For participation in these advantages, the City had to look beyond its own representatives, and to await the more comprehensive measures of Her Majesty’s Government.
Two years have elapsed, and none of the measures referred to has made visible progress. The water question remains unsettled; arrangements for extramural interment of the dead have been disconcerted at what seemed the moment of their completion; the river still receives the entire sewage of this immense metropolis, and still at each retreating tide, spreads amid the town, as heretofore, its many miles of fetid, malarious mud.
In justice it should indeed be remembered, that any one of the required amendments could only be the result of long preparatory labour, and that its organisation would often of necessity be the travail of some single mind, not insusceptible of fatigue. Particularly as respects the scheme (now understood to approach its maturity) for the complete drainage of the metropolis, it cannot be overlooked that very extensive surveys, superficial and subterranean, with innumerable drawings and specifications, were necessary to the construction of so comprehensive a plan.
But neither can it be disguised or disregarded, that meanwhile, in the absence of these sanitary works, there are dying needlessly and prematurely thousands of the population; that preventable death, hitherto unprevented, is proceeding at its accustomed pace; that children continue to perish at three or four times their due rate; that time, which carries us from one visitation of the great epidemic and obliterates the remembrance of our alarm, also, too probably, carries us towards the day of another outbreak: that typhus—our home-bred and daily visitant, rehearses the same warnings as heretofore, moving uniformly onward like the shadow on a dial, toward the hour when that Eastern pestilence may again be here.
Therefore, gentlemen, I have felt it my duty to represent to you that, in the promotion of those metropolitan works, the population of the City of London have an incalculable interest;—that the emancipation of human life from such fetters of disease as weigh on it, can never even approximate to completion within your City, while the saturated burial-grounds still continue to receive their annual multitudes of the dead, while the administration of the water-supply interposes an effectual hindrance to your most important functions, and while the river, contaminated and unembanked, diffuses injurious miasms through the whole extent of your jurisdiction. And I would further venture to urge on the consideration of your Hon. Court, that your legitimate influence with Her Majesty’s Government and with Parliament—your influence as trustees of the Public Health for so large a constituency, exerted in furtherance of those metropolitan reforms to which I have adverted—would be tending, not only to the general good, but directly and eminently to the sanitary advantage of the City of London.
I have the honour,
&c., &c.
Proposed Schedule of specification for the Register of Lodging-houses.
House situate at No. _____________________________________
Name and Address of Owner ______________________________
Number of Floors (including Cellars and Lofts) ____________________
„Rooms„ „____________________
| Ac- count of Rooms sepa- rate- ly. | No. on door. | Situation. | Height. | Length. | Breadth. | Windows. | Flooring. | Fire-place. | Ventilators. | Rent. | Number of Inmates. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Floor, Aspect. | ft. in. | ft. in. | ft. in. | Weekly, or nightly, or per person. | Under 9 years of age. | Over 9 years of age. | ||||||
| 1 | ||||||||||||
| 2 | ||||||||||||
| 3 | ||||||||||||
| 4 | ||||||||||||
| 5 | ||||||||||||
| 6, &c. | ||||||||||||