Do you conceive that all the business of street cleansing and house draining might be consolidated advantageously to the public?—Yes, clearly so, and with great economy.
In the evidence of Mr. Oldfield, an experienced builder in the wealthy districts of the metropolis, will be found exemplifications of the mischiefs resulting from the defective modes of opening sub-drains or communications, even from houses of the first class, into the main drains.[[7]] The state of sewerage and drainage in the larger towns, as described in the medical reports, in its effects of frequent disease and death,—is much worse in the provincial towns. But every step in improvement is an advance in reduction of existing burdens; drainage, per se, will be found to be a reduction of an existing charge for the expenses of sickness and mortality; science, applied to the improvement of drainage, not only gives it efficiency, but reduces greatly the expense.
The streets in the larger towns commonly display, from the want of science in their construction, similar waste, and equally admit of an improved and scientific arrangement, which will conduce to economy and to improved public health.
The bad condition of the streets in many of the towns is very generally ascribable to pavement being commonly regarded as requisite solely for cart or carriage conveyance, and not as a means of cleanliness. The pavement has therefore been usually confined to the chief streets in which the carriage traffic is considerable. Some of the principal streets even in the metropolis almost justify the description of being “streams of mud and filth in winter,” and “seas of dust” in summer. But attention has of late been directed to the cleansing of the road as a means of removing damp and dirt or dust, which are each found to be injurious. So far as various experiments have yet proceeded in the metropolis, they are stated to be highly favourable to the use of wood as a substance for paving the streets, though perhaps in forms different from those at present in use, with improvements which further experience will suggest. Wood, when pinned together and laid on a firm substratum, appears to be less retentive of wet than most forms of stone pavement, and to possess very considerable advantages over the Macadamised roads for crowded thoroughfares. If it be brought into general use it will have an advantage in removing the granite dust, which medical authorities believe to be much more prejudicial to health, in exciting or aggravating lung diseases, than the public have been aware of. Where there is much dust in the working of close quarries, the effects of it are almost as destructive to the lungs of the operatives as the knife-grinding to the operatives of Sheffield who do not guard against the steel-dust. “It is scarcely conceivable,” Dr. Arnott states, “that the immense quantities of granite-dust pounded by one or two hundred thousand pairs of wheels working on Macadamised streets, should not greatly injure the public health. In houses bordering such streets or roads, it is found that, notwithstanding the practice of watering, the furniture is often covered with dust even more than once in the day, so that writing on it with the finger becomes legible, and the lungs and air-tubes of the inhabitants, with a moist lining to detain the dust, are constantly pumping the same atmosphere. The passengers by a stage-coach in dry weather, when the wind is moving with them so as to keep them enveloped in the cloud of dust raised by the horses’ feet and the wheels of the coach, have their clothes soon saturated to whiteness with the dust, and their lungs of course are charged in a corresponding degree. A gentleman who rode only 20 miles in this way, had afterwards to cough and expectorate for 10 days to clear his chest again.” The imperfection of road cleansing in paved streets at the same time deteriorates the salubrity of the towns, the value of the refuse for production, and the streets themselves. The farmers find that the refuse of the streets, of which horse-dung and other excrementitious substances form so important a part, is valuable in proportion as it is “fresh.” On a proposition to sweep the streets of a town district oftener, it was stated by some farmers that they would, in that case, give more for the refuse. It is with this description of refuse, as stated with respect to the night-soil, in proportion as it is allowed to remain in the streets to dry, it loses the gas which gives it value; and the gas which is lost frequently gives to streets the offensive smell perceptible to strangers who have not been familiarised to it, and makes a deleterious addition to the compounds by which the health of the town population is injured. The complete and rapid cleansing of the roads has also its effects on the draught. It is proved experimentally that, “calling the draught on a broken-stone road 5, that on the same road covered with dust is 8, and that on the same road wet and muddy is 10.”[[8]] A road should be cleansed “from time to time, so as never to have half an inch of mud upon it. This is particularly necessary to be attended to where the materials are weak, for if the surface is not kept clean, so as to admit of its becoming dry in the intervals between showers of rain, it will be rapidly worn away.” With the even surface obtainable from the use of wood as a pavement, it is stated that the streets which are now kept wet and dirty whilst the process of cleansing is slowly carried on by the hand, may be rapidly and cheaply swept by sweeping-machines drawn by horses. With the advantage of such a system of sewerage as that described by Mr. Roe, the surface refuse, which continues exposed during a whole week, may be removed every morning before the hours of traffic from all the principal thoroughfares. In the main streets of the towns of considerable traffic, a smooth and firm surface for the carriage-way would ensure the advantages of a railroad, in addition to those to the public health from cleanliness. The experience on several portions of smooth road shows that single horses with lighter and less expensive vehicles would suffice where two horses are now required on the common roads; where strong stone pavements are required to resist the shock of heavy vehicles, and heavy vehicles propelled with double power to resist the battering of strong pavements, and the grinding and wear and tear of heavy and dirty roads.
