The 47 miles of highway of Sheffield is but three miles less than those of the city of London, the cost of cleansing which is, according to the estimate before given, no less than 18,000l.
The Sheffield account is divested of all calculations as to house-dust and ashes, and the charge for watering-carts; but, taking merely the sum paid to scavaging contractors, and assigning 1000l. (out of the 2485l.), as the proportion of salaries, &c., under the department of scavagery in the management of the City Commissioners, we find that while the expense of street-cleansing by the Sheffield hose and jet was little more than 34l., in London, by the ordinary mode, it was upwards of 140l. per mile, or more than four times as much. The hose and jet system is said to have washed the streets of Sheffield as clean as a house-floor, which could not be said of it in London. The streets of the City, it should also be borne in mind, are now swept daily; Mr. Lee proposes only a periodical cleaning for Sheffield, or once, twice, and thrice a week. Of the cost of the experiments made in London with the hose and jet, in Lascelles-court, &c., nothing is said.
Street-cleansing by the hose and jet is, then, as yet but an experiment. It has not, like the street-orderly mode, been tested continuously or systematically; but the experiments are so curious and sometimes so startling in their results that it was necessary to give a brief account of them here, in order to render this account of the cleansing of the streets of the metropolis as comprehensive as possible. For my own part, I must confess the street-orderly system appears to excel all other modes of scavagery, producing at once the greatest cleanliness with the greatest employment to the poor. Nor am I so convinced as the theoretic and crotchety Board of Health as to the healthfulness of dampness, or the daily evaporation of a sheet of even clean water equal in extent to the entire surface of the London streets. It is certainly doubtful, to say the least, whether so much additional moisture might improve the public health, which the Board are instituted to protect; rain certainly contributes to cleanliness, and yet no one would advocate continued wet weather as a source of general convalescence.
I shall conclude this account of the scavaging of London, with the following brief statement as to the mode in which these matters are conducted abroad.
In Paris, where our system of parochial legislation and management is unknown, the scavaging of the streets—so frequently matters of private speculation with us—is under the immediate direction of the municipality, and the Government publish the returns, as they do of the revenue of their capital from the abattoirs, the interments, and other sources.
In the Moniteur for December 10, 1848, it is stated that the refuse of the streets of Paris sells for 500,500 francs (20,020l.), when sold by auction in the mass; and 3,800,000 francs (equal to 152,000l.) when, after having lain in the proper receptacles, until fit for manure, it is sold by the cubic foot. In 1823, the streets of Paris were leased for 75,000 francs (3000l.) per annum; in 1831 the value was 166,000 francs (6640l.); and since 1845 the price has risen to the sum first named, viz., 500,500 francs (20,020l.); from which, however, is to be deducted the expense of cleansing, &c. I may add, that the receptacles alluded to are large places provided by Government, where the manure is deposited and left to ferment for twelve or eighteen months.
Of the Cost and Traffic of the Streets of London.
I have, at page [183] of the present volume, given a brief statement of the annual cost attending the keeping of the streets of the metropolis in working order.
The formation of the streets of a capital like London, the busiest in the world—streets traversed daily by what Cowper, even in his day, described as “the ten thousand wheels” of commerce—is an elaborate and costly work.
In my former account I gave an estimate which referred to the amount dispensed weekly in wages for the labour of the workmen engaged in laying down the paved roads of the metropolis. This was at the rate of 100,000l. per week; that is to say, calculating the operation of relaying the streets to occupy one year in every five, there is no less than 5,200,000l. expended in that time among the workpeople so engaged. The sum expended in labour for the continued repairs of the roads, after being so relaid, appears to be about 20,000l. per week[30], or, in round numbers, about 1,000,000l. a year; so that the gross sum annually disbursed to the labourers engaged in the construction of the roads of London would seem to be about 2,250,000l., that is to say, 1,000,000l. for repairing the old roads, and 1,250,000l. per annum for laying down new ones in their place.