London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

The principal means of effecting the change from cesspoolage to sewerage was the introduction of Bramah’s water-closets, patented in 1808, but not brought into general use for some twenty years or more after that date. The houses of the rich, owing to the refuse being drained away from the premises, improved both in wholesomeness and agreeableness, and so the law was relaxed.

There are two kinds of cesspools, viz. public and private.

The public cesspools are those situated in courts, alleys, and places, which, though often packed thickly with inhabitants, are not horse-thoroughfares, or thoroughfares at all; and in such places one, two, or more cesspools receive the refuse from all the houses. I do not know that any official account of public cesspools has been published as to their number, character, &c., but their number is insignificant when compared with those connected with private houses. The public cesspools are cleansed, and, where possible, filled up by order of the Commissioners of Sewers, the cost being then defrayed out of the rate.

The private cesspools are cleansed at the expense of the occupiers of the houses.

Of the Cesspool and Sewer System of Paris.

As the Court of Sewers have recently adopted some of the French regulations concerning cesspoolage, I will now give an account of the cesspool system of France.

When after the ravages of the epidemic cholera of 1848-9, sanitary commissioners under the authority of the legislature pursued their inquiries, it was deemed essential to report upon the cesspool system of Paris, as that capital had also been ravaged by the epidemic. The task was entrusted to Mr. T. W. Rammell, C.E.

Even in what the French delight to designate—and in some respects justly—the most refined city in the world, a filthy and indolent custom, once common, as I have shown, in England, still prevails. In Paris, the kitchen and dry house-refuse (and formerly it was the fæcal refuse also) is deposited in the dark of the night in the streets, and removed, as soon as the morning light permits, by the public scavengers. But the refuse is not removed unexamined before being thrown into the cart of the proper functionary. There is in Paris a large and peculiar class, the chiffonniers (literally, in Anglo-Saxon rendering, the raggers, or rag-finders). These men nightly traverse the streets, each provided with a lantern, and generally with a basket strapped to the back; the poorer sort, however—for poverty, like rank, has its gradations—make a bag answer the purpose; they have also a pole with an iron hook to its end; and a small shovel. The dirt-heaps or mounds of dry house-refuse are carefully turned over by these men; for their morrow’s bread, as in the case of our own street-finders, depends upon something saleable being acquired. Their prizes are bones (which sometimes they are seen to gnaw); bits of bread; wasted potatoes; broken pots, bottles, and glass; old pans and odd pieces of old metal; cigar-ends; waste-paper, and rags. Although these people are known as rag-pickers, rags are, perhaps, the very thing of which they pick the least, because the Parisians are least apt to throw them away. In some of the criminal trials in the French capital, the chiffonniers have given evidence (but not much of late) of what they have found in a certain locality, and supplied a link, sometimes an important one, to the evidence against a criminal. With these refuse heaps is still sometimes mixed matter which should have found its way into the cesspools, although this is an offence punishable, and occasionally punished.

Before the habits of the Parisians are too freely condemned, let it be borne in mind that the houses of the French capital are much larger than in London, and that each floor is often the dwelling-place of a family. Such is generally the case in London in the poorer districts, but in Paris it pervades almost all districts. There, some of the houses contain 70, not fugitive but permanent, inmates. The average number of inhabitants to each house, according to the last census, was upwards of twenty-four (in London the average is 7·6), the extremes being eleven to each house in St. Giles’s and between five and six in the immediate suburbs (see p. [165], ante). Persons who are circumstanced then, as are the Parisians, can hardly have at their command the proper means and appliances for a sufficient cleanliness, and for the promotion of what we consider—but the two words are unknown to the French language—the comforts of a home.