LON 17 REPORT on THE SANITARY CONDITION OF THE CITY OF LONDON for the year 1849-50, BY JOHN SIMON, Esq. F.R.S., medical officer of health to the city of london, ONE OF THE SURGICAL STAFF OF ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL. Ordered to be Printed, December 17th, 1850. LONDON: PRINTED BY ARTHUR TAYLOR, COLEMAN STREET. 1850. CONTENTS. I. Mortality of the City of London page 4 II. The Causes and Prevention of Endemic Disease 33 A. Sub-soil Drainage, House-Drainage and Sewerage ib. B. Water-Supply 40 C. Offensive or injurious Trades 72 D. Burial-Grounds 81 E. Habitations and Social Condition of the Poor 84 III. Suggested Alterations in the Act of Parliament 101 Appendix. No. I. Questions addressed to the eleven UnionSurgeons of the City of London, with respect to the health of their several Districts during the past Year, and their Replies there-unto 109 No. II. Analysis of the Year's Mortality, as to the Four Quarters of the Year, and as to the several Districts and Sub-Districts of the City 115 No. III. Deaths of the last Two Years, stated separately and conjointly, classified according to Ages, and distributed in Unions 116 No. IV. Illustrations of Comparative Mortality in several Districts and Counties of England, as occurring at all Ages, and as occurring under Five Years of Age 117 No. V. Comparative prevalence, in the several Wards of the City, of such Deaths as particularly depend on local circumstances 119 No. VI. Letter by Mr. Thomas Taylor, Lecturer on Chemistry, as to the Chemical Qualities of certain Waters 120 Ordered, That this Report be printed, and that a copy be sent to every member of this Court, and of the Court of Common Council. THE SANITARY CONDITION OF THE CITY OF LONDON. Mr. SIMON'S SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. To the Hon. the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London. Lancaster Place, November, 1850. Gentlemen, In obedience to that clause in your Act of Parliament under which my office is constituted, and which enjoins on your Officer of Health that he shall "report periodically upon the Sanitary condition of the City," I now submit to your Honourable Court my annual statement on this subject. I. Mortality of the City of London. During the fifty-two weeks, dated from September 30th, 1849, to September 28th, 1850, there died of the population under your charge 2,752 persons. B 6 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. The rate of mortality, estimated from these data, for a population of 125,500, would indicate somewhat less than twenty-two deaths (21.92) out of every thousand living persons. Last year it was my painful duty to record the ravages of pestilence, then indeed hardly terminated, under the pressure of which our general death-rate had risen to the alarming height of thirty in the thousand. On this present occasion, I have the happier task of laying before you the evidences of a mortality lessened considerably below its habitual average; and I rejoice in congratulating your Honourable Court on the testimony thus borne to the success of your sanitary exertions. For although, without question, some large share of this striking improvement may have depended on circumstances beyond our cognizance or control; although it may in part be but an instance of that tendency to periodical alternations of activity and repose which we recognize in disease, as in other operations of nature; although I should be over-sanguine if I believed, and premature if I stated, that your sanitary measures during the past twelve months had wrought such a change in the City as to ensure a continuance of this year's comparative healthfulness; yet I may venture without hesitation to assure you, that the labours of the Commission have been fruitful of real and demonstrable advantage to the health of the people; that a sensible diminution has occurred in the physical causes of disease ; and that, from 7 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. rious and dis-interested sources, I hear grateful men tion of improvements which you have operated. In confirmation of this assurance, I may inform your Honourable Court that, in collecting my mateterials for the present statement, I solicited from the Union-Surgeons of the whole City of London certain particulars of information which they were peculiarly able to furnish: I enquired of them, namely, whether, during the past year, there had prevailed among the poorer classes in their several districts, more or less than the ordinary pressure of epidemic, endemic, and infectious disease; and whether, in case of such difference having been observed, they could refer it, either for better or worse, to any changes recently wrought in the physical conditions of their respective neighbourhoods. They have had the kindness to furnish me with the information requested of them, and I append to my Report the substance of their replies, arranged in a tabular form*. These documents testify with remarkable uniformity, both to the abatement of disease within their several provinces of practice, and to the considerable dependence of that improved condition of health on sanitary works effected under your auspices. In order to form a correct estimate of the average mortality in any district, it is indispensable that one's records should extend over many years. Thus * Appendix No. I. B 2 8 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. only is it, that fallacies can be avoided which arise from the alternate pressure and remittence of epidemic disease. The havoc effected by a periodical visitation of influenza, cholera, or plague varies, in like manner as the ordinary death-rate varies, in different localities ; and its variation contributes importantly to fix the healthiness or unhealthiness of such localities. But obviously, if we wish for practical purposes to calculate an annual rate of mortality, and to decide, in respect of any district, what are the chances of life for its population, we must distribute the peculiar mortality of the pestilence-period over those years which intervene between visitations of the pestilence. Hitherto, in respect of the City of London, I have the record of only two years; two years differing from one another in the proportion of 30 to 22, and the mean mortality deduced from that biennial period would be 26 per thousand per annum. I am, of course, unable to tell you with certainty whether that ratio be the true average death-rate of the City; but I incline to believe that an average calculated from a longer period, with less abrupt fluctuations, would give a lower figure as the accurate one. In future years, so long as I may have the honour of reporting to the Commission, I purpose proceeding, step by step, to the construction of a cyclical average from the materials which will constantly be increasing; and I trust that many years may elapse 9 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. before any approach shall again be made to the high death-rate with which the cycle commenced. It may be useful, for the sake of comparison, that I should remind your Honourable Court of some of the more important differences which prevail throughout the country, in regard to the local rates of mortality. The extreme rates recorded in the Registrar-General's last publication, relating to the septennial period 1838-44, give 14 per thousand per annum as the lowest average, 33½ as the highest average, for a population male and female in equal proportion. The low average belongs to a district in Northumberland, numbering 27—28,000 inhabitants ; the high average is assigned to Liverpool. For the whole south-east division of England (comprising more than a million and a half of inhabitants) the death-rate is but 19; while in parts of the division it falls very considerably below this average. I have thrown these and some similar comparisons into a tabular form, which may perhaps be interesting to you*. Possibly it may occur to you that these comparisons are devoid of practical application—that it is unreasonable to suppose we can mitigate our London death-rate to the likeness of a selected country mortality—that the circumstances of the two populations are essentially and unalterably dissimilar— that the advantages of the one cannot be given to the other—that the traditional " three-score years * Appendix No. IV. 10 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. and ten" of human life, are allotted only to rustic existence—that the right of participating in the higher civilization of the metropolis, or of trading in its larger market, is not too dearly purchased by the tax of half or one third of one's fair expectation of life. On general grounds, I should not hesitate to combat this objection, and should feel sure of convincing you of its invalidity. I should argue (as indeed I have already argued here) that the main conditions which constitute the unhealthiness of towns are definite, palpable, removable evils; that dense over-crowding of a population—that intricate ramification of courts and alleys, excluding light and air—that defective drainage—that the products of organic decomposition—that contaminated water and a stinking atmosphere, are distinct causes of disease and death; that each admits of being definitely estimated in its numerical proportion to the total mortality which it contributes to cause; that each is susceptible of abatement or removal, which will at once be followed by diminution of its alleged effects on the health of the population. Likewise, I should argue, that if there indeed exist, attached to a metropolitan residence, some really unavoidable and necessary disadvantages to life (a point which however I am not prepared to concede) there are likewise, as respects the poor, some peculiar advantages to counterbalance those evils; that in urban communities the operations of charitable relief are largest and least remitting; that the resources of 11 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. medicine for curing what cannot be prevented are likewise readiest and most effective. On all these general grounds I should be prepared to maintain, that a lowness of mortality which has been attained in any considerable rustic population, might be attained by an urban population, if only the removable evils be removed, if only the practicable good be made practical. Surely too, above all, I would maintain this possibility in respect of our capital, the treasury as she is of all means for progress in civilization, the stronghold of all applicable knowledge. Let but the wealth, the science, the energy, and the benevolence of the metropolis, deal with removable causes of death as they have dealt with subjects infinitely more difficult, infinitely less promising, and certainly of not greater importance ; and few competent persons will doubt that the mortality of London might speedily be reduced to the level of any districtmortality yet recorded by the Registrar-General. There may be those in your Honourable Court who will hesitate to accept for themselves the firm conviction which I entertain on this subject; or who, at least, will withhold their assent from the line of argument which I have advanced. To them, what I have now to state may be more conclusive than any other consideration: viz., during the year on which I am reporting, there was one sub-district of the City of London Union—one comprising from twelve to thirteen thousand inhabitants, in which 12 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON (after including a due proportion of deaths which had occurred in the union-workhouse at Mile-end) the mortality stood only at 15 in the thousand; one in which, if those extra-mural deaths had been excluded, the local death-rate for the year would have been only 13.32. For an illustration of low and enviable deathrates, I need then no longer appeal to Northumberland, or to our south-eastern counties, (though, no doubt, their septennial periods of low mortality are valuable corroborations of any inference which could be drawn from our more restricted experience ;) but I may point to the last year's death-rate in the north-west sub-district of the City of London Union as one of rare excellence, and may content myself with wishing that that partial rate might become universal for the City, and might be the permanent expression of its average mortality. A detailed consideration of our sickness and mortality during the last year suggests to me a few other remarks, which may, I think, be of practical utility to your Honourable Court. First, as regards the ages at which death occurs; the respective proportions of timely and untimely deaths may, generally speaking, be inferred from the local death-rates. In general terms, we know a high death-rate indicates that many die before their time—indicates that a proportion of the population, more or less considerable, instead of reaching old age, becomes prematurely blighted 13 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. and extinguished. In order to illustrate this subject to you more exactly, I append a table* in which the deaths of the last two years are classified according to the ages at which they occurred. Of 3799 persons whose deaths are recorded in my last Report, 1318 died under the age of five years: of 2752 deaths registered in the present year, 1032 belong to the same early period of life. The City of London appears peculiarly fatal to infant life. Reference to the Registrar-General's last septennial record shows that of every 1000 male children under five years of age within the City of London (aggregately) nearly 113 die in each year; and the portion of this rate which is deduced from the East and West London Unions is as high as 119 in the thousand. In a subjoined table†, which illustrates some points of comparative mortality, I have endeavoured to show the extreme and disproportionate amount of this pressure on infant life. In referring (for instance, in regard of the City of London Union) to the three last columns of that table, you will observe that the mortality of children at the age stated, during the septennial period, was 1/2.66 of the entire mortality, although their class numerically constituted only 1/11.09 of the entire population; so that they died at more than four times (4.17) the rate which would have fallen to them as simple participators in the average mortality of their district. The actual infant morta- * Appendix No. III. † Appendix No. IV. 14 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. lity of the past year holds the same proportion to the general mortality as in the Registrar-General's septennial period, being of the whole. Lest any undue importance should be ascribed to the influence of bad or inappropriate articles of diet in producing this large infant mortality, I may inform you that the rate of death is highest during that very early period of life when the child depends for nourishment on its mother; so that, of a thousand male children in the first year of life there die within the district of the City of London Union 242, within that of the East and West London Unions 276. The causes, which thus decimate the young population of the City of London, are the common conditions of district unhealthiness—the conditions which it lies within the scope of sanitary legislation to amend. But, inasmuch as the few days of these wretched children are passed mainly within doors, so their high mortality constitutes the readiest and least fallacious evidence of the unwholesomeness of the dwellings in which they die: and hence I am acquainted with no correcter material for estimating the sanitary condition of a district than is afforded by the death-rate of its infant population. Secondly, with regard to the alleged particular causes of death; I have extracted from our general registry, and have grouped in a separate table, those cases of death from acute disease which seem peculiarly due to physical causes affecting large numbers of persons. 15 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. There are deaths by cholera, epidemic diarrhoea, and dysentery, of which during the biennial period we have had nearly 900; by fever, of which we have had 284; by erysipelas and puerperal fever, of which we have had 84 ; by small-pox, of which we have had 50: and cases of this sort partake of the nature of deaths by violence, not only because they are abrupt and untimely, but because they are avoidable,. If in the cases which I have specified, it were possible to make inquiry into the antecedent circumstances of the dead, you would find irrefragable evidence that life was lost in each individual instance by the operation of removable causes—by the foolhardy neglect of some familiar precaution, or by the obstinate retention of some notorious ill. The death of a child by small-pox would in most instances call for a verdict of "homicide by omission," against the parent who had neglected daily opportunities of giving it immunity from that disease by the simple process of vaccination : the death of an adult by typhus would commonly justify still stronger condemnation (though with more difficulty of fixing and proportioning the particular responsibility) against those who ignore the duties of property, aad who knowingly let, for the occupation of the poor, dwellings unfit even for brute tenants, dwellings absolutely incompatible with health. In addition to the diseases which I have named, there are others which owe their chief malignity and numerical largeness of fatality, though not their 16 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. existence, to local and removable causes. The proportionate mortality from scarlatina, measles, and hooping-cough is greatest where the general deathrate is greatest. Under similar circumstances, too, we find among the infant population a frequency and fatality of other diseases, not commonly counted specific, which warrant us in considering them to be mainly of endemic and avoidable origin. Such are the hydrocephalus and convulsions, the diarrhoea, bronchitis, and pneumonia of infants, which are often referred to the irritation of teething, but which prevail in different localities with so marked a proportion to the causes of other endemic disease that we may be sure of their partial and considerable dependence on those local and obviable causes. I dwell on this aspeet of the subject, and particularly invite the attention of your Honourable Court to the table* which illustrates it, because it is in respect of these diseases that your exertions have already effected valuable improvements for the health of the City, and because the future registry of such cases will attest year by year the further progress of your sanitary reforms. In examining this index of preventable deaths, you will notice that those from fever are fewer by 29 per cent, in the year just terminated than in the previous twelve months ; that those from scarlatina are 75 per cent, fewer; those from infantile zymotic disorders nearly 40 per cent. fewer: those from erysipelas and puerperal fever * Appendix No. V. 17 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. 