Any plan had, however, to be approved by the Chief Commissioner of Works. To him the Board submitted three plans, but none of them received such approval, and the matter was at a deadlock until 1858, when an Act was passed removing the veto of the Chief Commissioner of Works, and at the same time giving the Metropolitan Board power to raise a loan of £3,000,000, which up to that time it had no power to do.
Within a week from the passing of that Act, the Board determined on a plan, and began arrangements for carrying it out.
The plan adopted was to intercept all the sewage flowing into the Thames within the area of the metropolis, and to convey it by sewers to a distance, and to discharge it into the river at such a condition of tide as should take it still further out, so as not to return and become a nuisance to the metropolis. The proposed interception on the north side was by three main sewers, discharging at Barking—the upper, the middle, and the lower, with branches; on the south side, by two main sewers, discharging at Crossness.
As the result of the Act there had been transferred to the Board 106 miles of main sewers on the north side of the Thames with 33 outlets into the river, and 60 miles on the south side with 31 outlets. A considerable number of these were offensive open sewers, others were defective in design and construction, whilst all required reconstruction to make them effective, and to fit them for connection with the new system.
The Central Authority had thus a heavy task before it, and one which it would take years to perform.
The local authorities, with simpler duties to perform, were able to get quicker to work.
They appointed “Surveyors” in each parish to look after the multifarious duties in connection with the paving, lighting, and cleansing of the streets, with scavenging, and the removal of house and trade refuse, and with the construction and maintenance of local sewers and drains. In a sort of way some of this work had been done by the previous petty authorities; parts of it, therefore, were more or less familiar, and so not wholly new.
But wholly new, and of very great importance, were the appointments which the new local authorities had to make for their districts of a Medical Officer of Health, and of one or more Inspectors of Nuisances to help him.
The duties of the Medical Officer of Health were carefully prescribed by the Act. He was to inspect and report periodically upon the sanitary condition of the parish; to ascertain the existence of diseases increasing the rate of mortality; to point out the existence of any causes likely to originate or maintain such diseases, as well as to suggest the most efficacious mode of checking and preventing their spread, and various other important sanitary duties.
These appointments were duly made, and some appointments also of Inspectors of Nuisances.