Captain Vetch, the engineer, who is extensively acquainted with the structural economy of towns, observes in a communication on the subject, that—
“The other mode of avoiding the formation of mud is the substitution of wooden pavements; of the success of these I have little doubt, though for the present many failures have occurred, either from the foundation not having been truly and firmly laid, or from the blocks of wood not being massive enough. The greatest objection to wood pavements at present is the slipping of the horses, but this I believe might be obviated. The question, however, at present is to get rid of the street dirt, such as it is; and for that purpose I concur in opinion it would only be necessary in wet weather during rains that the street-cleaner should sweep the dirt into the kennels, and aid the water by stirring the mud, to carry off the material in a state of diffusion; in dry weather, the opening of pipes with hose attached would serve the same purpose as the rains, and at the same time aid the sewerage at the time most required. After a short but heavy fall of rain, the cleansing effect of the water is fully perceived: and if any means could be devised of saving the rain-water that falls on the houses and in the streets, so as to apply it in considerable quantities at intervals, it is probable that the rain-water would be amply sufficient for all the purposes in question.”
Mr. Roe states, that arrangements were made with the water companies for supplies of water for the cleansing of the sewers in the Holborn and Finsbury district, but it was found that the ordinary supplies to the sewers sufficed, and those from the company were not used.
The cleansing of the streets and the removal of the impurities from the habitations appears to have been the subject of considerable attention at Paris of late years. An individual proposed to the administration of that city a mode of cleansing the streets and pavement, by sweeping all the refuse into the sewers which are discharged into the Seine, that had hitherto been daily gathered into heaps and carted away beyond the precincts. The minister of police thought it advisable to take the opinion of the Institute on the proposal. The superiority of the proposed mode of street cleansing was admitted, but the members of the Institute, to whom the subject was referred, having ascertained the quantity of rubbish which was daily collected in Paris, and also the quantity of water which flowed in the Seine during the summer-time, they found that this volume of water was 9600 times greater than the greatest quantity of filth and rubbish collected in the same length of time from the streets of Paris; and they reported as their conclusion, “that the quantity of dirt which would be thrown into the Seine, compared with the volume of water in the river, would be found to be so extremely small as to be absolutely inappreciable; that it was not from the consideration therefore of insalubrity that the project for cleaning the streets as proposed should be negatived, but solely because by that means there would be lost a quantity of most valuable manure, which was quite indispensable to the agriculture around Paris, and consequently to Paris itself.”[[9]]
Mr. Roe has furnished me with a calculation made from the flow of water in the Thames, at a neap tide: taking the ebb, and comparing it with the quantity of deposit in the water running from the sewers from the whole of the metropolis (assuming that the sewerage bears the same proportion as the Holborn and Finsbury division), that the proportion of impurities to the volume of water of the Thames is as 1 to 10,100. If the surface cleansing of the streets were added to the ordinary mass of impurity, he calculates that the proportion held in suspension would then be about 1 to 5069. To this must be added the impurities from land-floods, and those from vessels in the river. The amount of impurity discharged from the sewers was calculated from the amount of deposit known to have been formed in several of them. The amount of impurity in the Thames would therefore be, at the least, double the amount of that calculated for the Seine.[[10]]
If the evils of the pollution of such a stream were much greater, they would still be found inconsiderable as compared with the perpetual pollution of the air by the retention of ordures and refuse amidst large masses of the population. What has been stated as to the practicability of extending threefold the cleansing of towns, by dispensing with cartage, and using the sewers for the removal of the refuse of the streets, is stated as an advantage, even on the supposition that no use is made of the refuse, and that it is entirely thrown away. But it were a reproach to stop at the advance to this far lesser evil, and to add to the pollution of the streams of the towns, which throughout the country form the chief common sewers, by throwing into them everything that is vile in the towns, i. e. everything that is most valuable for increasing the surrounding fertility.