9 per cent, fewer. Small-pox, it is true, is doubled; but the prevention of this disease rests, out of your jurisdiction, in the exercise of individual discretion. Under the item of infantile diarrhoea (included in the tenth column) there is likewise an increase of nearly a third*; an exception probably dependent on the fact that, during last year, many deaths which might have swelled this column were (on account of the then prevalent influence) catalogued under the head of epidemic diarrhoea or cholera. I should be misleading your Honourable Court, and practising a deception which next year's registry would expose, if I pretended that the striking difference between the two years' several totals of preventable deaths (a difference which, leaving cholera out of the question, probably amounts to a diminution of 30 per cent. on the sum of last year) had resulted wholly, or even chiefly, from sanitary improvement, and could be interpreted as the evidence of permanent physical changes around our poorer population. I guard you against this impression now, because, however satisfactory it might be as a momentary belief, it would lead to subsequent disappointment; and any future rise in the proportion of these deaths would induce the erroneous but disheartening supposition, that your later sanitary * In the column referred to, this is concealed by the marked diminution, during the present year, of other disorders classed with infantile diarrhoea. Their reduction maintains the total of that column (notwithstanding the difference of diarrhoea) considerably less for this year than for last. 18 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. steps had been less successful than the first. In all these matters, and especially in analyzing the details of a death-registry, it is requisite (as I have already stated) to deal with cycles of many years. Periods of pestilence are habitually followed by periods of diminished mortality: partly because population is diminished, and especially that share of the population which suffers most from obviable causes of disease; partly because the great alarm of death has induced vigilance and precaution, public and private, against the occasions and beginnings of illness. And, beyond both these circumstances, there are others which we cannot analyze or explain, though we have scientific certainty of their operation ; circumstances which seem to ensure a comparative quiescence of the ordinary causes of disease during those periods which next succeed the prevalence of certain fatal epidemics. Nevertheless, that the sanitary condition of the City has undergone considerable improvement within the last two years, is a fact which no one can gainsay; and that a considerable share of the mitigation in mortality arises from this improvement cannot reasonably be questioned. If even a third of the mitigation in question, if a reduction of ten per cent. on the preventable mortality of the City, may be inferred from the materials which I lay before you, it is indeed matter for the utmost congratulation ; and a continuance of the same reduction year by year, perpetuated (as doubtlessly it may be) by a 19 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. continuance of the same exertions, would soon raise the City of London above all fear of comparison, on the ground of healthfulness, with urban or with suburban populations. Thirdly, I would beg the attention of your Honourable Court to those very important local differences of death-rate which may be deduced from a study of our death-register. I have already had the pleasure of citing to you the low rate of mortality which has prevailed during the last year in the north-west sub-district of the City of London Union. The rate of death in the north division of the West London Union was exactly double that proportion ; and between these extreme terms of disparity there were many intermediate degrees. Similar inequalities of mortality were observable in last year's record. In the healthiest sub-district of the City the year's death-rate was little above 20 in the thousand ; while in the worst it stood within a very small fraction of 40; and for the whole West London Union was as high as 39.15. Mainly and essentially these local differences of mortality depend on the proportion in which preventable deaths enter into the total; the differences, however partial, depending on the operation within certain districts, of removable deleterious influences which do not exist in certain other districts. In classifying for your consideration the deaths which, during the last two years, have depended on epidemic, endemic, and infectious diseases, I have 20 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. thought it desirable to distribute them according to the municipal divisions of the City. Strongly believing, what I have endeavoured to express, that this class of deaths is for the main part preventable, I have thought it would interest the honourable representatives of the several wards, and would more directly enlist their sympathies for sanitary progress, if I could enable them at a glance to recognize the ratio in which their respective constituencies contribute to this annual death-roll. I have included in the table, under eight different heads, all those acute diseases which depend in an important degree on local causation, either for their existence or for their fatality. It will be obvious, even to the unprofessional reader, that local causes are not of equal prevalence in respect of all the diseases there tabulated. Some (as fever and cholera) would not be known at all under perfect sanitary arrangements; others (as scarlatina, measles, and hooping-cough) would be far less malignant in their attacks ; others (as those classified in the tenth and twelfth columns) would no doubt exist under the most perfect physical circumstances, but would probably prevail in numbers quite inconsiderable as compared with those actually observed. On consulting the table*, it will be observed that in Cordwainers Ward, during the last year, not a single death occurred from the causes referred to, and in the preceding year of epidemic visitation * Appendix No. V. 21 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. only five; that in Cornhill Ward there have been only two such deaths in each of these years; that in Coleman-street they have been 66 ; in Queenhithe, 59; in Portsoken, 143; in Aldersgate Within, 30; in Aldersgate Without, 179; in Cripplegate Within, 80; in Cripplegate Without, 299; in Bishopsgate Within, 60; in Bishopsgate Without, 329 ; in Farringdon Within, 153; in Farringdon Without, 845. I am unable to state with accuracy, in these several instances, what proportion subsists between the preventable mortality and the number of living persons, for I have no means of ascertaining precisely the population of the separate wards; and without this knowledge it is impossible to arrange them in a scale of comparative healthiness. I need hardly remind your Honourable Court that the wards differ very considerably in their magnitude; so that the largest majority of cases occurring in one ward (as in Farringdon Without) must not unconditionally be taken to imply that the ward, in proportion to its population, suffers more deaths than one in which the apparent number is less considerable. In the table to which these remarks refer, I have endeavoured to give you the means of comparing (at least approximatively) the healthiness of your several departments, by entering against the name of each ward the number of holdings for which it stands assessed to your rate. This entry (with some trifling modifications specified in the table) may be taken to express the number of houses contained in c 22 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. each ward of the City: it thus furnishes indirectly the means for estimating the local population. It will be noticed, that the more glaring inequalities which I have adduced are in some degree due to the epidemic of last year, which did not press uniformly on all parts of the City. It may, however, likewise be observed that the chief operation of that epidemic was to exaggerate, but not importantly to mis-represent, the features of each locality; that the habitual sanitary proportions of districts to each other were for the most part preserved; that (with a qualification to which I shall presently revert) the wards numbering fewest deaths last year numbered also fewest this year. In my last Report, when the cholera had scarcely subsided, when men's minds were full of apprehension on the subject, and when there was every human probability (happily since refuted) that, with the recurrence of autumn, we should again suffer from its invasion, I was unwilling to dwell too pointedly on the wonderful pertinacity with which that disease fixes itself on particular localities, and tends to re-appear in them on each new occasion of its rise. Knowing that no extemporaneous measures could counteract these local preferences of the epidemic, I refrained from a course which would have produced no good result (unless indeed it had depopulated certain spots of the City) and which might have caused unavailing and hurtful alarm. Now, however, I think it right to tell you 23 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. that the local predilections of this dreadful disease are so marked and so obstinate, that we may almost certainly predict in what parts of the metropolis it would tend to arise on any renewed visitation. We may anticipate that at any such time its latent power of destruction will kindle again in the districts, the streets, the houses, perhaps even in the very rooms, where it recently prevailed, unless the determining local conditions shall previously have been annulled. It would be ridiculous if I should pretend to carry you into any medical consideration of this subject, or should make my present Report the vehicle of a professional argument; but I may very briefly acquaint you with such generalisations as will justify you in pursuing a particular course with respect to the haunts of cholera. While doing so, I hope your Honourable Court will believe that I have devoted to this very serious subject the best consideration of which I am capable, and have done my utmost to arrive at conclusions which may be fruitful of practical good. Cholera visited no localities of which it could be said, that they were generally healthy; but still there seemed to be something peculiar and specific in the kind of local unhealthiness which determined its invasion. On the one hand, it is unquestionably true that many habitual seats of fever were visited by cholera; on the other hand, many of the worst fever-nests in the whole metropolis were unaffected by it; and it struck with extreme severity in a class C 2 24 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. of houses habitually exempt from fever. See, for instance, how malignantly it prevailed along the line of Farringdon and New Bridge streets, and in Fleet street and Ludgate hill, where their line intersects that just mentioned; and here, you will observe, not only in those obscure and ill-ventilated courts and by-ways, where fever is the familiar visitant of a hungry and crowded population ; but also, and very strikingly, in spacious and airy houses, situate along the main thoroughfare of the City, and inhabited by opulent tradesmen, by members of the various professions, or by officers of assurance-companies. Other infective diseases which habitually desolate the former class of dwellings are almost unknown in the latter. Cholera came as a startling exception. Within the infected district (fulfilling the classical description of death) it trod with equal foot the gates of rich and poor. Personal peculiarities, or vicious habits, or temporary indiscretion, may often have determined its choice of a victim; low nourishment—even temporary emptiness and exhaustion, very manifestly invited its attack; but, speaking generally, I may say that it was a disease prevailing over a certain patch of ground, and (within this limit) tending to strike equally, or nearly equally, in all classes of habitations. Crowdedness of dwellings, defective ventilation, squalor of inhabitants, and many forms of local nuisance, which are omnipotent in giving occasion to fever, and in adding malignity to many 25 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. disorders of its class, did not by themselves exert so marked and specific a power in determining the onset of cholera. What then were the conditions determining its local preference ? Consideration of its statistics, or inspection of a cholera-map, enables one, with some confidence, to answer—a peculiar condition of soil, of which dampness is one sure and invariable character, and organic decomposition (promoted by dampness) probably another. Its local affinities have much analogy to those of ague, and often appear identical in their range with the sphere of malarious infection. Our entire metropolis, built down to the very margins of a large river—of a river, too, which, at each retreating tide, exposes acres of mud saturated with the reeking sewage of an immense population, is placed generally in circumstances not unfavourable to the development of the disease; and its several parts will be liable to suffer especially, in proportion as they are exposed to these general circumstances, or to special circumstances of their own of a like nature. The lower level of districts on the south side of the river, their attendant failure of natural land-drainage, the consequent soddenness of a soil from which likewise the materials of house-refuse were never efficiently removed, accounted sufficiently for the frightful epidemic mortality which prevailed in those quarters of the metropolis. If you now look to the disease as it raged within 26 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. 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 Oldbourne 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, 27 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. 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 28 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. diction 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. 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 29 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. 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." 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, prima 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 Honourable 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 30 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. 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* 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; with a statement at the foot of each column of the year's death-rate per thousand of the living in each such district or subdistrict. To this I have adjoined an analysis (which of course can be only approximative) of the actual population, as distributed in these several Registrars' divisions of the City. In the second† table are classified, according to the ages at which they befell, the deaths of the last two years; first separately, then conjointly; and in the latter form they are distributed as they occurred, among the three Unions of the City, so that you may observe any local differences which obtain as to the ages of chief mortality. In the third tablet, for the sake of comparison in respect both of general and of infant mortality, I * Appendix No. II. † Appendix No. III. ‡ Appendix No. IV. 31 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. have arranged the statistics of certain other localities side by side with our own. In the fourth* (to which I have already especially referred) is contained an enumeration, according to the several Wards of the City, of those deaths, during the last two years, which have arisen in consequence of acute disease partially or entirely preventable. In tables of this nature perfection is at present impossible; partly because of trifling changes in the population which often occur, but rarely can be estimated; partly because of the slovenly manner in which deaths are occasionally recorded. While, however, I would not consider myself responsible for their absolute and infinitesimal accuracy (consisting as they do of so many and so various details) I may assure your Honourable Court that all proper pains have been taken, to render them for every useful purpose correct and trustworthy; and that I believe them, in all essential particulars, truthfully to represent whatsoever I have sought to embody in them. The annual ratio of deaths within your district, the local differences of that ratio, the proportion of infantile mortality, the amount of preventable disease, and a comparison in all these respects of parts of the City with each other, and of the whole City with other inhabited districts,—these are the materials on which your judgment must be formed as to the necessity of sanitary measures, whether * Appendix No. V. 32 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. for the entire City, or for its component parts: and as a main object of the appointment which I have the honour to hold is that I should furnish you with materials for forming that judgment, so I may probably stand excused for troubling you with these considerations at such great length. 33 II. The Causes and the Prevention of Endemic Disease. According to the method adopted in my last Annual Report, I now proceed to offer you such observations as another year's experience may justify, on those physical influences which prevail against life within the City of London, and on those remedial measures which seem aptest to remove them. A. Sub-soil Drainage, House-Drainage, and Sewerage. 1. In respect of drainage, I have already adverted to those unwholesome conditions which prevail along the low-lying valley of the ancient Fleet, and have mentioned to you that frequent incursions of the river aggravate whatever mischief is inherent in the soil, by maintaining it as a perpetual swamp, and by favoring in it a constant succession of putrefactive changes. I have likewise illustrated to you the probability that, in some of the higher portions of the City, chiefly in the Out-Wards of Cripplegate and Bishopsgate, there still survive some properties of that old malarious fen, from which these districts were originally reclaimed. Stow 34 DRAINAGE. seems in his day to have had misgivings on this subject; for, after describing the improvements that had been effected there, and the gradual levelling and heightening of the ground, he adds; "it seemeth to me that if it be made level with the battlements of the city wall, yet will it be little the dryer, such was then the moorish nature of that ground." From a consideration of this former geography of the place, and from observation of the diseases which prevail there, I am led to think it highly probable, that some of its sanitary defects depend less on defective house-drainage than on a still marshy undrained condition of the ground itself, and that these defects, including the liability to cholera, would be removed by an efficient application of subsoil drainage. I would therefore respectfully recommend to you, under this head, that the state of soil in the specified districts be referred to competent authorities, and that such measures be adopted as inquiry may prove requisite, for relieving those parts where the sub-soil drainage is imperfect, and for protecting the house-foundations, and sewers, and sub-soil adjacent to the river, from being soaked or flooded by the tide. 2. With respect to house-drainage, I have no addition to offer to those remarks which I submitted to you in my last Report. Your Honourable Court has fully recognised that immense peril to life which 35 DRAINAGE. is connected with the presence of cesspools beneath houses, and which depends on their poisonous emanations. At the commencement of the present year, your Surveyor stated that he might take "5414, as a fair approximation of the number of cesspools" then in existence within the square mile of the City of London. This proportion, dangerously large as without doubt it is, presented an important diminution from the number which existed a year previously, when your Commission first obtained from the Legislature authority to enforce their closure; and it may reasonably be anticipated that at the termination of this present year, a still further abatement will be recorded in the magnitude of that destructive nuisance. 