London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

There is one other purpose toward which a sewer is available—a purpose, too, which I do not remember to have seen specified in the Metropolitan Reports.

“The first, and perhaps most important purpose of sewers, as respects health,” says the Report of Messrs. Walker, Cubitt, and Brunel (1848), “is, as under-drains to the surrounding earth. They answer this purpose so effectually and quietly, and have done it so long, that their importance in this respect is overlooked. In the Sanitary Commissioners’ Reports we do not find it once noticed, and the recommendation of the substitution of stone or earthenware pipes for the larger brick sewers, seems to show, that any provision for the under-drainage was thought unnecessary, although such a provision is in our opinion most important.

“Under the artificial ground, the collection of ages, which in the City of London, as in most ancient towns, forms the upper surface, is a considerable thickness of clean gravel, and under the gravel is the London clay. The present houses are founded chiefly on the artificial or ‘made ground,’ while the sewers are made through the gravel; and it is known practically, that however charged with water the gravel of a district may be, the springs for a considerable distance round are drawn down by making a sewer, and the wells that had water within a few feet of the surface have again to be sunk below the bottom of the sewer to reach the water. Every interstice between the stones of the gravel acts as an under-drain to conduct the water to the sewer, through the sides of which it finds its way, even if mortar be used in the construction.

“Hence the salubrity of a gravel foundation, if the water be drawn out of it by sewers or other means, as is the case with the City and with Westminster. A proof of this principle was afforded by the result of a reference to physicians and engineers in 1838, to inquire into the state of drainage and smells in and near Buckingham Palace, as to which there had been complaints, though none so heavy as Mr. Phillips now makes, when he says, ‘that the drainage of Buckingham Palace is extremely defective, and that its precincts are reeking with filth and pestilential odours from the absence of proper sewerage!’”

The Report then shows the pains that were taken to ensure dryness in the Palace. Pits were dug in the garden 14 feet below the surface, and 3½ feet below high-water mark in the river, and they were found dry to the bottom. The kitchens and yard of the palace are, however, only 18 inches above Trinity high-water mark in the Thames, and therefore 18 inches below a very high tide. The physician, Sir James Clarke, and the engineers, Messrs. Simpson and Walker, in a separate Report, spoke in terms of commendation of the drainage of the Palace in 1838, as promotive of dryness. Since that time a connecting chain has been made from the Palace drains into the canal in St. James’s-park, to prevent the wet from rising as formerly during heavy rains. “The Palace,” it is stated in the Report of the three engineers, “should not be classed with the low part of Pimlico, where the drainage is, we believe, very defective, and to which, for anything we know to the contrary, the character given by Mr. Phillips may be applicable.”

Unfortunately, however, for this array of opinions of high authority, and despite the advantages of a gravel bed for the substratum of the palatial sewerage, the drainage and sewerage about Buckingham Palace is more frequently than that of any other public place under repair, and is always requiring attention. It was only a few days ago, before the court left Windsor Castle for London, that men were employed night and day, on the drains and cesspoolage channels, to make, as one of them described it to me—and such working-men’s descriptions are often forcible—“the place decent. I was hardly ever,” he added, “in such a set of stinks as I’ve been in the sewers and underground parts of the palace.”

Of the City Sewerage.

As yet I have spoken only of the sewers of London[64] “without the City;” but the sewers within the City, though connected, for the general public drainage and sewerage of the capital, with the works under the control of the Metropolitan Commissioners, are in a distinct and strictly defined jurisdiction, superintended by City Commissioners, and managed by City officers, and consequently demand a special notice.

The account of the City sewers, however, may be given with a comparative brevity, for the modes of their construction, as well as their general management, do not differ from what I have described as pertaining to the extra-civic metropolis. There are, nevertheless, a few distinctions which it is proper to point out.