[61] Querying means literally inquiring or asking for work at the different houses. The “queriers” among the sweeps are a kind of pedlar operatives.
[62] In East and West London there are rather more than 32 houses to the acre, which gives an average of 151 square yards to each dwelling, so that, allowing the streets here to occupy one-third of the area, we have 100 square yards for the space covered by each house. In Lewisham, Hampstead, and Wandsworth, there is not one house to the acre. The average number of houses per acre throughout London is 4.
[63] Gully here is a corruption of the word Gullet, or throat; the Norman is guelle (Lat. gula), and the French, goulet; from this the word gully appears to be directly derived. A gully-drain is literally a gullet-drain, that is, a drain serving the purposes of a gullet or channel for liquids, and a gully-hole the mouth, orifice, or opening to the gullet or gully-drain.
[64] Of the derivation of the word Sewer there have been many conjectures, but no approximation to the truth. One of the earliest instances I have met with of any detailed mention of sewers, is in an address delivered by a “Coroner,” whose name does not appear, to “a jury of sewers.” This address was delivered somewhere between the years 1660 and 1670. The coroner having first spoken of the importance of “Navigation and Drayning” (draining), then came to the question of sewers.
“Sewars,” he said, “are to be accounted your grand Issuers of Water, from whence I conceive they carry their name (Sewars quasi Issuers). I shall take his opinion who delivers them to be Currents of Water, kept in on both sides with banks, and, in some sense, they may be called a certain kind of a little or small river. But as for the derivation of the word Sewar, from two of our English words, Sea and Were, or, as others will have it, Sea and Ward, give me leave, now I have mentioned it, to—leave it to your judgments.
“However, this word Sewar is very famous amongst us, both for giving the title of the Commission of Sewars itself, and for being the ordinary name of most of your common water-courses, for Drayning, and therefore, I presume, there are none of you of these juries but both know—
“1. What Sewars signify, and also, in particular,
“2. What they are; and of a thing so generally known, and of such general use.”
The Rev. Dr. Lemon, who gave the world a work on “English Etymology,” from the Greek and Latin, and from the Saxon and Norman, was regarded as a high authority during the latter part of the last century, when his quarto first appeared. The following is his account, under the head “Sewers”—
“Skinn. rejects Minsh’s. deriv. of ‘olim scriptum fuisse seward à sea-ward, quod versus mare factæ sunt: longè verisimilius à Fr. Gall. eauier; sentina; incile, supple. aquarum:’—then why did not the Dr. trace this Fr. Gall. eauier? if he had, he would have found it distorted ab Ὑδωρ, aqua; sewers being a species of aqueduct:—Lye, in his Add., gives another deriv., viz. ‘ab Iceland. sua, colare; ut existimo; ad quod referre vellem sewer; cloaca; per sordes urbis ejiciuntur:’—the very word sordes gives me a hint that sewer may be derived à ‘Σαιρω, vel Σαροω, verro: nempe quia sordes, quæ everruntur è domo, in unum locum accumulantur; R. Σωρος, cumulus: Voss.’—a collection of sweepings, slop, dirt, &c.”