3. Notwithstanding the variety of stink-traps to which you have given trial, and notwithstanding the fact (recorded by your Committee of Health on the Surveyor's authority) that "there does not exist within your jurisdiction a single gully which is untrapped," there continue to be frequent complaints of offensive exhalations from the sewers. The mechanical difficulties in this matter of trapping have appeared to be, from the nature of the case, almost insuperable. It may, indeed, easily be conceived, how incompatible are the common uses of a gully-hole with such fineness of adjustment and delicacy of balance as would render the apparatus air-tight from within, and effectually preclude 36 DRAINAGE. an escape to the gaseous contents of a sewer. Under such circumstances, your Honourable Court has desired that I should express my opinion, how far a different course might be adopted in respect of these exhalations; how far, namely, they might be neutralised within the sewers; how far it might be chemically feasible, and in a sanitary point of view expedient, that a systematic use should be made of de-odorising agents; so that any gas escaping from the sewers should at least be divested of its original smell. On this subject, I would submit to you the following considerations. As respects its feasibility (putting aside as foreign to my province all questions of the expense, and all details of the daily arrangement) a first and obvious objection is this: Granted, in the abstract, that sewer-gases can be converted by appropriate agents into inodorous compounds; in the practical application of these agents, you would find impediments with which you are already familiar. Theoretically, there may be no difficulty in providing air-tight traps; practically, there is said to be every difficulty: just as that mechanical problem has defeated you in practice, so would the chemical one; and for the same reason. The fulfilment of either problem is a matter of nice adjustment: in proportion as your gully-hole is exquisitely trapped, it becomes liable to obstruction; it loses its use as an inlet to the sewer, nearly in the same measure as it becomes an effective obstacle to 37 DRAINAGE. regurgitant gases. Similarly, in proportion as these alleged de-odorisers might succeed in completely stifling the characteristic odour of sewage, they would be liable to diffuse perfumes peculiarly their own, and to establish, in the vicinity of gully-holes, the alternation of a new nuisance with the old. To proportion with accuracy the introduction of these chlorinous preparations to the amount of refuse traversing the sewers—an amount varying most considerably at different hours of the day, seems to me quite a visionary hope. Failing such accurate proportions, I am not prepared to say that the result would be useful; and I accordingly consider the scheme as not chemically feasible. Further—as involving an important sanitary principle, I would say, that the great object which must be aimed at is not the mere chemical neutralisation of certain stinks which arise within your jurisdiction, but the closest possible limitation, and the promptest possible removal of all those materials which are decomposed into foetid products. Admirable, no doubt, is that arrangement by which Nature, stationing our sense of smell at the inlet of our breath, cautions us by this vigilant sentinel against the inhalation of many poisonous airs; but, in respect of organic decomposition, 1 am in no degree induced to believe that its odorous products are its only, or even its principal, agents of injury; nor have I any reason to suppose that the real detriment to health which arises from breathing the miasms of sewers or d 38 DRAINAGE. marshes, of cesspools, burial-grounds, or slaughterhouses, would in any important degree be lessened by the mere mitigation of fœtor in their effluvia. Offensive as these are, they at least answer the useful purpose of warning us against the other poisons with which they are associated. Let me likewise take the opportunity of correcting a mis-apprehension, which, by the use of an inappropriate word, is sometimes shown to exist on this subject. The agents in question are spoken of as dis-infectant. As there is no scientific reason whatever for believing that they in any degree interfere with the spread of epidemic or infectious disease, and as an erroneous opinion on this point may lead to the neglect of measures which are truly precautionary and useful, I think it well to state explicitly, for your information, that there is no evidence of their possessing any other utility, in the respects under consideration, than simply and singly that of removing stink from the atmosphere around them. For reducing to a minimum the exhalations which arise from sewers and house-drains, it appears to me that the following are the essential principles: First, to render the current through them as rapid as possible; and above all, by every care for their form, their junctions, their slope, and their material, to provide against the occurrence of obstructions and deposit: Secondly, to employ in their construction, so far as may be possible, such substancs as 39 DRAINAGE. are porous in the least procurable degree; such as consequently will be least apt to imbibe and retain in their interstices any considerable impregnation from the foetid fluids running over them at intervals; such, too, as will be least likely to permit soakage into the surrounding soil: thirdly, by reducing the size of drains and sewers to the lowest dimensions compatible with a full performance of their uses, to diminish to the utmost the extent of their interior evaporating surface, and of those large chambers which they now offer for the evolution, retention, and diffusion of gases. To the application of these principles (together with a sufficient and appropriate distribution of water) far more than to chemical agents, or to the invention of mechanical traps, I believe that you must look for rendering inodorous the vicinity of your numerous gully-holes. I content myself with stating them to you, as a practical deduction from physical laws, without venturing to offer any opinion on the degree in which they are applicable within your jurisdiction, or on the manner in which they should be applied. For although, as principles, they have their foundation in physics, and although their importance to sanitary improvement is beyond measure great, all details relating to their application lie out of my province, and belong to a class of subjects in which your Surveyor's opinion will, of course, be infinitely more useful to you than mine. D 2 40 B. Water-Supply. During the past year, as in the preceding one, I have given frequent consideration to the subject of water-supply within the City. I have already endeavoured to convey to you the deep sense which I entertain of its importance, and I have every reason to believe that your Honourable Court recognizes, at its full weight, the necessity of providing for the City of London a supply of water which in quantity shall be ample, in quality pure, in distribution constant and accessible. In my former Annual Report, and in some remarks subsequently addressed to your Committee of Health, I dwelt especially on such defects of our present system as relate to the quantity and distribution of water; endeavouring to illustrate the insufficiency of its supply to the poorer tenements of the City, and the extreme inconvenience which is entailed on their inmates, sometimes by dependence on a common tap, sometimes by the troublesome, expensive, and unwholesome necessity of storing water. In reverting to this subject, I may correct a fallacy which is apt to prevail with respect to the abundance of supply. I have no reason whatever to doubt that a very liberal allowance of water is daily 41 WATER-SUPPLY. pumped into theCity—enough,or more than enough, so far as I know, to fulfil all necessary purposes. But those purposes are not fulfilled by it. A certain large figure is stated as representing the average quantity daily driven through the mains of the City; this quantity is divided by the number of residents within your area, and the inference is drawn that each individual inmate of the City has at his disposal 25 gallons a day; or (after deduction for public purposes and the like) 211/4 for his domestic supply. As an arithmetical conclusion from the premises this may be true: nothing can be less accurate as a practical representation of the facts. An average amount of three million gallons per diem may, or may not, be pumped through the mains of the City: but to calculate the available water-supply from this dividend, without previous deduction for the immense escape of un-available water by wastepipes or otherwise, gives a most fictitious result. The large waste which naturally arises in the system of intermittent supply has been well illustrated by some evidence given by Mr. Lovick before the late Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, in respect of a particular block of nearly 1200 houses. "Some of the houses were of the higher, and many of the poorer class, but the average might be stated to be of the middle class, and to present a fair example of an urban population. The drainage of all these houses was discharged through one main sewer. The run of water through this sewer was carefully watched and 42 WATER-SUPPLY. gauged every hour, during the night as well as the day, on days when the water was on, that is to say, when the intermittent supplies were delivered, and also on the ordinary days, when the consumption of the houses was from butts and cisterns, into which the intermittent supplies were delivered. The gaugings of the discharge of waste water into the sewer were checked by gaugings of the consumption of water from the butts and cisterns, during the intervals of the delivery of the supply by the company. It was ascertained that the average quantity discharged per diem through the sewers was 441/2 gallons per house; but it appeared that, on the days when the intermittent supplies of water were on, the quantity discharged per diem was 209 gallons per house. The waste in this district from defects in house-apparatus of distribution, incident to an intermittent supply of water, was, on the water days, three and three quarter times greater than the consumption on those days." No similar gaugings have, I believe, been made within the City; so I am unable to tell you with accuracy what are the proportions of waste and consumption. In an interview with your Committee on Health, when they were collecting information on the subject, Mr. Mylne, the engineer of the New River Company, stated (as a reason against fulfilling some object desired by the Committee) that within the City of London, in connection with its distributing apparatus, there existed for the escape and 43 WATER-SUPPLY. waste of water, during the period of supply, "at least 10,000 open cocks." Assuming the accuracy of this statement, I doubt whether the average available supply of water for domestic purposes within the City, can possibly exceed a quarter of its alleged quantity; and I am persuaded that there must be large numbers of persons to whom the enjoyment even of that reduced average is utterly unknown. Your Honourable Court, observing the incalculable waste, and knowing that the cost of water-supply (as of all other commodities) must of necessity vary according to the quantity supplied, can appreciate the consequences of so much fruitless expenditure. I would beg likewise to observe to you, that this unapplied flood of water is in itself not unobjectionable. It would be of questionable advantage, if the drainage of the City were so perfect as to carry all away without inundation of the soil; while under opposite circumstances, in every quarter where drainage is absent or faulty, evil must arise from the extensive and habitual infiltration of moisture. On the extreme inconvenience which attends the storage of water in the poorer habitations of the City, I have already reported to you, and will now only add that increased experience has given much confirmation to my view. Their receptacles are generally such as contribute to the contamination of water, and are constantly so arranged as to invite an admixture of the most varied impurities. 44 WATER-SUPPLY. In the large proportion of them, which are open casks, one sees habitually a film of soot floating on the surface; one sees (if, indeed, one can see so deeply into water which is often turbid and opaque) that filth and rubbish lie at the bottom; one sees the interior of the cask itself dirty and mouldering. I now merely glance at this part of the subject, because you have already on other occasions allowed me to state my knowledge at greater length. But there is one evil in particular to which I would beg leave to advert. Those works of drainage which are established under your orders depend for their efficiency on a proper supply of water; and in every case where you enforce the construction of housedrains, you order that those drains shall be served efficiently with water. Your wishes on this subject are nominally complied with by those on whom your orders are served, but are often virtually evaded by a filthy and ineffectual contrivance. The butt or cistern of the house—that on which the inmates depend for their supply of fresh and pure drinking-water, is placed in immediate contiguity to the privy, so as to reduce the requisite length of connecting pipe to the fewest possible number of inches; the application of water is not made discretionary on the users of the privy, nor are any of the cheap and common self-acting contrivances introduced; but the waste-pipe of the butt or cistern is conducted into the discharge-pipe of the privy, so that, periodically, with a frequency varying 45 WATER-SUPPLY. cording to the arrangements of the water-company, the arrears of excrement are removed, so far as the surplusage of the water-receptacle may have p6wer to dislodge and propel them. Frequent evidence has been before me of the insufficiency of this arrangement: and, in addition to its actual failure (on the reasons of which your Surveyor can speak more competently than I) there is strong reason to object to its prevalence on other grounds. Water, as you probably know, is a very active absorbent of many gaseous materials; and the open butts, which are thus placed in immediate contact and communication with privies, must rapidly become infected by their foulness. I need not explain to you how injurious an addition this is to the other objectionable incidents of water-storage, or how unattractive as a beverage to the poor inhabitants of the City must be this vapid, privy-flavoured stuff. For this arrangement I can suggest to your Honourable Court no alternative or remedy, so long as the distribution of water continues to be on its present intermittent plan: but it is matter for extreme regret that, by circumstances over which you have no control, the success of your sanitary measures should be seriously diminished. By the enforcement or execution of house-drainage, your Honourable Court has conferred great advantages on many districts of the City; but it is my duty to tell you that, in my judgment, the present condition of the water-trade contributes to neutralise those 46 WATER-SUPPLY. tages, and constitutes a restriction on your power of doing good. As respects the evils to which I have just adverted, unquestionably they admit of abatement by devoting separate water-receptacles to the very different uses of diet and drainage. But the expense of additional cisternage in tenements so poor cannot be considered trifling; and I believe that your Honourable Court would hesitate, even if you have the power, to enforce this double burthen on the owners of house-property, at a time when one may reasonably hope that the necessity for cisterns will be superseded. There can be no doubt on the extreme degree in which it is desirable for the poor of the City of London, that water should be delivered to their houses on the principle of constant supply, and that they should thus be relieved from the expensive and unwholesome necessity of storing it in small quantities and in improper receptacles. That it is desirable is a certainty within my official knowledge, and on which therefore I can give an opinion of my own. That it is practicable, is not within my official knowledge; for in this part of the question are involved various considerations of hydraulic engineering, on which I am incompetent to offer an opinion. But I cannot ignore the fact that, in many parts of England and Scotland, the practicability of a constant supply has been evinced by the very conclusive evidence of its success. To some such 47 WATER-SUPPLY. instances I alluded in my last Report, and from the present year I can quote you a striking additional one. At Wolverhampton, in 1849, the system of supply, which had previously been intermittent, was made continuous. Instead of waste ensuing on the change, its immediate effect was a reduction of 22 per cent, on the quantity consumed. So great had been the unpopularity of the intermittent system of supply, that at the time of the change the company had not more than 600 customers. Immediately on the adoption of the new system, their customers increased, and within ten months had risen to 1400. This increase was continuing up to the date of the Report (May 4th, 1850) at which time they were adding to the number of their customers at the rate of 50 each week. The above facts (as is well observed by the resident engineer, Mr. Marten) may be taken as a fair test that the system of continuous supply is one of superior adaptation to the domestic wants of the public. This case is but an inconsiderable fraction of the evidence which lies before the public on the subject of continuous supply. With such evidence before me, in contrast to what I observe of the distribution of water within the City of London, I cannot refrain from repeating to your Honourable Court my confirmed and deliberate opinion, that our method of supply is essentially bad, and that it withholds from the poorer population of the City a large proportion of those sanitary advantages which it is the object 48 WATER-SUPPLY. of water to confer. No doubt it will occur to you, that against evils of this nature—evils arising in the conflictive interests of water-buyer and water-seller, the first principles of commerce imply a resource; and that in this matter, as in others of the sort, a customer holds in his own hands the remedy for his dissatisfaction. But although the supply of water, in the hands of the powerful companies who vend it, is in many respects a common transaction of trade, and as such is in theory open to competition, yet I would beg to point out to your Honourable Court, that in regard of the City under your jurisdiction, no such check and no such stimulus as competition can virtually be said to exist. In every practical sense the sale of water is a monopoly. The individual customer, dwelling in Cripplegate or in Farringdon, who is dissatisfied with his bargain in water, can go to no other market; and however legitimate may be his claim to be supplied with this prime necessary of life at its cheapest rate, in the most efficient manner, and of the best possible quality, your Honourable Court, hitherto, possesses no power to enforce it. All who have given impartial