Paul’s Wharf sewer is 7 feet 6 inches by 5 feet 6 inches near the outlet.
With the one exception of the Fleet River, none of the City sewer outlets are covered, the Fleet outlet being covered even at low water. The issue from the others runs in open channels upon the shore.
Mr. Haywood (February 12, 1850), in a report of the City Sewer Transactions and Works, observes,—“During the year (1849) the outlet sewers at Billingsgate and Whitefriars, two of the outlets of main sewers which discharged at the line of the River Wall, have been diverted (times of storm excepted); there remain, therefore, but eleven main outlets within the jurisdiction of this commission, which discharge their waters at the line of the River Wall.
“As a temporary measure, it is expedient to convey the sewage of the whole of the outlets within the City by covered culverts, below low-water mark; this subject has been under the consideration both of this Commission and the Navigation Committee.”
Whether the covered culvert is better than the open run, is a matter disputed among engineers (as are very many other matters connected with sewerage), and one into which I need not enter.
Mr. Haywood says further:—“The Fleet sewer already discharges its average flow, by a culvert, below low-water mark; with one exception only, I believe, none of the numerous outlets, which, for a length of many miles, discharge at intervals into the Thames at the line of the River Wall, both within and without your jurisdiction, discharge by culverts in a similar manner.”
These eleven outlets are far from being the whole number which give their contents into “the silver bosom of the Thames,” along the bank-line of the City jurisdiction. There are (including the 11) 182 outlets; but these are not under the control (unless in cases of alteration, nuisance, &c.) of the Court of Sewers. They are the outlets from the drainage of the wharfs, public buildings, or manufactories (such as gas-works, &c.) on the banks of the river; and the right to form such outlets having been obtained from the Navigation Committee, who, under the Lord Mayor, are conservators of the Thames, the care of them is regarded as a private matter, and therefore does not require further notice in this work. The officers of the City Court of Sewers observe these outlets in their rounds of inspection, but interfere only on application from any party concerned, unless a nuisance be in existence.
To convey a more definite notion of the extent and ramified sweep of the sewers, I will now describe (for the first time in print) some of the chief Sewer Ramifications, and then show the proportionate or average number of public ways, of inhabited houses, and of the population to each great main sewer, distinguishing, in this instance, those as great main sewers which have an outlet into the Thames.
The reader should peruse the following accounts with the assistance of a map of the environs, for, thus aided, he will be better able to form a definite notion of the curiously-mixed and blended extent of the sewerage already spoken of.