[41] After three years’ further inquiry I find no reason to modify this general description: but, as regards the local circumstances which determine the specified condition of soil and atmosphere, I have been able to extend my information; and the subject is therefore better treated in my [Fifth Annual Report] than in the paragraphs here following above.—J. S., 1854.
If you now look to the disease as it raged within your own jurisdiction, you will observe its fatality in two especial directions. First, in the line I have indicated to you, northward from Blackfriars Bridge, in a band of two or three hundred yards width; there, in the parallelogram which lies along the main road, from Stonecutter-street to Bridewell Hospital, were 76 deaths; there, in the little clump of houses forming the angle of Farringdon-street and Holborn-hill, were 17 deaths; there, in a square space behind twenty-seven shop fronts in Fleet-street, were 57 deaths; there, in the small parish of St. Ann’s, Blackfriars, were deaths at the rate of 25 to every thousand of its population. This was incomparably the most afflicted portion of your territory. Those who are acquainted with the ancient geography of the City will readily conjecture a reason; they will remember when ‘the course of water running at London under Old-bourne bridge and Fleet bridge, into the Thames, was of such bredth and depth that ten or twelve ships, navies at once with merchandises, were wont to come to the foresaid bridge of Fleet, and some of them unto Old-bourne bridge;’ they will remember how this broad river (like the Thames of our day) was thronged on both sides with population; how (again like the Thames) it was a draining river, probably with wide banks of putrefying mud; how many fruitless attempts were made to cleanse and preserve its channel; but how (in Stow’s day) ‘the brooke, by meanes of continuall incrochments upon the banks, and casting of soylage into the stream, was become worse cloyed than ever it was before.’ Where that soylage was cast, and where, since the days referred to, so many habitations have arisen that no sign of stream remains visible to the wayfarer above ground, its traces still remain below. Throughout at least a large portion of this district, the sub-soil (your Surveyor informs me) consists of black mud, the bed of the ancient river, in which are set the foundations of the modern houses. The river, which centuries ago fulfilled for a large population those vile uses which now pollute the Thames, has gradually yielded its foul banks to the residence of a growing population; and the sanitary relations of that population are exactly such as might be imitated, if the volume of the Thames were henceforth slowly reduced, and if those banks of mud which are now exposed only at low water, were simultaneously converted into the site of permanent habitations.
The history of the stream at Walbrook is, I believe, not dissimilar; but there is this marked difference between the two cases, that the comparative declivity of the latter district has allowed its soil to acquire a dryness and healthiness which have never been reached on the banks of the Fleet. For, owing to the extreme lowness of level in this district, the tidal influence of the Thames is very inconveniently felt; the cellars of houses are habitually exposed to dampness, even to flooding; and probably the whole porous sub-soil, at least as far north as your jurisdiction extends, is maintained in a sodden and malarious state.
With respect to the second part of the City in which considerable groups of cholera cases were observed, it has a not dissimilar peculiarity. I refer to that northern part of the City which extends (on the other side of London Wall) from Bishopsgate to Aldersgate. The epidemic prevailed there with far less severity than in the Fleet district, but still with a preference which easily shows itself in a cholera-map. At the intersection of Whitecross-street by Beech-lane, in a space that the point of one’s finger would hide in Wyld’s large map, there were 12 deaths: in that small portion of the City which lies north of Barbican and Beech-street there were 40 deaths: in the immediate vicinity of Half-moon-street, Bishopsgate, 60 deaths, of which more than half were in the workhouse. Now, certainly, in all this space (and probably still further in both directions, east and west) without the former gates of the City, there is a marked local character. It is a reclaimed marsh.[42] Throughout this district, in the olden times of the City, there lay (says Stow) ‘a moorish rotten ground, unpassable but for cawswaies purposely made to that intent;’ and one reads how ‘divers dikes were cast, and made to drein the waters of the said Moorefields, with bridges arched over them, whereby the said field was made somewhat more commodious, but yet it stood full of noisome waters;’ till gradually ‘by divers sluces was this fenne or moore made maine and hard ground, which before, being overgrowne with flagges, sedges, and rushes, served to no use;’ while ‘the farther grounds beyond Finsbury Court were so over-heightened with laystalls of dung, that divers windmills were thereon set, the ditches were filled up, and the bridges overwhelmed.’
[42] I have reason to believe that this statement, though founded on the authority of Stow, is erroneous, for so much of the district as lies west of Moorgate-street; and that the main cause of this locality suffering so severely from cholera must have lain in those very extensive defects of house-drainage, which more recently I have become better able to appreciate. With the kind assistance of Mr. Haywood, I have been enabled to look over the memoranda which are kept in his office, of deep cuttings of soil made in the construction of sewers by himself and his predecessor, Mr. Kelsey. These sections do not by any means tally with Stow’s description of the Moor, as extending in part ‘from without the postern called Cripplegate, even to the river of Wels;’ for here at least there is no trace of any such condition of soil.—J. S., 1854.
It is not as matter of literary curiosity that I quote these passages of your old historian, but simply that I may avail myself of his accurate local knowledge for the explanation and the cure of a serious existing evil. For if, as I believe, the unfortunate preference for certain localities evinced by the recent epidemic be, primâ facie, a reason for doubting the effectiveness of their sub-soil drainage, and if the ancient records of the City assure one that these very localities are such as, from conditions then in active operation, would be liable to retain, perhaps for an indefinite period, the materials of malarious poison, useful and practical deductions may be drawn. And as the liability to this severe recurrent epidemic is an extreme detriment to the population of such localities—one too, which, if unremoved, must inevitably lead to the deterioration of property, as well as to the sacrifice of life, I know that your Hon. Court will be solicitous to adopt whatever remedial measures are possible.
To those measures I shall presently return, having here dealt with the question only as it relates to the distribution of our mortality, and explains the preponderance of a large class of deaths in some special districts of the City.
In the Tables which accompany this portion of my Report, I have arranged in a synoptical form, convenient for reference, the chief facts of our sanitary statistics to which I have invited your attention.
In the first[43] you will read a summary of the deaths as they have occurred, male and female, in the several districts and sub-districts of the City, during each quarter of the past year.