consideration to the subject seem to concur as to the advantages which result from a control over the supply and distribution of water being possessed by those who are responsible for the drainage and cleanliness of a district. These different duties are in such essential relation to each other that they would seem 49 WATER-SUPPLY. most of necessity to require a single direction and control. House-drainage pre-supposes water-supply; water-supply pre-supposes house-drainage; the efficiency of either implies their mutual adaptation; just as the circulation of blood within an animal body implies uninterrupted continuity of arteries and veins, each harmonising with the uses of the other, to ensure the efficiency of the whole. But while the works of drainage executed under your orders lose much of their sanitary usefulness for want of an effectual water-supply, your Honourable Court has no power of interference in the matter, closely associated as it is with the performance of your other functions. These anomalies would be removed, and a most beneficial power over the distribution of water would be vested in the hands of your Commission, if in the renewal of your Act of Parliament, you procured authority to represent the citizens in this matter. All the advantages which could possibly be gained by competition, together with many benefits which no competition could ensure, would thus be realized to the population under your charge; if, namely, a clause were inserted in your Bill, empowering you, at your discretion, to contract corporately with any person or any company for the supply of water to the City of London. In the Public Health Act (passed simultaneously with yours) an enactment of this nature exists, authorising local boards of health to "provide their district with such a supply of water as may be proper 50 WATER-SUPPLY. and sufficient," and for this purpose "to contract with any person whomsoever to do and execute all such works, matters, and things as shall be necessary and proper, and to require that houses shall be supplied with water," and to "make and levy water rates upon the premises, at a rate not exceeding twopence per week." With a power like this in your hands, you would easily enforce for the City of London whatever method of supply you might deliberately believe to be best; and you would then be enabled and entitled, in the application of other clauses in your Act, to require of landlords acting under your orders, a far completer, though less expensive, improvement of their property than you are yet in a position to obtain. In submitting to your Honourable Court my views as to the expediency of your having a controlling power over the supply of water, I am glad to find myself supported by the recorded opinion of the present Lord Mayor, himself formerly the chairman of a commission of sewers; and I am induced to believe that such an addition to your functions might not be objectionable to the water companies, as I observe that Sir William Clay, the chairman of two metropolitan companies, has expressed himself strongly on its "great and obvious convenience." 2. Of equal importance with anything which relates to the distribution of water are those momentous questions which relate to its quality, and 51 WATER-SUPPLY. which tend to determine its fitness for human consumption. Considering the great share of public attention which these questions at present very properly obtain, the many projects which are broached for improving the quality of our metropolitan supply, and the importance of your being in a position to decide as to the merits of any plan which may affect the City of London, I have thought it desirable in this Report to submit to you some general observations on the subject. During the last few months, I have accordingly been collecting such information as might, in my judgment, be useful for this purpose. In pursuing one portion of my enquiry—that which relates to the chemical constitution of certain waters, I have availed myself of the permission of your Honourable Court to procure a limited amount of assistance from some one more conversant than myself with the practice of analysis. For this purpose I have addressed myself to Mr. Taylor, lately Lecturer on Chemistry at St. Thomas's Hospital, a gentleman in whose skill and impartiality I can implicitly trust. His account of the very careful analyses which he has made is subjoined to my Report*. Concurrently with the experience of other chemists, it has furnished me with material for many of the conclusions which I am about to lay before you. The water which is supplied by the New-River and East London companies for the consumption * Appendix No. VI. 52 WATER-SUPPLY. of the City of London is substantially of one kind. The River Lea, on which the East London Company entirely depends, furnishes likewise much of the supply conveyed by the New River*. The springs in which the latter originate are of the same chemical kind as those which contribute to the Lea; and the artificial aqueduct runs its forty miles of course through much the same country as the natural river. Chemically, therefore, one description may apply to both; and I the rather speak of them conjointly, as any extension of its resources for our supply which the New River might obtain, would apparently be provided by increasing considerably its present draught from the Lea. The pipe-water consumed in the City has for its general chemical character, that it contains a considerable quantity of carbonate of lime, held in solution by an excess of carbonic acid. To this and another salt of lime (the sulphate) the water chiefly owes the property which is complained of under the name of hardness: it is by reason of these salts, namely, that (if used as drawn) it decomposes a certain large proportion of whatever soap is used * It appears that the New River Company at present derives about two thirds of its supply from the River Lea, and proposes to draw from this source a still larger proportion. Any chemical difference of quality in the City pipe-water (as between that supplied by the New River and that by the East London Company) would probably not exceed those limits of difference which prevail in respect of waters gathered under varying circumstances from one and the same source. 53 WATER-SUPPLY. with it, and (till those salts are exhausted by a wasted proportion of soap, or by boiling or otherwise) prevents the formation of a lather, and hinders to that extent the several purposes for which soap is employed. You are probably aware that soda is extensively used in the laundry, as an antidote to this objectionable quality of hard waters; and the excess of its employment tends, by corrosion, very observably to hasten the destruction of washing articles of dress. In the same measure as water possesses the property of decomposing soap, its utility as an universal solvent is impaired; it extends to various other substances which one seeks to dissolve in it (especially to many vegetable matters) the same disposition to waste them in the form of insoluble precipitates. Its conveniences for the purposes of cooking and manufacture are pari passu diminished. Of the actual extent to which these disadvantages are sustained within the City of London, I have no means of forming an accurate opinion; but statements are before the public (from the general correctness of which I have no reason to withhold reliance and belief) rating the pecuniary loss to the metropolis, in the two articles of soap and tea, at a very high figure. You will see from Mr. Taylor's observations the proportion in which waste occurs, as regards one of these articles; namely that, for the production of a lather in washing, the pipewater of the City of London, used without boiling, e 54 WATER-SUPPLY. consumes from 13 to 19 times as much soap as distilled water would consume*. The chemical constitution of these waters occasions another inconvenience. Their carbonate of lime is held in solution (in the chemical form of bicarbonate) by an excess of carbonic acid: under the influence of heat this excess is gradually disengaged and driven off; consequently, as they approach the boiling point, they begin to precipitate the earthy salt which that gas was instrumental in dissolving. Each gallon of water under these circumstances would deposit from ten to fifteen grains of earthy matter on the interior of whatever vessel might contain it, or on the surface of whatever solid—linen or mutton, might be contained in the boiler. Hence arises the well-known furring of vessels in which such waters have habitually been boiled. *It has been alleged that, by the use of soft water, the saving in soap would probably be equivalent to the whole of the money at present expended on water-supply; and that in the article of tea, the economy would amount to about one third of the tea now consumed in the metropolis. It strikes me as possible that, in forming these estimates, the argument may have proceeded too much from a consideration of the hardness of London waters in their unboiled state; and that sufficient allowance may not have been made for the change which boiling produces. If boiling were prolonged for some hours before culinary or detergent use of the water, the results (for tea or soap) would be identical with those produced under the employment of soft water. Notoriously this precaution is not taken: but to avoid disputable ground, I confine myself to the fact of considerable pecuniary loss, arising from the cause in question, and I avoid any attempt to determine its exact amount. 55 WATER-SUPPLY. I refrain from dwelling on the economical considerations which arise in these points of the subject, as very obvious inferences from the result of chemical analysis; and I pass to other matters more strictly within my own province of observation. Is water thus constituted in any degree detrimental to the health of those who drink it? It is not in a single word that this question can be fairly answered. Almost insuperable difficulty belongs to it, from the absence of any statistical method by which we might isolate the water-drinking portion of our population (a minority not defined in the census), and might compare them, in regard of the diseases to which they arc liable, with similar sections of population in soft-water districts and in harder-water districts. Obviously, no other method of comparison can be unobjectionable; and, in arguing the subject from such materials as I have, I can pretend to nothing more than a rational approximation to truth. Except in the comparatively few instances where active medicinal agents are naturally dissolved in a water, its effects (when injurious) would be so slow as to elude ordinary observation. If, as is exceedingly probable, the same constitution of water as impairs its solvency out of the body, do likewise operate against its being the most eligible menstruum or dissolvent for processes occurring within the body—such processes I mean as attend the act of digestion; if the lime and other hardening in- e 2 56 WATER-SUPPLY. gredients which waste soap in our laundries, and tea in our parlours, do similarly waste within us those organic agencies by which our food is dissolved and converted; any result arising from this source would be of gradual operation, would not easily admit of being traced to its source, and (except in susceptible persons) would rarely produce such symptoms as might immediately draw attention to their cause. The ill effects (whatever they may be) arising from the use of hard waters must be looked for in chronic impairment of digestion, and in those various derangements of nutrition in distant parts (the skin and teeth particularly) which follow as secondary results on such chronic disorder. It would be ridiculous to look for the operation of an ill-chosen water, after its habitual use during two centuries, as though one were inquiring for the symptoms of an acute poison. The signs that are to be ascertained among a population, if such signs exist, are those which would evidence a premature exhaustion of the power of digestion, and would testify that the machine on which we depend for that power had been exposed to unnecessary and avoidable fatigue. This, I believe, is the utmost which Medicine, proceeding from theoretical grounds, would venture to say on the subject. Perhaps I need not inform you that indigestion, with all that follows from it, is so frequent in the metropolis, in persons after the first strength of youth, that, for large classes of society, a perfect 57 WATER-SUPPLY. discharge of the natural process of digestion (such a discharge of it as a lecturer would describe to be the exact type and intention of Nature) is exceptional and rare. Unquestionably, in large numbers of cases, wine, and beer, and spirits, have more than water to do with this effect. Unquestionably, other influences of metropolitan life—and, not least, the mental wear and tear which belong to its large excitement, contribute immensely to this chronic derangement of health; but there are reasons likewise for believing, that the quality of water consumed is not a matter of indifference to the result. We cannot but give it an important place among those influences of health or unhealth which we consider local; and we cannot refuse to recognise the fact, that in recommending our patients (as we do often recommend them) to try "change of air" for complaints which baffle us by their obstinacy, so long as the subject of them remains in London, the course on which we rely for success implies "change of water," equally with that other change to which more popular importance is attached. In illustration of this view, I may quote to you the experience of two other towns. Dr. Sutherland stated, in evidence before the General Board of Health, that having lived for a number of years at Liverpool (where the water is said to be of about the same degree of hardness as ours) he had long entertained a conviction that "the hard water, in a certain class of constitutions, tends to produce 58 WATER-SUPPLY. visceral obstructions; that it diminishes the natural secretions, produces a constipated or irregular state of the bowels, and consequently deranges the health. He had repeatedly known these complaints to vanish on leaving the town, and to re-appear immediately on returning to it, and it was such repeated occurrences which fixed his attention on the hard selenitic water of the new red sandstone as the probable cause, as he believed it to be, of these affections." (Rep. p. 51.) And Dr. Leach of Glasgow stated before the same Board, as the result in that town of two years experience of a substitution of soft for hard drinking-water, that, in his opinion, "dyspeptic complaints had become diminished in number and that it had "been observed, since this change, urinary diseases have become less frequent, especially those attended by the deposition of gravel." Inferences useful for ourselves cannot be drawn from statements like the above, on the fullest assumption of their accuracy, without comparing the waters referred to with our own, more completely than is done by the one characteristic of "hardness and there may likewise be other qualifications requisite for an application of the analogy. But those disorders of health which are specified by the gentlemen quoted, as produced by the use and diminished by the disuse of hard waters, are such as might very probably stand in the relation of effect to their alleged cause; results, namely, primary and secondary, of disordered digestion. 59 WATER-SUPPLY. Practically, I may tell you, that there are many individuals whose stomachs are extremely sensitive to the impression of hard water, who derive immediate inconvenience from its use, and who refuse to drink it without artificial reduction of its objectionable quality. I may likewise inform you that a physician, recently deceased, whose knowledge of indigestion and its chronic effects (especially in relation to the skin and urinary organs) was most profound and accurate, and whose consulting practice in such disorders was for many years almost a monopoly (I mean Dr. Prout) was in the habit of enjoining on his patients the use of distilled water. He evidently considered that the consumption of such waters as are habitually drunk in the metropolis was detrimental, at least to an enfeebled digestion. This is an opinion which, I have reason to believe, is generally entertained by medical practitioners in London. It may not be irrelevant to mention to you (since the influence of imagination or of artificial habits can have little to do with this result) that horses are liable to be much inconvenienced by hard water, if unaccustomed to its use; and it is, I believe, notorious that grooms in charge of racers habitually take the trouble of conveying with them, to their temporary racing stables, a supply of the accustomed water. Veterinary surgeons say that under the continued use of hard water, which horses will avoid if possible, their coats become rough and staring;— 60 WATER-SUPPLY. an effect, I may observe, analogous to those skindisorders of the human subject which are apt to occur from impairment of the digestive functions. Taking into account all these considerations, together with others of a more technical description; and believing that water is eligible for human consumption in proportion as it is free from the admixture of any material foreign to its simple elementary constitution—exception being made only of so much dissolved air as will render it sparkling and palatable; I entertain no doubt that a water, devoid of considerable hardness, would (cæteris paribus) for the purposes of cooking and beverage, be far preferable to that which the companies now distribute through the City of London. Hitherto, however, I have spoken of the waters supplied to the City, merely as regards that large impregnation of earthy material which they gather from their source; and I have criticised them only in respect of that admixture. Their essential chemical quality is one native to the soil from which they are derived; and whatever censure thus far belongs to them could only have been avoided by the selection of a different source. Chemistry, in the days of Morrys and Myddleton, was not sufficiently advanced to inform the water-merchants of a city on those different conditions which determine the fitness of a soil to serve as the natural or artificial gathering-ground of a supply, and by which (as they vary in different localities) hardness is imparted to the 61 WATER-SUPPLY. rain-fall of one district, while softness is preserved for that of another. But there are other evils belonging to these waters, less appreciable indeed by chemistry, but open to universal observation, and meriting unqualified blame. They are conducted to the metropolis in open channels; they receive in large measure the surface-washing, the drainage, and even the sewage of the country through which they pass; they derive casual impurities from bathers and barges; they are liable to whatever pollutions mischievous or filthy persons may choose to inflict on them; and then on their arrival in the metropolis (after a short subsidence in reservoirs, which themselves are not unobjectionable) are distributed, without filtration, to the public. Whatever chemistry may say on this subject (and I need not remind you of very powerful causes of disease which lie beyond its cognisance) I cannot consider it matter of indifference, that we drink—with whatever dilution, or with whatever imperfect oxidation, the excremental and other impurities which mingle in these sources of our supply. Such admixtures, though in their quantity less, are in their quality identical with those which render Thames-water, as taken at London Bridge, inadmissible for domestic consumption, and which occasion it, when stored for sea-use, to undergo, before it becomes fit to drink, a succession of offensive changes strictly comparable to putrefaction. 