These eight companies supply about 140,000,000 gallons of water daily (about one half being from the Thames) to 668,525 houses, by means of 145 engines of 17,145 horse-power, through 4,068 miles of mains, and by the aid of a capital of £13,150,318.
It is difficult for us to appreciate such a quantity as 140,000,000 gallons, but we may grasp it better if we imagine this water put into 1,400,000 water-butts, of 100 gallons each, and each 4 feet high. These butts placed end to end would reach considerably more than 1,000 miles, and that, be it remembered, is a statement of the daily water supply of this city, which is certainly well within the mark.
The great fault in the situation of London was the proximity to it on every side of marshy land. The Thames, as I have stated, was formerly much wider than at present. Certain it is that Moorfields to the north was often flooded; to the immediate east and north-east was marshy ground, stretching into Essex; to the west was the low district of Thorney Island, Chelsea, and Fulham, while on the opposite bank of the Thames was the ground around Southwark and Lambeth, which was little better than a swamp, and remained unbuilt upon, except to a very slight extent, until the end of the last century.
Ague is at present a rare disease in London, although one still occasionally meets with cases which are apparently due to local causes. Formerly it was a very potent cause of death, but the discovery of the use of “Jesuits’ Bark,” as Cinchona was at first called, and the gradual and continuous filling up of the soil, combined with drainage, led to its extinction. Possibly the impregnation of the soil with coal-gas may have helped to this end.
MEDIÆVAL LONDON.
Mediæval London was a town in which the clerical element predominated. I have upon the screen a very beautiful drawing which appeared in the Builder newspaper, and which is an imaginative and authoritative reconstruction of the London of Henry VIII., by Mr. W. H. Brewer, whose great talents will be obvious to all who look at his picture. London at that time must have been exceedingly beautiful, filled as it was by grand ecclesiastical and monastic institutions.
The artist’s point of view is from some coign of vantage east of the Tower. In front of him, in the middle distance, forming at once the centre and apex of the picture, is old St. Paul’s, with its lofty steeple towering to a height of 500 feet, and placed on an eminence which enhances its commanding importance.
To the left is the noble river, its broad expanse dotted with many a craft, and forming a superb sweep to the south-west, where it is lost beyond the Abbey of Westminster, which forms the most distant object to the left of the spectator. The chief feature in the foreground is “The Tower,” a noble mixture of military, palatial, ecclesiastical, and domestic architecture. Beyond it, and to the south, is old London Bridge, probably the most picturesque structure of the kind that the world has ever seen, with its quaint houses and graceful chapel, and with the clear water of the Thames roaring through its nineteen narrow arches. On the south side of the bridge is the church of the Priory of St. Mary Overy (St. Saviour’s, Southwark), as it may still be seen, and near it the great palace of the Bishops of Winchester, with the marshy ground of Southwark and Lambeth, and Lambeth Palace in the distance. Running northward from the Tower is the castellated city wall, with its brimming ditch filled with water flowing from the shallow lake of Moorfields. Between the wall and the spectator is a series of grand ecclesiastical buildings, with St. Katherine’s Hospital to the south, and St. Mary Spital to the north, and between them Eastminster or the Abbey of Grace, the Abbey of St. Clare in the Minories, and the church of St. Botolph. Behind the city wall is seen a bewildering wealth of tower and spire and gabled roof.
By the river bank among wharves and quaint mediæval warehouses, St. Magnus’ steeple, the stern towers of Baynard’s Castle, and the buildings of the Blackfriars are conspicuous; while in the same direction, and beyond the Fleet river, is Bridewell Palace, the huge tower of the Whitefriars, the Temple, St. Dunstan’s Church, Exeter House, Arundel House, the Savoy, and York Place. Along the eastern limits of the City are St. Dunstan’s, St. Margaret Pattens, All Hallows Barking, the great Minster of the Friars of the Holy Cross, and the still larger Priory of the Holy Trinity in Aldgate. Near Bishopsgate is the large establishment of the Augustinians, and beyond this again the Grey Friars, the Priory of St. Bartholomew, the Charter House, and the Priory of St. John, Clerkenwell. In the centre of the City is an almost endless array of parish churches, with here and there the high-pitched roof of some guild house, or the residence of a nobleman or wealthy merchant.