London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

“374 gullies have been retrapped in the City upon improved principles during the last year.”

The gully-traps are on the principle of self-acting valves, but it is stated in several reports, that these valves often remain permanently open, partly from the street refuse (especially if mixed with the débris from new or removed buildings) not being sufficiently liquified to pass through them, and partly from the hinges getting rusted, and so becoming fixed.

Of the Length of the London Sewers and Drains.

There is no official account precisely defining the length of the London sewerage; but the information acquired on the subject leaves no doubt as to the accuracy of the following facts.

About 900 miles of sewers of the metropolis may be said to have been surveyed; and it is known that from 100 to 150 miles more constitute a portion of the metropolitan sewerage; this, too, independently of that of the City, which is 50 miles. Altogether I am assured that the sewers of the urban part of London, included within the 58 square miles before mentioned, measure 1100 miles.

The classes of sewers comprised in this long extent are pretty equally apportioned, each a third, or 366 miles, of the first, second, and third classes respectively. Of this extent about 200 miles are still, in the year 1852, open sewers!—to say nothing of the great open sewer, the Thames. The open sewers are found principally in the Surrey districts, in Brixton, Lewisham, Tooting, and places at the like distance from the more central parts of the Commissioners’ jurisdiction. These open sewers, however, are disappearing, and it is intended that in time no such places shall exist; as it is, some miles of them are inclosed yearly. The open sewers in what may be considered more of the heart of the metropolis are a portion of the Fleet-ditch in Clerkenwell, and places in Lambeth and Bermondsey, or about 20 miles in the interior to 180 miles in the exterior portion of the capital. These are national disgraces.

The 1100 miles above-mentioned, however, include only the sewers, comprising neither the house nor gully-drains. According to the present laws, all newly-built houses must be drained into the sewers; and in 1850 there were 5000 applications from the western districts alone to the Commissioners, for the promotion of the drainage of that number of old and new houses into the sewers, the old houses having been previously drained into cesspools.

I am assured, on good authority, that fully one-half of the houses in the metropolis are at the present time drained into the sewers. In one street, about a century old, containing in the portion surveyed for an official purpose, on the two sides of the way, 76 houses, the number was found to be equally divided—half the drainage being into sewers and half into cesspools. The number of houses in the metropolis proper, of 115 square miles area, is 307,722. The majority, as far as is officially known, are now drained into the public sewers, or into private or branch sewers communicating with the larger public receptacles, so that—allowing 200,000 houses to be included in the 58 square miles of the urban sewerage, and admitting that some wretched dwelling-places are not drained at all—it is reasonable to assume that at least 100,000 houses within this area are drained into the sewers.

The average length of the house-drains is, I learn from the best sources, 50 feet per house. The builder of a new house is now required by law to drain it, at the proprietor’s cost, 100 feet, if necessary, to a sewer. In some instances, in detached houses, where the owners object to the cesspool system, a house drain has been carried 230 feet to a sewer, and sometimes even farther; but in narrow or moderately wide streets, from 18 to 26 feet across, and in alleys and narrow places (in case there is sewerage) the house drains may be but from 12 to 20 feet. Both these lengths of drainage are exceptions, and there is no question that the average length may be put at 50 feet. In some squares, for example, the sewer runs along the centre, so that the house-drains here are in excess of the 50 feet average.

The length of the house-drainage of the more central part of London, assuming 100,000 houses to be drained into the sewers, and each of such drains to be on the average 50 feet long, is, then, 5,000,000 feet, or about 2840 miles.