62 WATER-SUPPLY. In this slovenly method of conveyance and distribution there is a neglect of common precaution for the purity and healthfulness of the supply, which I must report to you as highly objectionable: and this—the method of supply to our great metropolis, strikes one the more with astonishment and disgust, as one reflects on the long experience and admirable models which past centuries in foreign countries have supplied; and especially, as one remembers those colossal works which, more than two thousand years ago, were constructed under the Roman government, for the cool and cleanly conduction of water. The present imperfections of knowledge forbid me to cite, as definite causes of disease, the contaminations to which I have adverted: I cannot say to you—pointing to our classified list of sickness and mortality, this depends on drinking the diluted drainage of Hertford, that on the contributions of Ware. Indeed I know that, under the influence of the river and the atmosphere, very considerable changes occur in the materials thus furnished, tending eventually to render them inert; and if injury to life occur from their ingestion, it is probably only under peculiar and exceptional conditions, increasing their quantity, or delaying their oxidation. In protesting against their continued distribution as articles of diet, I therefore insist less on inferences deducible from medicine, and shall probably have the concurrence of your Honourable Court 63 WATER-SUPPLY. in grounding my appeal on the common principles of taste. On the incidental contaminations to which the pipe-water consumed within the City becomes liable, by reason of its storage in receptacles both foul in themselves and surrounded by causes of foulness, I have already addressed you; and I have shown to you the dependence of this evil on the system of intermittent supply as adapted to the houses of the poor. Of other sources of water-supply existing within the City of London, there are many of small extent in the form of superficial springs. These are eagerly sought after, sometimes from a distance, on account of their coolness, and sparkling condition. In the Appendix you will find an account of one of these waters, that in the vicinity of Bishopsgate church, which is very much drunk in that quarter of the City. Any praise given to it illustrates exceedingly the fallacy of popular judgment on such subjects, and shows how easily those qualities of coolness and freshness, which are absent from stored waters, impose on the palate, and induce a preference to be given to waters which are relatively most objectionable. The chemical faults which belong to our London pipe-water are possessed in a far greater degree by this water of Bishopsgate pump, and the latter has moreover some vices which are absent from the former; but the vapidity and fustiness of water 64 WATER-SUPPLY. which has been stored in cisterns are so repugnant to the taste, that the water chemically preferable is not in practice preferred. To the use of waters of this description, within a large City, there is always much objection. In addition to extreme hardness, which in London they universally possess, they are liable, in a dangerous degree, to become contaminated by the leakage of drains, and by other sources of impurity; as, for instance, where situated within the immediate vicinity of grave-yards, they derive products of animal decomposition from the soil*. Very recently, a celebrated pump within the City of London, that adjoining St. Bride's church-yard, has been abandoned on account of such impregnations. Or perhaps I should rather say (for the difference again illustrates the readiness with which the palate is deceived or corrupted) that it was not abandoned—for till almost the last moment the neighbours adhered to it with fondness; but the parochial authorities—alarmed by the proximity of cholera—caused its handle to be locked. As an available source of supply to the City of London, the use of deep (Artesian) wells has been *This is illustrated in the analysis of Bishopsgate pump-water, given in my Appendix. The very large quantity of nitrates, there referred to that water, must be due to the oxidation of human bodies in the adjoining soil, which serves in part as gatheringground to the spring. I should fear that, during rain-fall, this oxidation of organic compounds may not always have completed itself, and that materials of decomposition still in progress of decay may thus often be mingled in the water. 65 WATER-SUPPLY. recommended: the clearness and softness of these waters, together with their freedom from organic matters, having concurred to suggest their employment. I feel bound to express the strongest opinion against the fitness of these waters for the purpose of beverage. They uniformly contain a considerable proportion of medicinal ingredients; they are capable of exerting definite and demonstrable influence over the natural actions of the body; and information is before me of various injury to health, affecting large numbers of persons, arising from the continued dietetic use of such waters. In addressing your Honourable Court on the subject of Water-supply for the City, it is impossible that I should do otherwise than advert to the fact, that, during the last few months, under the auspices of Her Majesty's government, as represented for sanitary purposes by the General Board of Health, a plan has been gradually maturing itself, for the supply of the entire metropolis with pure soft water. Founding itself on very extensive investigations as to the qualities of water, as to the influence of soils on its chemical composition, as to the relation between streams and rain-fall, as to the hydraulic principles of distribution, and the like, this plan proposes to gather water in certain silicious soils, which can impart to it the least possible admixture of foreign ingredients; to conduct it in closed channels, with every precaution for its perfect purity; and to distribute it throughout the metropolis, at a rate 66 WATER-SUPPLY. which shall be from 30 to 50 per cent. less than our present water-charges. The proposed area for the collection of this supply is in the extensive range of sandy soil in the south of Surrey, extending around Farnham, about ten miles in each direction. Since the publication of the first Report made on this subject by the General Board of Health, unremitting inquiry has been advancing, under their direction, into all details of the plan; and the Honourable William Napier, who, with others, has been engaged in the investigation of the proposed sources, has advocated an important modification, which promises to reduce very considerably the anticipated expense of the undertaking. The essential and most important principles which governed the Board, in arranging their plan, were, first, to seek their supply in a silicious soil, where little soluble material could exist for its contamination; secondly, to take possession of the water so near to its source that all its original purity might be preserved; and, during conduction, to isolate it from those contaminations which are incidental to the onward passage of a stream through miles of promiscuous country. To fulfil these indications, there were two conceivable courses; and studious local inquiries could alone determine which of them was preferable: on the one hand, if the streams which represent the natural drainage of the country should be found uniformly pure and copious, they might admit of being conducted bodily into the 67 WATER-SUPPLY. artificial river of supply; on the other hand, it might be requisite to carry the interference of art still further, to absorb the filtering moisture of this large sand-district before it had become confluent into streams, and thus from day to day, by extensively ramified works of artificial sub-drainage, to derive immediately from the soil, the varying contributions of rain-fall and dew. The Board, apparently solicitous for the completer security of their plan, preferred to estimate its cost on the latter very expensive supposition; they allowed apparently for the diffusion of drain-pipes over 150 square miles of country, and for a reservoir which should contain storage of water equivalent to a very long metropolitan consumption. The later examination, made by Mr. Napier and confirmed by others, tends and appears to show, that these large sources of expense may be avoided; that the waters may be collected of unusual purity and softness, where they have united themselves into rivulets of considerable volume; that the gauged and estimated discharge of these rivulets is sufficient day by day for the needs of the metropolis, according to the largest construction of those needs; that capillary drain-pipes and very extensive storage-room may thus be dispensed with; and that under the modification of arrangement suggested by these facts, some very large reduction might be inferred for the total estimate of this comprehensive plan. Many of these particulars are already before the 68 WATER-SUPPLY. public; but in a matter of so much importance to the health of the City, as that of participating in a supply of pure water, collected and distributed on the soundest principles, and sold at the cheapest rate, I did not think it would become me, as your Officer of Health, to remain an indolent auditor. I have felt it my duty to inform myself, so far as I could, on the real merits of this scheme, and on its probable relation hereafter to the sanitary condition of the metropolis. I have spent three days on the site of the proposed sources, and many other days in informing myself on all the bearings of the subject. I have likewise collected water from a proposed tributary of the future supply, which has been analysed, and which shows (as my Appendix will illustrate to you) a remarkable and rare excellence. On one occasion of visiting the country, I was accompanied by Mr. T. Taylor, and we made on the spot a sufficient number of extemporaneous examinations, to assure us that the essential features, shewn in the more elaborate analysis, are (as geological considerations would lead us to believe) the general characters of water throughout the district. On any other than the sanitary relations of this subject I can have nothing officially to say; but, confining myself to these relations, I may certify to your Honourable Court that the water in question is, in my judgment, of a quality admirably suited for domestic purposes; that its distribution through the 69 WATER-SUPPLY. City of London would conduce to the health and comfort of the population; and that the principles, proposed by the Board for its collection and conveyance, appear to me such as sanitary science, in its present condition, should counsel for the waterservice of the metropolis. There is, however, one aspect of the subject which must not pass unconsidered. Water that is free from earthy ingredients requires a peculiar distributory apparatus. If conveyed in leaden pipes with access of air, or if stored in leaden cisterns, it corrodes the metal of which they are composed, and is liable to derive from this source an impregnation very hazardous to life. Under certain circumstances, especially under alternations of air and water (such as occur in the intermittent supply) or where organic impurities are held in solution or suspension, or probably where from any cause uncombined carbonic acid is present, even the hardest waters are not free from this risk. Speaking generally, however, it affects soft water chiefly; distilled water most of all: and the Farnham water (in common with all pure water) is decidedly liable to this empoisonment, if used with leaden apparatus of conduction and storage. In my Appendix you will find some interesting particulars on this head; and you will observe that with experiments conducted by Mr. Taylor in imitation of the constant supply (i. e. with total submersion of the metal) the formation of carbonate of lead in the Farnham water was ex- F 70 WATER-SUPPLY. ceedingly gradual. This concurs with the alleged experience of Aberdeen, where it is said by Professor Clark to have been found (to my mind, by a somewhat dangerous trial) that pure and soft water, distributed on the principle of constant supply, does not exert on the leaden pipes any action injurious to the health of the population. You will likewise observe, that when hard water, as at present employed in the City, is softened by boiling, it acquires this property of pure water, and becomes capable of acting on lead: and here is an important observation, as it has been proposed by similar artificial means, employed on a very large scale, to soften all the water now distributed in the metropolis. Obviously—as regards one and all of the many proposals for supplying water destitute of hardening ingredients, any chemical process, or any change of source, which might lead to the distribution of such pure water through the metropolis, could not be considered as a single and separate reform, but must be undertaken conjointly with such alterations in the distributive arrangements as might be requisite for removing from the new plan any chance, however slight or remote, of injuring the population by metallic poison. What those alterations must be, it would now be premature to decide. The experience of Aberdeen might seem to suggest, that the system of constant supply (on all other accounts so eminently desirable 71 WATER-SUPPLY. for the metropolis) would in itself, if accompanied by the total disuse and prohibition of leaden cisternage, give sufficient security against the danger in question; or, on the other hand, further inquiry may show it to be quite indispensable for a safe distribution of the new supply, that leaden pipage should be entirely superseded by the use of some nonmetallic material, as earthen-ware or glass. Should this change become necessary, its adoption would no doubt be facilitated by the comparative cheapness of these preferable materials. C. Offensive or injurious Trades. With respect to offensive or injurious trades and occupations pursued within the City of London, you were reminded by your Committee of Health, in their Report of March 26th, "that upon your attempting to put in force the powers of your Act of Parliament in reference thereto, it was found that considerable difficulties were opposed to your efforts. Sufficient powers (the Report proceeds to say) are not given by the City of London Sewers Act to meet some of the cases alluded to, while other legal f 2 72 OFFENSIVE OR INJURIOUS TRADES. and technical objections presented themselves to the enforcement of the powers in question." The Committee concluded their Report by "pointing out to you the necessity, when the question of renewing your Act should come into consideration, of procuring additional powers which may enable you effectually to remedy those evils." On the grounds thus expressed by your Committee, I avail myself of the present opportunity for bringing the subject again under your notice. In my former Report, I spoke particularly of those trades and occupations which deal with animal substances liable to decomposition; and in expressing my knowledge of their danger to the health of an urban population, I argued that no occupation which ordinarily leaves a putrid refuse, nor any which consists in the conversion or manufacture of putrescent material, ought, under any circumstances, to be tolerated within a town. To that subject I now revert, only to assure your Honourable Court that the past year has given me no reason to alter my opinion. But the trades to which I wish, on this occasion, more especially to request your attention, are those which are complained of on the ground of their offensiveness rather than of their injury to health—as nuisances rather than as poisons. During the year, I have received a very considerable number of complaints of this nature; some of them perhaps frivolous, but many well-founded and reasonable. 73 OFFENSIVE OR INJURIOUS TRADES. At the head of this class of evils stands the flagrant nuisance of smoke. Those members of the Court who have visited foreign capitals where other fuel than coal is employed, will remember the contrast between their climate and ours—will remember (for instance even in Paris) the transparence of air, the comparative brightness of all colour, the visibility of distant objects, the cleanliness of faces and buildings, instead of our opaque atmosphere, deadened colours, obscured distance, smutted faces, and black architecture. Those, even, who have never left our metropolis, but who, by early rising or late going to rest, have had opportunities of seeing a London sun-rise, can judge, as well as by any foreign comparison, the difference between London as it might be, and London as it is. Viewed at dawn and at noon-day, the appearances contrast as though they were of different cities and in different latitudes. Soon after day-break, the great factory shafts beside the river begin to discharge immense volumes of smoke; their clouds soon become confluent; the sky is overcast with a dingy veil; the house-chimneys presently add their contributions; and by ten o'clock, as one approaches London from any hill in the suburbs, one may observe the total result of this gigantic nuisance hanging over the City like a pall. If its consequences were confined to rendering London (in spite of its advantages) the unsightliest metropolis in Europe, to defacing all works of art, 74 OFFENSIVE OR INJURIOUS TRADES. and rendering domestic cleanliness expensive, I should have nothing officially to say on the subject; but inasmuch as it renders cleanliness more difficult, and creates a despair of cultivating it with success, people resign themselves to dirt, domestic or personal, which they could remove but so temporarily: or windows are kept shut, in spite of immeasurable fustiness, because the ventilation requisite to health would bring with it showers of soot, occasioning inconvenience and expense. Such is the tendency of many complaints which have reached me, and of their foundation in truth and reason I have thorough conviction and knowledge. I would submit to your Honourable Court that these evils are not inconsiderable; and that beside the injury to property (with which I have nothing to do) the detriment to health, if only indirect, claims to be removed. Yet, while I am cautious to speak of this latter injury, as though it were only indirect—only by its obstruction of healthy habits, I ought likewise to tell you, that there are valid reasons for supposing that we do not with impunity inhale day by day so much air which leaves a palpable sediment; that many persons of irritable lungs find unquestionable inconvenience from these mechanical impurities of the atmosphere; and (gathering a hint from the pathology of vegetation) that few plants will flourish in the denser districts of London, unless the air which conduces to their nourishment be previously filtered from its dirt. 75 OFFENSIVE OR INJURIOUS TRADES. If the smoke of London were inseparably identified with its commercial greatness, one might willingly resign oneself to the inconvenience; but to every other reason against its continuance must be added as a last one (on the evidence of innumerable competent and disinterested witnesses) that the nuisance, where habitual, is, for the greater part or entirely, voluntary and preventable; that it indicates mismanagement and waste; that the adoption of measures for the universal consumption of smoke (while relieving the metropolis and its population from injury) would conduce to the immediate interest of the individual consumer, as well as to indirect and general economy; for all the smoke that hangs over us is wasted fuel. The consumption of smoke in private houses is unfortunately a matter to which hitherto little attention has been given; and it would be vain to hope that the reform should begin with those, whose individual contributions to the public stock of nuisance are comparatively trifling. With the progress of knowledge on these subjects, a time will undoubtedly arrive, and at no distant period, when chimneys will cease to convey to the atmosphere their present immense freight of fuel that has not been burnt, and of heat that has not been utilised; when each entire house will be uniformly warmed with less expenditure of material than now suffices to its one kitchen fire; and our successors will wonder at the ludicrous ingenuity with which we 76 OFFENSIVE OR INJURIOUS TRADES. have so long managed to diffuse our caloric and waste our coal in the directions where they least conduce to the purposes of comfort and utility. But, while the arrangements of private establishments may, perhaps wisely, be left to the operation of this spontaneous reform, I would venture to recommend in regard of furnaces, employed for steamengines and otherwise for manufactures within the City, that you should endeavour to control the nuisance of smoke. The members of your Honourable Court are probably cognizant of the great mass of evidence on this subject, collected by two separate committees of the House of Commons, and of the almost unanimous conclusions to which that evidence led: "that opaque smoke issuing from steam-engine chimneys may be so abated, as no longer to be a public nuisance; that a variety of means are found to exist for the accomplishment of this object, simple in construction, moderate in expense, and applicable to existing furnaces and flues of stationary steamengines; that a sufficient body of evidence has been adduced, founded upon the experience of practical men, to induce the opinion that a law, making it imperative upon the owners of stationary steamengines, to abate the issue of opaque smoke is desirable for the benefit of the community*;" "that the expense attendant on putting up whatever apparatus may be required to prevent smoke arising from fur*Report, Committee, 1845. 