| Total cost of flushing the sewers | £12,000 per annum. |
⁂ The above division of districts is the one adopted by the Commissioners of Sewers, but the districts of the Flushermen are more numerous than those above given, being as follows:—
| Ganger. | Flushermen. | ||||
| Fulham and Hammersmith | employing | 1 | and | 6 | 1st District of Commissioners. |
| Counter’s Creek and Ranelagh Districts. | „ | 1 | „ | 7 | |
| Westminster (Western Division) | „ | 1 | „ | 10 | 2nd District of Commissioners. |
| Ditto (Eastern Division) | „ | 1 | „ | 12 | |
| Holborn Division | „ | 1 | „ | 8 | |
| Finsbury Division | „ | 1 | „ | 9 | 3rd District of Commissioners. |
| Tower Hamlets Levels | „ | 1 | „ | 10 | |
| Poplar and Blackwall | „ | 1 | „ | 8 | |
| Districts south of the Thames | „ | 2 | „ | 22 | 4th District of Commissioners. |
| City | „ | 1 | „ | 9 | |
Holborn and Finsbury districts are under one contractor, and so are the two divisions of Westminster. The same men who flush Holborn flush the Finsbury district also, 17 being the average number employed; but the Finsbury district requires rather more men than the Holborn; and the same men who work on the western division of Westminster flush also the eastern, the number of flushers in the western district being more, on account of its being the larger division.
The inspector receives 80l. per annum.
The table on p. [429] shows the number of clerks of the works, inspectors of flushing, flap and sluice keepers, gangers, and flushermen employed in the several districts throughout the metropolis, as well as the salaries and wages of each and the whole.
None of the flushermen can be said to have been “brought up to the business,” for boys are never employed in the sewers. Neither had the labourers been confined in their youth to any branch of trade in particular, which would appear to be consonant to such employment. There are now among the flushermen men who have been accustomed to “all sorts of ground work:” tailors, pot-boys, painters, one jeweller (some time ago there was also one gentleman), and shoemakers. “You see, sir,” said one informant, “many of such like mechanics can’t live above ground, so they tries to get their bread underneath it. There used to be a great many pensioners flushermen, which weren’t right,” said one man, “when so many honest working men haven’t a penny, and don’t know which way to turn theirselves; but pensioners have often good friends and good interest. I don’t hear any complaints that way now.”
Among the flushermen are some ten or twelve men who have been engaged in sewer-work of one kind or another between 20 and 30 years. The cholera, I heard from several quarters, did not (in 1848) attack any of the flushermen. The answer to an inquiry on the subject generally was, “Not one that I know of.”
“It is a somewhat singular circumstance,” says Mr. Haywood, the City Surveyor, in his Report, dated February, 1850, “that none of the men employed in the City sewers in flushing and cleansing, have been attacked with, or have died of, cholera during the past year; this was also the case in 1832-3. I do not state this to prove that the atmosphere of the sewers is not unhealthy—I by no means believe an impure atmosphere is healthy—but I state the naked fact, as it appears to me a somewhat singular circumstance, and leave it to pathologists to argue upon.”