood.

5. The circulation of pure air would be much increased by pulling down all dead walls, and by substituting iron railings in their stead; and too much credit cannot be given for what has already been effected in this respect in the neighbourhood of Knightsbridge, &c.

6. The prohibition of all burials in the metropolis and other large towns, and the consequent diffusion of unwholesome effluvia.

Drainage and Sewerage.—As towns become more crowded, the value of good drainage and sewerage as a sanitary measure becomes the more apparent; and as the means of draining the site of a town above and below the surface is to be effected in part by the same means as the sewerage or removal of the liquid filth, the subject becomes of great importance, and second only to the choice of the site of the town and distribution of its streets; and if a due regard to system has been shown to be so desirable in the one case, it is no less so in the other, and before any buildings are commenced the plan of drainage should be matured.

In order to arrive at a good system of drainage for a piece of ground intended to be built upon, or in a town where the sewerage requires improvement, a necessary step in the process would be to add to the plan of the town lines of equal altitudes, drawn at every two or three feet of elevation, which would present at one view the means of comparing the levels over the whole extent of the town; they would show the deepest valleys where the main sewers would most conveniently run, and the most efficient mode of combining the several classes of drains, so that the declivities might be turned to the best account; in addition, the plan should be so far geological as to show the boundaries of the strata, as a body of marl or clay often upholds a quantity of water which might prove injurious as a building site if not previously tapped.

A notorious instance of this nature occurred at the village of Moseley, near Birmingham. Preliminary to carrying the Gloucester Railway through the village, in deep cutting, it had been ascertained by trial shafts that the bottom consisted of quicksand, which rendered it difficult either to construct a tunnel or to support the slopes in open cutting until the water was removed; and for this object a drift or level was brought up from a distance of a quarter of a mile through a bed of marl; the miners proceeded for some distance perfectly dry until they reached the quicksand, when the water flowed into the drift at the rate of 253 cubic feet per hour, or 77½ gallons per minute, and the wells in the village in a short time were laid dry, and had to be deepened at the expense of the Railway company. It so happened in this instance that the level of the quicksand was so deep that the surface of the land had not been affected by the pending up of the water below; but if it had been otherwise, the measure resorted to would have proved as useful to the land as it was to the Railway.