77 OFFENSIVE OR INJURIOUS TRADES. naces is very trifling, and (as some of the witnesses observed), the outlay may be repaid within the year, by the diminished consumption of fuel; that the means of preventing smoke might also be applied to the furnaces of steam-boats, but such application would be attended with rather more expense than on land, from the occasional want of space, and the setting of boilers in a steam-vessel. No doubt, however, existed, in the opinions of those examined, that the prevention of smoke could be accomplished in steam-vessels*." In two local improvement Acts (those of Leeds and Manchester) clauses have been introduced in accordance with the sense of these conclusions; and in order to render them as little oppressive as possible to those whose interests might be affected by their operation, the enactments (which apply to every variety of furnace) have been so framed as to enforce penalties for the issuing of smoke only when it should appear (as no doubt it commonly would appear) that the proprietor had refrained from "using the best practicable means for preventing or counteracting such annoyance." Surely if such applicable means exist, it is a just and reasonable thing that the public should be defended against offence and injury, arising in the mere indifference or obstinacy of those who inflict them; and I venture to hope that your Honourable Court, in renewing your application to Parliament, may *Report, Committee, 1849. 78 OFFENSIVE OR INJURIOUS TRADES. procure the enactment of a clause, giving you control over so much of the nuisance as is wanton and avoidable. There are still under the present head, some points to which I am anxious to advert. During the two years that your Act has been in operation, various complaints have been made with respect to nuisances arising in particular trades; and with many of the causes of complaint you have been unable effectually to contend. Soap-makers, tallow-melters, gut-spinners, naptha-distillers, preparers of patent manure, dealers in soot, exposers of stinking hides, wire-makers, dealers in kitchen-stuff, fish-curers, tripe-boilers, type-founders, gold-refiners, slaughterers, varnish-makers, coffee and chicoree roasters, whalebone-boilers, iron and brass founders, keepers of cattle-sheds, makers of printing-ink, dealers in camphine, cookers of cat's-meat, and manufacturing chemists, have all, at different times and in various degrees, been complained of. In respect of those of the enumerated trades which deal in the manufacture or sale of organic materials in a putrid or putrescent state, I have already submitted to you my opinion that the City of London, the home of a large and crowded population, is no place for them. With regard to the many other occupations, it would obviously be absurd, in the present state of society, to think of banishing them from the City which their industry has contri- 79 OFFENSIVE OB INJURIOUS TRADES. buted to enrich, and where immemorial custom has given sanction to their continuance, unless you could with certainty affirm of them, that they cause direct and inevitable detriment to their neighbourhood. Every useful purpose, as regards the health of the City, might be fulfilled by the enactment of some moderate restriction. Manifestly, it is opposed to the spirit of your Act of Parliament, that any trader or manufacturer should possess the right of diffusing in the vicinity of his house, to the detriment and disgust of his neighbours, any product (whether in the form of running fluid, or volatile dust, or vapour, or smoke, or odour) which is either disagreeable to the senses or may be hurtful to the health. Many of the instances which I have enumerated fall within this description, and yet remain unaffected by the restrictive sections of your Act. I would submit to the consideration of your Honourable Court, whether in the renewal of your Act, some comprehensive clause might not be introduced, which should deal with these difficulties, as well as with the nuisance of smoke—and deal with them, too, on the same principle; a clause, which (without enumerating all trades which have been, or possibly may become, sources of nuisance in the City, and without specifying too narrowly the nature of the nuisances to be guarded against) should empower your Commission generally, in respect of every trade practised within the City, to require that its 80 OFFENSIVE OR INJURIOUS TRADES. tions shall be conducted with the least possible amount of inconvenience to the neighbourhood; and which should enable you to enforce penalties in case of every nuisance arising in such operations, unless it should be distinctly shown on the part of the proprietor, that every practicable measure for abatement of the inconvenience had been constantly and thoroughly employed. I would beg to express my conviction that your possession of the authority with which such a clause would invest you, would very largely increase your powers of utility, in respect of many acknowledged grievances hitherto beyond your control; and the influence of your example, in the achievement of this great municipal purpose, would, I doubt not, speedily lead to the adoption of general measures throughout the metropolis, for the total suppression of smoke, and for the mitigation of other nuisances which now exist around your territory no less than within it. 81 D. Burial-Grounds. In my last year's Report, I had occasion to represent to your Honourable Court the evils of intramural sepulture. I testified to that large accumulation of human remains, by which, in numerous parts of the City, the soil of burial-grounds has been raised many feet above its original level; and I advised you of the injury which must accrue to health, from the constant organic decomposition thus suffered to proceed in the midst of our crowded population. I likewise invited your attention to the still greater evil of burial in vaults; I explained and endeavoured to remove the misconception which commonly prevails, as to the preservation of bodies under those circumstances; and I showed you how unfailingly, sooner or later after such burial, the products of putrefaction make their way from within the coffin (whatever may have been its construction) and diffuse themselves offensively and injuriously through the air. I concluded by expressing to you my strong conviction of the necessity, that some comprehensive measure should be undertaken, for abolishing, at once and for ever, all burial within the City of London. During the session of Parliament that has intervened between that Report and my present one, an event has occurred, which promises to remove 82 BURIAL-GROUNDS. effectually the evils on which I then addressed you. Her Majesty's government, acting at the instigation of the General Board of Health, carried through Parliament a Bill, enacting that the Queen, by Order in Council, may prohibit further burials within any district of the metropolis, so soon (after the close of this year) as the General Board of Health should have provided the means of extramural interment. The operation of this Act of Parliament is such, as I have every reason to believe, you will welcome within the City of London; and I look forward to the complete cessation of burial within your territory, as a matter for warm congratulation among all who are interested in the cause of sanitary improvement. From the terms of the Act in question, I find that Her Majesty's Order in Council is to be preceded by a Report from the General Board of Health, stating their opinion of the expediency, that (in any particular case reported on) burial should forthwith be discontinued. Accordingly, in the present state of the law, it will devolve on that Board to initiate whatever measures may be necessary for the prohibition of further interment in the City. Two clauses of your Act of Parliament, which have hitherto been inoperative, may perhaps come into requisition whenever Her Majesty's Order in Council closes the burial-grounds of the City; viz., clause 89, which empowers your Commission, if you shall " think fit, to provide fit and proper places, in BURIAL-GROUNDS. 83 which the poor, under proper rules and regulations, may be permitted to deposit the bodies of their dead previous to interment;" and the following clause, which authorises your Officer of Health, in case of necessity, and for protection of the living, to cause any dead body to be removed at your expense, to whatever building may have been provided for the reception of the dead, previous to interment. It may hardly be necessary that I should trouble you with any remarks on the subject of these clauses, till such time as they are likely to come into operation. With respect to the burial-grounds within the City, which will fall into disuse so soon as the new Interment Act becomes operative, I trust that your Honourable Commission will procure the power of regulating and supervising their maintenance, so that they may no longer be hurtful to the health of their vicinity. The arrangement of them which would be most advantageous to their locality would be that of planting them with whatever trees or shrubs may be made to flourish in a London atmosphere. The putrefactive processes which for some years longer must proceed in these saturated soils, will be rendered comparatively harmless and imperceptible, if at the same time there advance in the ground a sufficiency of vegetation, which for its growth would gradually appropriate, as fast as they are evolved, the products of animal decay. It seems almost superfluous to observe, that, from the time when burials are discontinued, no 84 BURIAL-GROUNDS. sary disturbance of the soil should be allowed ; nor any attempts at levelling or the like, except under the direct sanction of your Honourable Court. Another point in connexion with these burialgrounds, to which I may here advert (though I must recur to it hereafter) is, that while great advantage may be expected from the discontinuance of their former uses, if their several areas be left open and without building, so as to subserve the ventilation of their neighbourhood, all that advantage would be lost, and a heavier evil inflicted on the neighbourhood than that of which it purports to be relieved, if these spaces were at any time to be covered with houses; and I trust it may be found within the province of your Honourable Court to obtain authority for preventing any encroachment of this nature on the limited breathing-spaces of the City. E. Habitations and Social Condition of the Poor. In my last Report, under its fifth and sixth heads, I particularly solicited the attention of your Honourable Court to certain circumstances connected with the dwellings and habits of the poor, which (though they then lay apparently out of your jurisdiction, as defined by the Act of Parliament) yet HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 85 appeared to me of immeasurable weight in the sanitary fluctuations of the City, as tending in their operation constantly to thwart your endeavours for improvement, and to neutralize day by day whatever good you could achieve. I reported to you that there were sanitary defects, inherent in certain large proportions of your municipal cure, which the most absolute control of drainage and water-supply would do nothing to amend,—constructional defects of houses and of courts, whereby their crowded inhabitants were excluded from a sufficiency of light and air, and were constrained, without remission or change, to breathe an atmosphere foetid with their own stagnant exhalations. I reported to you that, however unexceptionable might be the arrangement of such localities in matters already within your control— however clean their pavements, however pure their water, however effective their drainage, yet fever and the allied disorders could never be absent from their population; while under opposite arrangements, with nuisances around them, with organic poisons rising from the soil or mingling in the water, their mortality would rise to the horrors of pestilence, and might easily renew the most awful precedents in history. I described to you the class of miserable dwellings alluded to—" Courts and alleys with low, dark, filthy tenements, hemmed in on all sides by higher buildings, having no possibility of any current of air, and (worst of all) some- G 86 HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. times so constructed, back to back, as to forbid the advantage of double windows or back doors, and thus to render the house as perfect a cul-de-sac out of the court, as the court is a cul-de-sac out of the next thoroughfare:" I affirmed that "this could never be otherwise than a cause of sickness and mortality to those whose necessities allot them such residence and assured you of the "incontrovertible fact, that subsistence in closed courts is an unhealthy and short-lived subsistence, in comparison with that of the dwellers in open streets." In habitations of this kind, the death-rate would of necessity be high, even if the population were distributed thinly in the district. A single pair of persons with their children, having such a court for their sole occupancy, would hardly be otherwise than unhealthy; the infants would die teething, or would live pallid and scrofulous; or a parent would perish prematurely—the father, perhaps, with typhus, the mother with puerperal fever. Judge then, gentlemen, how the mortality of such courts must swell your aggregate death-rate for the City, when I tell you that their population is in many instances so excessive as in itself, and by its mere density, to breed disease. Statistics can give you no conception of this crowding. If you refer to the results of the last census, you find the average population per house, in the City of London Union, to be 7.1; in the East and West London Unions, 8.8. For the HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 87 struction of these averages, the most dissimilar materials are blended together; and the density of population is apparently reduced by the very large number of business-houses which have no resident inmates, beyond the porter or the laundress who has charge of them. If you turn from the deceptions of an average to an exact analysis of detail, you will find many single rooms in the City with a larger number of inmates than you might otherwise ascribe to entire houses. Instances are innumerable, in which a single room is occupied by a whole family—whatever may be its number, and whatever the ages and sexes of the children ; where birth and death go on side by side; where the mother in travail, or the child with small-pox, or the corpse waiting interment, has no separation from the rest. This is evil enough; but worse remains behind. It is no uncommon thing, in a room of twelve feet square or less, to find three or four families styed together (perhaps with infectious disease among them) filling the same space night and day—men, women, and children, in the promiscuous intimacy of cattle*. Of these inmates it is nearly superfluous * I purposely refrain from any attempt to illustrate all the horrors which are incidental to this method of life; but, as a single exemplification of the text (chosen, not because of its rarity, but because it happens to occur at the moment) I insert an extract frem a note, with which I was favoured a fortnight ago, by Mr. Hutchinson, surgeon to the North District of the West London Union: " I was sent for to attend a poor Irish woman in labor, at half-past six o'clock yesterday morning, at 17, Fox G 2 88 HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. to observe, that in all offices of nature they are gregarious and public; that every instinct of personal or sexual decency is stifled ; that every nakedness of life is uncovered there. Such an apartment is commonly hired in the first instance by a single pair, who sub-let a participation in the shelter, probably to as many others as apply. Sometimes a noxious occupation is carried on within the space : thus, I have seen mud-larks (chiffoniers) sitting on the floor with baskets of filth before them, sorting out the occasional bit of coal or bone, from a heterogeneous collection made along the bed of the river, or in the mouths of the sewers ; and this in a small room, inhabited night and day by such a population as I have described. Who can wonder at what becomes, physically or morally, of infants begotten and born in these bestial crowds ? In my former Report, I drew your attention to this pestilential heaping of human beings, and suggested to you its results ; and on many occasions, during the past year, complaints have been before your Honourable Court which have had their real and Knot court. There were three families, each consisting of a man and wife and two or more children, in a small room, 15 feet by 8, all lying upon dirty rags on the floor. I found one of the children suffering under small-pox. The adjoining room was occupied by six grown up persons and two children." In the circumstances to which my Report refers, scenes of this description must of necessity be habitual: and it is to their habit, not to their exceptional occurrence, that my remarks apply. HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 89 origin in this