First, then, as to the ramifications of the great and ancient Fleet outlet. From its mouth, so to speak, near Blackfriars Bridge, its course is not parallel with any public way, but, running somewhat obliquely, it crosses below Tudor-street into Bridge-street, Blackfriars, then occupies the centre of Farringdon-street, and that street’s prolongation or intended prolongation into the New Victoria-street (the houses in this locality having been pulled down long ago, and the spot being now popularly known as “the ruins”), and continues until the City portion of the Fleet Sewer meets the Metropolitan jurisdiction between Saffron and Mutton hills, the junction, so to call it, being “under the houses”[65] (a common phrase among flushermen). A little farther on it connects itself with an open part of the Fleet Ditch, running at the back of Turnmill-street, Clerkenwell. In its City course, the sewer receives the issue from 150 public ways (including streets, alleys, courts, lanes, &c.), which are emptied into it from the second, third, or smaller class sewers, from Ludgate-hill and its proximate streets, the St. Paul’s locality, Fleet-street and its adjacent communications in public ways, with a series of sewers running down from parts of Smithfield, &c. The greatest accession of sewage, however, which the Fleet receives from one issue, is a few yards beyond where the City has merged into the Metropolitan jurisdiction; this accession is from a first-class sewer, known as “the Whitecross-street sewer,” because running from that street, and carrying into the Fleet the contributions of 60 crowded streets.
After the junction of the covered City sewer with the uncovered ditch in Clerkenwell, the Fleet-river sewer (again covered) skirts round Cold Bath Fields Prison (the Middlesex House of Correction), runs through Clerkenwell-green into the Bagnigge Wells-road, so on to Battle-bridge and King’s-cross; then along the Old Saint Pancras-road, and thence to the King’s-road (a name now almost extinct), where the St. Pancras Workhouse stands close by the turnpike-gate. Along Upper College-street (Camden-town) is then the direction of this great sewer, and running under the canal at the higher part of Camden-town, near the bridge by the terminus of the Great North Western Railway, it branches into the highways and thoroughfares of Kentish-town, of Highgate, and of Hampstead, respectively, and then, at what one informant described as “the outside” of those places, receives the open ditches, which form the further sewerage, under the control of the Commissioners, who cause them to be cleansed regularly.
In order to show more consecutively the direction, from place to place, in straight, devious, or angular course, of this the most remarkable sewer of the world, considering the extent of the drainage into it, I have refrained from giving beyond the Whitecross-street connection with the Fleet, an account of the number of streets sewered into this old civic stream. I now proceed to supply the deficiency.
From a large outlet at Clerkenwell-green (a very thickly-built neighbourhood) flows the connected sewage of 100 streets. At Maiden-lane, beyond King’s-cross, a district which is now being built upon for the purposes of the Great Northern Railway, the sewage of 10 streets is poured into it. In the course of this sewer along Camden-town, it receives the issue of some 20 branches, or 40 streets, &c. About 15 other issues are received before the open ditches of Kentish-town, Highgate, and Hampstead are encountered.
It is not, however, merely the sewage collected in the precincts of the City proper, which is “outletted” (as I heard a flusherman call it) into the Thames. Other districts are drained into the large City outlets nearing the river. “Many of your works,” says Mr. Haywood, the City surveyor, in a report addressed to the City Commissioners, Oct. 23, 1849, “have been beneficially felt by districts some miles distant from the City. Twenty-nine outlets have been provided by you for the sewage of the County of Middlesex; the high land of and about Hampstead, drains through the Fleet sewer; Holloway and a portion of Islington can now be drained by the London Bridge sewer; Norton Folgate and the densely-populated districts adjacent are also relieved by it.”
On the other hand, the Irongate sewer (one of the most important), which has its outlet in the Tower Hamlets, drains a portion of the City.
The reader must bear in mind, also, that were he to traverse the Fleet sewer in the direction described—for all the men I conversed with on the subject, if asked to show the course of sewerage with which they were familiar, began from the outlet into the Thames—the reader, I say, must remember that he would be advancing all the way against the stream, in a direction in which he would find the sewage flowing onward to its mouth, while his course would be towards its sources.
On the left-hand side (for the account before given refers only to the right-hand side) proceeding in the same direction, after passing the underground precincts of the City proper, there is another addition near Saffron-hill, of the sewage of 30 streets; then at Gray’s-inn-road is added the sewage of 100 streets; New-road (at King’s-cross), 20 more streets; from the whole of Somers-town, a populous locality, the sewerage concentrating all the busy and crowded places round about “the Brill,” &c., the sewage of 120 streets is received; and at Pratt-street, Camden-town, 12 other streets.
Thus into this sewage-current, directed to one final outlet, are drained the refuse of 517 streets, including, of course, a variety of minor thoroughfares, courts, alleys, &c., &c., as in the neighbourhoods of Gray’s-inn-road, in Clerkenwell, Somers-town, &c. Some of these tributaries to the efflux of the sewage are “barrel-drains,” but perform the function of sewers along small courts, where there is “no thoroughfare” either upon, or below the surface.
The London Bridge sewer runs up King William-street to Moorgate-street, along Finsbury-square into the City-road, diverging near the Wharf-road, which it crosses under the canal near the Wenlock basin, and thence along the Lower-road, Islington, by Cock-lane, through Highbury-vale; after this, at the extremity of Holloway, the open ditches, as in the former instance, carry on the conveyance of sewage from the outer suburbs.