London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

Our legislative enactments on the subject of sewers are ancient and numerous. The oldest is that of 9 Henry III., and the principal is that of 23 Henry VIII., commonly called the “Statute of Sewers.” These and many subsequent statutes, however, relate only to watercourses, and are silent as regards my present topic—the Refuse of London.

It is remarkable how little is said in the London historians of the sewers. In the two folio volumes of the most searching and indefatigable of all the antiquarians who have described the old metropolis, John Stow, the tailor, there is no account of what we now consider sewers, inclosed and subterranean channels for the conveyance of the refuse filth of the metropolis to its destination—the Thames. Had covered sewers been known, or at any rate been at all common, in Stow’s day, and he died full of years in 1604, and had one of them presented but a crumbling stone with some heraldic, or apparently heraldic, device at its outlet, Stow’s industry would certainly have ferreted out some details. Such, however, is not the case.

This absence of information I hold to be owing to the fact that no such sewers then existed. Our present system of sewerage, like our present system of street-lighting, is a modern work; but it is not, like our gas-lamps, an original English work. We have but followed, as regards our arched and subterraneous sewerage, in the wake of Rome.

As I have said, the early laws of sewers relate to watercourses, navigable communications, dams, ditches, and such like; there is no doubt, however, that in the heart of the great towns the filth of the houses was, by rude contrivances in the way of drainage, or natural fall, emptied into such places. Even in the accounts of the sewers of ancient Rome, historians have stated that it is not easy, and sometimes not possible, to distinguish between the sewers and the aqueducts, and Dr. Lemon, in his English Etymology, speaks of sewers as a species of aqueducts. So, in some of our earlier Acts of Parliament, it is hardly possible to distinguish whether the provisions to be applied to the management of a sewer relate to a ditch to which house-filth was carried—to a channel of water for general purposes—or to an open channel being a receptacle of filth and a navigable stream at the same time.

That the ditches were not sewers for the conveyance of the filth from the houses to any very great, or rather any very general extent, may very well be concluded, because (as I have shown in my account of the early scavagers) the excrementitious matter was deposited during the night in the street, and removed by the proper functionaries in the morning, or as soon as suited their convenience. Though this was the case generally, it is evident that the filth, or a portion of it, from the houses which were built on the banks of the Fleet River (as it was then called, as well as the Fleet Ditch), and on the banks of the other “brooks,” drained into the current stream. The Corporation accounts contain very frequent mention of the cleansing, purifying, and “thorough” cleansing of the Fleet Ditch, the Old Bourne (Holborn Brook), the Wall Brook, &c.

Of all these streams the most remarkable was Fleet Ditch, which was perhaps the first main sewer of London. I give from Stow the following curious account of its origin. It is now open, but only for a short distance, offending the air of Clerkenwell. At one period it was to afford a defence to the City! as the Tower-moat was a defence to the Tower, and fortress.

“The Ditch, which partly now remaineth and compassed the Wall of the City, was begun to be made by the Londoners, in the year 1211, and finished 1213, the 15th of K. John. This Ditch being then made of 200 foot broad, caused no small hindrance to the Canons of the Holy Trinity, whose Church stood near Ealdgate, for that the said Ditch passed through their Ground from the Tower unto Bishopsgate.

“The first Occasion of making a Ditch about the City seems to have been this: William, Bishop of Ely, Chancellor of England, in the Reign of King Richard I., made a great Ditch round about the Tower, for the better Defence of it against John the King’s Brother, the King being then out of the Realm. Then did the City also begin a Ditch to encompass and strengthen their Walls [which happened between the Years 1190 and 1193.] So the Book Dunthorn. Yet the Register of Bermondsey writes that the Ditch was begun, Oct. 15, 1213, which was in the Reign of King John that succeeded to Richard.

“This Ditch being originally made for the Defence of the City, was also a long time together carefully cleansed and maintained, as Need required; but now of late neglected, and forced either to a very narrow, and the same a filthy Channel.

“In the Year of Christ, 1354, 28 Ed. 3, the Ditch of this City flowing over the Bank into the Tower-ditch, the King commanded the said Ditch of the City to be cleansed, and so ordered, that the overflowing thereof should not force any Filth into the Tower-ditch.