uncontrolled evil. I revert to it because of its infinite importance. While it maintains physical filth that is indescribable, while it perpetuates fever and the allied disorders, while it creates mortality enough to mask the results of all your sanitary progress, its moral consequences are too dreadful to be detailed. I have to deal with the matter only as it relates to bodily health. Whatever is morally hideous and savage in the scene— whatever contrast it offers to the superficial magnificence of the metropolis—whatever profligacy it implies and continues—whatever recklessness and obscene brutality arise from it—whatever deep injury it inflicts on the community—whatever debasement or abolition of God's image in men's hearts is tokened by it—these matters belong not to my office, nor would it become me to dwell on them. Only because of the physical sufferings am I entitled to speak; only because pestilence is for ever within the circle; only because Death so largely comforts these poor orphans of civilization. To my duty it alone belongs, in such respects, to tell you where disease ravages the people under your charge, and wherefore ; but while I lift the curtain to show you this—a curtain which convention would gladly leave unraised, you cannot but see that side by side with pestilence, there stalks a deadlier presence; blighting the moral existence of a rising population; rendering their hearts hopeless, their acts ruffianly and incestuous; and scattering, while society averts 90 HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. her eyes, the retributive seeds of increase for crime, turbulence, and pauperism. While I refer to these painful topics, I may remind your Honourable Court of the Report of your Committee on Health, in respect of the same heads in my previous communication, and may strengthen myself with their testimony; "We feel it due to Mr. Simon to add, from the result of personal investigation, that the statements contained in his Report under this subject, distressing as they are, are not exaggerated and, as regards whatever I may have recapitulated from that Report, I would beg leave to add, that my experience during the past year has confirmed the opinions which I then expressed ; assuring me more and more, that the correction of these crying evils must advance simultaneously with the other labours of sanitary reform. Recently, while having the honour to attend your Committee of Health in their deliberations on your Act of Parliament, I have submitted to them, as my view of what is desirable for legislation on the subject of my present section, substantially the same suggestions as I formerly laid before your Honourable Court. As their recommendations must shortly come before you for consideration, and as I entertain the deepest conviction that the subject is of paramount importance to the cause in which you are interested, I have hoped you would excuse my recurrence to it, and my brief repetition HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 91 of those suggestions which the incompleteness of your Act of Parliament has hitherto prevented your adopting. 1. There are within the City some blocks of houses which are, I fear, irremediably bad and pestilential from such errors of construction as I have already described; and which, further, are so dilapidated, as to show at a glance their little pecuniary value. In many instances the destruction of such a block of houses would confer a sensible advantage on the population of a considerable district. Of this class I could hardly give you a better illustration than would be seen in the ground-plan of Sevenstep alley. There are other instances (frequent in Cripplegate) where the removal of a single house at the extremity of a court or passage would make a material difference to the ventilation of several houses, and to the health of a numerous population. 2. Again, in very many parts of the City, you find illustrations of a constructional error to which I have adverted as in the highest degree pernicious to health. You find a number of courts, probably with very narrow inlets, diverging from the open street in such close succession, that their backs adjoin with no intermediate space whatsoever. Consequently, each row of houses has but a single row of windows, facing into the confined court; and thus there is no possibility of ventilation, either through the court generally, or through the houses which 92 HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. compose it. In the Out-Wards of Cripplegate, Farringdon, and Bishopsgate, examples of this arrangement are both most numerous, and, I believe, most removable : but they may likewise be found in considerable numbers in the In-Wards of the City; e.g. in the neighbourhood of Printing-house square, of Great Bell alley, of Leadenhall street, of Aldgate, of Skinner street, and of St. Martin's-le-Grand. In many of these cases, if the management of the property were under a single control, it is possible that effectual relief might be given, by converting any two rows of houses which are back to back, each having windows only on one side, into a single row of houses, with door and windows both before and behind; and if changes of this nature were accompanied by the removal of an occasional house, or other impediment to the circulation of air, I would guarantee to your Honourable Court that the next year's register would show a very large diminution in the local amount of preventable sickness and mortality. 3. In other cases, the immediate impediment to ventilation apparently consists in the operation of the window-tax. Your Honourable Court, at various times, has heard how unfortunate for the health of cities is this ill-chosen method of taxation, assessing the amount of rate for houses in proportion to their means of ventilation. You can easily conceive how much it would impede your endeavours to promote health and cleanliness within the City, if an HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 93 tional direct tax were levied on houses by reason of their drainage; or if the assessor regulated his rate according to the consumption of water for household purposes. The working of the window-tax is on this principle: it is accurately proportioned to the healthiness of the tenement; and although it may be very true that health is the greatest of treasures, and that, on this ground, its means and appliances are eligible for taxation, I cannot but regret that a struggling population should be tempted by the hope of some small saving, to make a sensible diminution in their chances of life, by retrenching within the narrowest measures their inlets of ventilation and light. In reference to the more important constructional errors which I have described to you, as affecting the courts and alleys of the City, it will be obvious, from the remedies which I have suggested, that no hope of alteration can be expected from landlords. To throw together the adjoining houses of two different courts, or to remove one house for the advantage of certain others, or to destroy a whole block of houses for the sake of its neighbourhood, could evidently be undertaken, as a matter of private enterprise, only where property of very considerable extent, and close juxta-position, happened to be in the hands of a single individual; and, as regards the City of London, this is rarely or never the case. The only manner, then, it occurs to me, 94 HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. in which the requisite remedies could be applied, would be through the wealth and benevolence of the Corporation. If there were vested in your Honourable Court (or in any other authority of the Corporation) the power to make compulsory purchases of house property, on the ground of its unfitness for human habitation, it would be easy to correct the extreme errors which exist; and, under a single large landlordship of this nature, it might not improbably be found that measures such as I have described would give to the localities in which they might be effected as much improvement in value as in health. After the necessary alterations, such houses would no longer need to continue under tenure of the Corporation, and the proceeds of their sale might again be applied to the reclamation of similar property in other parts of the City. In throwing out this suggestion to your Honourable Court, I, of course, do not pretend to offer you any details for its realisation. These can more fitly be supplied by others; nor should I have introduced even this general mention of a plan, but for the vividness with which its practicability and usefulness have struck me. During my period of office I have seen distinctly, that what seems incurable in the dark intricacies of our worst courts and alleys often depends for its difficulty on the number of landlords, and on their mutual independence. The conviction had thus been forced on me, which I have endeavoured briefly to express to you; that the only HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 95 available cure for such evils would consist in the Corporation assuming to itself (if only for a time, and in gradual succession) the proprietage of such wretched tenements, and fulfilling towards them those large and liberal duties of landlordship which now remain unperformed through the multiplicity and neediness of petty owners. And, as a precedent for one species of such improvement, I may mention to your Honourable Court, that in such property as I have described to you, situated in other parts of the metropolis, private societies have already effected purchases which have enabled them to convert bad and unwholesome residences into the form of model lodgings for the working classes. Before leaving the consideration of evils, in which over-density of building and defective ventilation form such important parts, I would avail myself of the opportunity to observe, that it is of incalculable importance to preserve, for the health of the City, every open space which at present exists. The density of buildings within the City of London Union is very great, and in the East and West London Unions, is very considerably greater than in any other part of the metropolis; and not merely are the houses closely packed together, but (as I have already described them) very thickly inhabited. Within the City of London Union, each human being, on an average, has less than an eighth part of the space he would have if residing in the district of Islington; and, small as is this pittance, it is more than double 96 HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. what he would enjoy if he were living in the district of the East and West London Unions. With such density of population, it would, of course, be advantageous, if any space now occupied by buildings should hereafter become vacant, so as to increase the breathing-room of the neighbourhood; and your Honourable Court will see the imperative necessity of discountenancing, so far as may be, the erection of additional houses on the few unoccupied spaces which remain. In order to do this effectually, it would be desirable to procure the enactment of a clause, giving you absolute prohibiting power in this respect, whenever, for sanitary reasons, you might think it right to interfere. With respect to those evils which I have set before you, as arising from the unrestricted accumulation of persons of both sexes, and of all ages, within a single sleeping-room—dreadful as they are, I do not consider them irremediable. In the first place, I would beg you to observe, that the very restricted definition of a "lodging-house" given in your Act of Parliament, has hitherto rendered it impossible, in any degree, to regulate dwellings of the description referred to. An amendment of that definition might bring them within your control, and might enable you, not only in these instances but in many others, to restrict the numbers of inmates, to compel the removal of persons with infectious disease, and to enforce provisions of decency, cleanliness, and ventilation. HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 97 Not, however, alone to restrictive and compulsory measures do I look for the social improvement of numbers, now so destitute and miserable. That in other respects our entire industrial population within the City might gain great advantage from an enlightened supervision and guidance, I formerly endeavoured to show. I sought (from other experience) to illustrate the benefits they would derive, not only from your exercising habitual inspection, and possessing a more extensive control, in many matters relative to their dwellings and mode of life; but likewise, from the establishment, under the auspices of the Corporation, of institutions which, raising before them a higher standard of civilization, would improve their social habits by an indirect educational influence, and would elevate the general tone and character of their class. On the subject of Model Dwellings for the labouring classes, and of Public Baths and Wash-houses, as illustrating this view, I dwelt at some length in my former Report; and, deeply convinced of the boon which their establishment would confer on the poor, I explained, to the best of my ability, the nature and the extent of their usefulness. I now only recur to the subject, that I may repeat my profound conviction of its importance; and that in doing so, I may congratulate your Honourable Court, and may utter my deep thankfulness for the labouring and suffering poor of this great community, that, in compliance with the Standing Orders 98 HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. of Parliament, formal notice has been given on the part of the Corporation of the City of London, of their intention, in the approaching session of the Legislature, to apply for authority which may enable them to achieve, for their dependent fellow-citizens, this almost incalculable good. I cannot too strongly express the importance I attach to this implied intention of the Corporation, to establish model-dwellings for the industrial population of the City. But the first and immediate operation of such an Act will, from the nature of things, hardly reach to those very destitute and degraded classes of which I have spoken. Modellodgings of the ordinary character will become the residence of men, who now pay from two to five shillings a week for such space as they occupy, and who have the habit of sleeping in beds. To them the gain will be very great; and the example of improved domestic habits will be beneficial to their entire class. But among the lowest order which I have described to you, as it subsists in thronged and pestilent heaps within your worst quarters, there is little knowledge of beds. The first hirer of the room may possibly have a pile of rags on which he lies, with his wife and children, in one corner of the tenement; but the majority of his sub-tenants (paying for their family-lodging from sixpence to tenpence a week) lie on straw, or on the bare boards. It will be obvious to you, that no Model Lodginghouse could be reduced to the level of their means. HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 99 By those restrictions to which I have adverted, something may be done, no doubt, for improving the arrangement of houses so tenanted—something to prevent the more glaring outrages of decency which at present prevail—something to maintain comparative cleanliness, and to check the spread of disease. I fear that no further remedy than this would prove effectual, unless it were universal for the metropolis. Unquestionably, it would be possible, with persons even of the lowest sort above pauperism, to proceed on the same principle as in the establishment of model-lodgings for the working orders; to provide for them, namely, under respectable control and supervision, the best accommodation which their price could purchase, of the kind to which they have been habituated; to give them the means of lying down, free from damp or cold, partitioned from one another, and with isolation of sexes, in a building constructed or arranged for the purpose, where the ventilation and the facilities for cleanliness might be complete. There seems little room to doubt that this might be done, on a very large scale, at a rate considerably less than the poorest now pay for the right of lairage amid vermin, filth, obscenity, and fever; and with such dormitories, obviously, there might be connected other arrangements for giving comfort and cleanliness to the very poor and destitute, at the lowest possible price. Of gratuitous reception I do not speak, because that is already provided, under certain regulations, in all 100 HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. the work-houses of the metropolis. But while I conceive that such a measure, if generally adopted throughout London, would defray its own cost, and would remove evils and miseries horrid to contemplate, I cannot but feel that it would be inadmissable (in its cheapest form) as a local measure. For if the price of reception—for instance, here, were so low as to allure the wretched population in question from their places of present resort within the City, it cannot be doubted that its influence would extend beyond your jurisdiction, and would throng your dormitories with the destitute of other districts. As the evil is metropolitan, so ought the remedy to be; and if there were thus instituted within each union of the metropolis, a Ragged Dormitory of the nature described, I am persuaded, from my knowledge of the poorest classes, that its establishment would be of infinite advantage in improving the habits, and diminishing the mortality of those who would become its inmates. 101 III. Suggested Alterations in the Act of Parliament. Finally, gentlemen, considering that you are about to procure a renewal of your Act of Parliament, and that you contemplate strengthening it with such additional clauses as may render it effective for the eradication of all preventable disease within the City of London, I would ask permission, in this point of view, to submit to you in a connected series, such modifications as in my judgment would contribute to that purpose. Most of these I have already had the advantage of suggesting to your Committee on Health; and to many of them I have adverted by anticipation, in previous passages of my Report. I would beg to enumerate the desiderata under the following heads, viz. 1. A clause, which would give you control over the supply and distribution of water, would enable you in your corporate capacity to contract with any person or any company for the total service of the City; and would authorise you to defray the expenses of such contract by certain specified rates. 2. A clause empowering you to require, that every trade or manufacture practised within the City shall be carried on with such precautions, and with such available improvements, from time to time, as shall reduce to the lowest practicable amount h 102 SUGGESTED ALTERATIONS IN ACT. whatever nuisance or inconvenience to the neighbourhood is apt to arise therefrom. 3. Such change in the definition affixed to your 91st clause as would render this operative for the regulation and improvement of a larger number of houses; and such addition to the clause as would enable you, on the joint certificate of your Officer of Health and Surveyor, to enforce the opening of additional windows, where requisite for the proper ventilation of houses. 4. A clause permitting and empowering you, on sufficient medical testimony, to remove, or to call upon the Board of Guardians to remove, from any lodging-house, within the new definition of your Act, any person diseased with fever or other infectious malady, whose continuance there would endanger the lives of other inmates. 