It is not many months since the neighbourhood of so modern a locality as Waterloo-bridge was flooded in this manner, and boats were used in the Belvidere and York-roads. On the 1st of August, 1846, after a tremendous storm of thunder, hail, and rain, miles of the capital were literally under water; hundreds of publicans’ beer-cellars contained far more water than beer, and the damage done was enormous. These facts show that though much has been accomplished towards the efficient sewerage of the metropolis, much remains to be accomplished still.
The first statute on the subject of the public sewerage was as early as the 9th year of the reign of Henry III. There were enactments, also, in most of the succeeding reigns, but they were all partial and conflicting, and related more to local desiderata than to any system of sewerage for the public benefit, until the reign of Henry VIII., when the “Bill of Sewers” was passed (in 1531). This act provided for a more general system of sewerage in the cities and towns of the kingdom, requiring the main channels to be of certain depths and dimensions, according to the localities, situation, &c. In many parts of the country the sewerage is still carried on according to the provisions in the act of Henry VIII., but those provisions were modified, altered, or “explained,” by many subsequent statutes.
Any uniformity which might have arisen from the observance of the same principles of sewerage was effectually checked by the measures adopted in London, more especially during the last 100 years. As the metropolis increased new sewerage became necessary, and new local bodies were formed for its management. These were known as the Commissions of Sewers, and the members of those bodies acted independently one of another, under the authority of their own Acts of Parliament, each having its own board, engineers, clerks, officers, and workmen. Each commission was confined to its own district, and did what was accounted best for its own district with little regard to any general plan of sewerage, so that London was, and in a great measure is, sewered upon different principles, as to the size of the sewers and drains, the rates of inclination, &c. &c. In 1847 there were eight of these districts and bodies: the City of London, the Tower Hamlets, Saint Katherine’s, Poplar and Blackwall, Holborn and Finsbury, Westminster and part of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent, and Greenwich. In 1848 these several bodies were concentrated by act of parliament, and entitled the “Metropolitan Commission of Sewers;” but the City of London, as appears to be the case with every parliamentary measure affecting the metropolis, presents an exception, as it retains a separate jurisdiction, and is not under the control of the general commissioners, to whom parliament has given authority over such matters.
The management of the metropolitan scavengery and sewerage, therefore, differs in this respect. The scavengery is committed to the care of the several parishes, each making its own contract; the sewerage is consigned by Parliament to a body of commissioners. In both instances, however, the expenses are paid out of local rates.
I shall now proceed to treat of each of these subjects separately, beginning with the cleansing of the streets.
Of the Streets of London.
There are now three modes of pavement in the streets of the metropolis.
1. The stone pavement (commonly composed of Aberdeen granite).
2. The macadamized pavement, or rather road.
3. The wood pavement.