5. A clause prohibiting the occupation of underground cellars for the purposes of dwelling. 6. A clause prohibiting the keeping of cattle in or under dwelling-houses. 7. A clause vesting in the Commission a right to purchase houses by jury-valuation, in any case where they shall determine that such houses are permanently unwholesome and unfit for human habitation, or that their alteration or removal is necessary for the public health. 8. A clause enabling the Commission to control all further encroachments on spaces which are now open within the City; so that on ground now (within SUGGESTED ALTERATIONS IN ACT. 103 a certain number of years) unoccupied by buildings, no future erection shall be made, except with the sanction of the Commission. 9. A clause to protect the purity and wholesomeness of human food, as sold within the City, by affixing penalties to its exposure for sale in any adulterated, decayed, or corrupted condition, which may impair its fitness for consumption. These are the heads under which it has appeared to me that the most useful additions might be made to your Act of Parliament, in matters within the scope of my official observation. There are some other minor modifications, which I have submitted to your Committee of Health, and which (as they relate merely to detail) it is unnecessary for me to bring before you. All the recommendations which I have made on this subject result from a careful scrutiny of the operation of your present Act, during the two years that I have had the honour of serving you. Each separate paragraph of my enumeration founds itself upon a distinct recollection of occasions (sometimes numerous) wherein, for want of such enactments, nuisances which you were anxious to suppress have eluded your authority, or advantages which you were desirous to realise have stood beyond your attainment. It was in the nature of things that this should be so; for the period has been one of experiment. When the City Sewers Act became law for a period H 2 104 SUGGESTED ALTERATIONS IN ACT. of two years, every one interested in its success must have felt the advantage of that limited duration, and have rejoiced in the opportunity thus afforded of rendering it eventually the most perfect embodiment of sanitary law. Parts of the Act have abundantly fulfilled your intention. In the all-important particular of housedrainage—in the enforcement of water-supply, so far as circumstances rendered possible—in the effective preservation of exterior cleanliness—in the abatement of innumerable nuisances—in the provision and maintenance of sewerage and paving and lighting throughout the City—the public has seen your Honourable Court exercising very large powers with very unusual success. And this, let me add, during a time of no ordinary difficulty: a time when, day by day, the vast importance of sanitary improvement has been gaining ground among the educated classes of the country, as a deep and settled conviction; a time when the feelings of all classes have been powerfully excited, and when the metropolis especially has been convulsed with alarm, in the anticipation and in the aspect of a pestilence. In some other respects the Act has been less operative, and for an obvious reason. To legislate for health was new to you. It was only through the gradual investigation of officers appointed under the Act that you could become adequately informed of those sanitary requirements on which your ultimate legislation for the City must found itself: only SUGGESTED ALTERATIONS IN ACT. 105 by their slow experience, only by failure as well as by success, was it possible that correct knowledge could be obtained of the powers really needful for fulfilling your sanitary intentions. In carefully watching the fluctuations of health amid your population; in investigating the causes which determine them; and in testing, on every occasion, how far these causes are amenable to the control of your Act of Parliament, I have arrived at the conclusions submitted to you in the present and in my previous Report. To excuse the length at which I have addressed you, I have but another word to say. My apology consists in the assurance, which again I lay before you, that in spite of all your exertions, untimely and preventable death still prevails most largely in the population under your charge. If the deliberate promises of Science be not an empty delusion, it is practicable to reduce human mortality within your jurisdiction to nearly the half of its present prevalence. It is the sad prerogative of my profession, to have such knowledge of death as cannot lie within your experience. Knowing all that is implied in each one separate instance of its visitation—how much pain and sorrow, often how much bereavement and destitution, we learn, perhaps better than others, to appreciate that vast amount of social misery which has its symbol in the high death-rate of 106 SUGGESTED ALTERATIONS IN ACT. a population. It is from this practical point of view that I have ever estimated the importance of your functions, and have fixed the obligations of my own humbler office. Notwithstanding all that medicine can achieve, to succour the body as it struggles against actual disease—notwithstanding those resources of drugs and handicraft, by which the physician or surgeon opposes death or mitigates pain in the detailed exercise of his art, all past experience, and every transaction of our daily practice, confirm the popular adage that prevention is better than cure. If this be true in any particular case, much more is it true in the largest application. While curative medicine, ministering step by step to the individual units of a population, can produce only minute, and (so to speak) molecular changes in the health of society, Sanitary Law, embodying the principles of preventive medicine, may ensure to the aggregate masses of the community prolongation of life and diminution of suffering: in the working of some single enactment, it may affect the lives of generations of men, and may moderate in respect of millions the sources of orphanage and poverty. Surely, it is no common epoch in the history of the metropolis when you are appealing to the Legislature, on behalf of the Corporation, for the grant of additional powers towards the accomplishment of so great a beneficence. To me it has always been an act of the deepest and most anxious responsibility to address you; and it would ill have become SUGGESTED ALTERATIONS IN ACT. 107 me now, in the attempt to discharge so grave a duty, if I had spared any pains or withholden any conviction. While endeavouring in this, and in my previous Report, faithfully and in detail to depict for you the actual condition of human life within the City, and while seeking to deduce for you, from reason and experience, those sanitary principles which are applicable for its improvement, I have had no trivial or easy task; and you will pardon me, I hope, both if I have incompletely surmounted the difficulties of so large a subject, and if, by the length of my Report, I have made too great claims on your indulgence. I have the honour to remain, Gentlemen, Your obedient faithful servant, JOHN SIMON. APPENDIX. No. I.—Questions addressed to the Union-Surgeons of the City of London, with respect to the Health of their several Districts during the past Year, and their Replies thereunto. Names of Surgeons and their Districts. I. II. III. During the past year (dating from Michaelmas, 1849, to Michaelmas, 1850) have epidemic, endemic, and infectious diseases prevailed in your parochial practice, with more or with less than their average severity: namely, 1st, as regards the numbers attacked by such diseases ; 2dly, as regards the proportion of fatal cases ? If you have observed any such difference from the average, are you able to refer it causatively to any change for better or worse effected in the physical condition of your neighbourhood, either within this period, or immediately before it ? and if so, will you specify those changes ? Are there in your district any spots, to which you would especially wish and advise that sanitary improvement should be given ? and will you specify, in regard of any spots you may enumerate, what are the improvements which seem to you more particularly called for? Mr. PORTER, Surgeon to theBishopsgate District of the East London Union. The number of orders issued for district attendance in the Bishopsgate District have very considerably lessened in number, being 513 below an average of the five preceding years, and 116 below an average of the ten preceding years. Epidemic, endemic, and infectious diseases have been of a less severe grade, and the number of fatal cases have been fewer. I am disposed to consider that the improvement in the physical condition of the neighbourhood from better drainage cleansing, supply of water, and other sanatory measures, has had much influence, as well in lessening the amount of disease, as in improving its aspect, and thereby reducing the extent of its mortality. South side of Sweet-apple court, in respect of drainage and water-supply. Names and Districts. I. II. III. Mr. HADLOW, Surgeon to the Aldgate District of the East London Union. Having been elected in July, 1849, is unable to give any table of comparison. A marked change for the better has been effected in the physical condition of infected neighbourhoods ; viz. improved drainage, better supply of water, partial but beneficial attention to lime-washing and cleansing of dwelling-houses. Seven-step alley : fatal to all children; house-cleansing requires to be enforced; overcrowding to be abated; dust bins to be erected. Harrow alley: filthy, overcrowded, unfit for human habitation. Offal from slaughterhouses, and filth from cattlesheds, together with want of cleanliness of its inhabitants, render it an absolute focus for contagious diseases. Gun yard: dung-heaps and condition of houses. Princes street: fearfully overcrowded and foul; defective supply of water. Mr. LLOYD, Surgeon to the Cripplegate District of the East London Union. Considerably under the average, both as regards the numbers attacked, and the proportion of deaths. Principally to the sanitary improvements effected in and around the dwellings of the poor; to the better supply of water; to the increased employment of the labourers ; to food being cheaper ; and to the in- Fountain-and-Still court:— two small houses so badly constructed for light and ventilation, that they should be shut up altogether. creased facilities offered by the recent regulations of the New Fever Hospital, for the admission of cases not only of confirmed fever, but of doubtful ones. Dr. LOBB, Surgeon to the Aldersgate District of the East London Union, and to the Male Workhouse. A manifest improvement. There has been a considerable diminution in those diseases likely to be benefitted by the adoption of efficient sani- Bridgewater place : insufficiently drained, Saddler's buildings : privies in immediate conjunction with the dwelling-rooms, and from want of a sufficient supply of water, they become choked, and are consequently most disgusting and injurious. tary measures, which have been adopted in my district. I fear, however, that as the alarm from the late fearful epidemic subsides, so will the dirty inhabitants of still dirtier localities relapse into their former habits ; thus I would strongly urge a periodical survey being made, and a report forwarded to the proper authorities. Mr. BULLIN, Surgeon to the Workhouse of the West London Union. Has no district under his charge; but is aware of improved health in the neighbourhood of his residence (Farringdon street). Sanitary works improving the physical condition of the poorer classes. All the neighbouring courts and alleys demand alteration and improvement. Mr. HUTCHINSON, Surgeon to the North District of the West London Union. Cases below average and not unusually fatal. Health of the people generally better than usual. Independently of atmospheric influence, in some measure to the greater cleanliness enforced in the courts and alleys; to improved and extended sewerage, to the better supply of water, to a less crowded state of the poor population, and to the greater facility of obtaining food, in consequence of the cheapness of provisions. Three-diamond court; Foxand-knot court; John's court; Black-bear alley; extreme defects of every sort in light, air, and water; excessive overcrowding, filth, and (in the first case) disordered drainage. Names and Districts. I. II. III. Mr. DIGBY, Surgeon to the South District of the West London Union. Slight diminution in number of cases as compared with last year; its excess having been attributable to the epidemic then prevailing. Nuisances, perhaps, rather abated in the present year. Apollo court; Mac's place ; Plough court, Holborn ; Plough place; Black-horse alley; Temple lane ; Union court; Church passage; Plum tree court; Plough court, Fetter lane; Robinhood court. Mr. CORN. SMITH, Surgeon to the South-East District of the City of London Union. Diminished. No apparent alteration has taken place in the physical condition of the district. Nuisance connected with shell-fish boiling-house in Love lane ought to be removed. Mr. ROBERTS, Surgeon to the NorthEast district of the City of London Union. Less in number and less fatal. Improved drainage in many localities within the last 18 months, and the substitution of trapped water-closets for offensive open privies; better supply of water. Overcrowding. Nos. 8 and 9 Little Swan alley unfit for human habitation, and with very aggravated nuisances. Mr. BLENKARNE, Surgeon to the South-West District of the City of London Union. Diminished in frequency and in fatality. Increased supply of water and greatly extended drainage. To make this district as healthy as others, greater ventilation, more cleanliness, and less crowded dwellings are wanting. Dr. SPARKE, Surgeon to the Central District of the City of London Union. The first quarter of the period in question was strongly marked by the severer forms of the sequelae of cholera, such as consecutive low fever, of protracted duration and interrupted convalescence, by persistent dyspepsia and gastric febricula, together with arthritic or muscular affections accompanying constitutional debility. During the subsequent three quarters (from September 1849) there was remarkable absence of the diseases in question; a few sporadic and for the most part mild cases of scarlatina, hooping-cough, and ordinary febrile affections, being the only exceptions. To the recent prevalence of an epidemic which by its fatality swept away a considerable proportion of the intemperate, the aged, and enfeebled inhabitants of courts and alleys, and crowded localities; as well as to the tendency of that severe scourge to produce a more careful attention to the means and maintenance of health among the surviving in those close and unwholesome neighbourhoods. There is a considerable number of places in my district needing this interference; more particularly the following : Philip lane, London Wall; the houses numbered 26, 27, and 28, Monkwell street; and the following places bordering upon Upper Thames street; viz., Sugar-loaf court and Church place, Garlick hill; Bromley's buildings, and Pennyfather's rents, Huggin lane; Greenarbour court, and Crane court, Lambeth hill; and Brook's yard, Old Fish-street hill. 114 APPENDIX. Note to No. II. In making the calculations on which the rates of the following Table are founded, I have reckoned the Workhouse Population and Workhouse Deaths of each Union as forming part of the aggregate population and aggregate mortality for such Union respectively; and in proceeding to calculate the District Mortality, I have distributed, among the several Districts, the population and the mortality of their Union Workhouses, apportioning these in the ratio of the District Population, so as to prevent the high Workhouse Mortality from telling unjustly against the District in which the building happens to be situated. • Hospital Deaths have been distributed according to the residences of the patients; so that the North Division of the West London Union (in which St. Bartholomew's Hospital is situated) now retains only its just proportion of deaths. 115 No. II. Analysis of the Year's Mortality, as to the Four Quarters of the Year, and as to the several Districts and Sub-Districts of the City. Population in Unions or Regi- strars' Districts East London Union, 39,741 West London Union, 28,939 City of London Union, 56,745 APPENDIX. In Registrars' Sub-Districts Saint Botolph, Cripplegate, Workhouse. North, South, Workhouse. S. W. N.W. South, S. E. N. E. Workhouse. Deaths in four quarterly periods terminating as follows: 20,395 19,346 * 12,243 16,696 * 8,969 12,610 12,131 10,753 12,282 M. F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F 1849, December 29th 62 56 72 65 22 22 42 43 30 40 10 13 35 22 26 19 27 28 30 21 22 30 9 19 118 137 44 85 70 23 57 45 55 51 52 28 1850, March 30th 49 47 68 56 21 15 50 41 42 42 21 19 23 23 16 29 48 32 22 36 45 29 15 14 96 124 36 91 84 40 46 45 80 58 74 29 June 29th 39 41 42 48 6 13 39 35 45 26 5 22 13 21 14 25 25 15 23 20 21 19 9 13 80 90 19 74 71 27 34 39 40 43 50 22 September 28th 57 45 57 36 12 14 35 39 26 39 5 13 20 19 18 21 22 21 16 15 15 28 12 10 102 93 26 74 65 18 39 39 43 31 43 22 Year's Mortality in Registrars') Sub-Districts 207 189 239 205 61 64 166 158 143 147 41 67 91 85 74 94 122 96 91 92 103 116 45 46 396 444 125 324 290 108 176 168 218 183 219 101 Year's Mortality in Unions, or Registrars' Districts 965 722 1065 Rates of Mortalityper thousand of the population; for the City aggregately, nearly 22: For Sub-Dis. 22.54 26.10 * 30.22 21.08 * 21.40 15.08 19.74 18.78 19.62 * For Unions 24.28 24.94 18.75 116 No. III. Deaths of the last Two Years, stated separately and conjointly, classified according to Ages, and distributed in Unions. Under 5 Years. Under 10 Years. Under 15 Years. Under 20 Years. Under 30 Years. Under 40 Years. Under 50 Years. Under 60 Years. Under 70 Years. 70 and upwards. . APPENDIX. Deaths in the population of the City of London du- ring the year 1849-50 1032 83 44 70 166 200 251 254 322 334 2752 Deaths in the population of the City of London during the year 1848-49* 1318 146 88 86 291 373 382 354 367 379 3784 Sum of two years 2350 229 132 156 457 573 633 608 689 713 6536 Deaths of the two years distributed in Unions : East London Union 935 74 42 40 138 169 185 180 235 2531 West London Union 594 55 37 55 155 187 202 200 193 161 6536 City of London Union 821 100 53 61 164 217 246 228 257 299 * During the year 1848-49, there were fifteen cases, in respect of which the particulars of age and residence could not be correctly ascertained. The addition of these to the amount in the table would give the correct number of deaths for that year, 3799. 117 No. IV. Illustrations of Comparative 'Mortality in several Districts and Counties of England; (1) as occurring at all Ages, and (2) as occurring under Five years of age. Places. Population in 1841. Total deaths in seven years, 1838 to 1844. Deaths of children under five years of age in the same septennial period. General death-rate per thousand per annum.* Death-rate per thousand per annum of male children under five years of age.† Out of entire living population what proportion is under five years of age ? Out of entire mortality what proportionoccurun der five years of age ? By what multiple is the mortality of children under five years in excess of the average mortality of all ages ? APPENDIX. City of London Union 56,844 8,490 3,184 21 101 1/11.09 1/2.66 4.17 E. and W. London Union 72,895 13,637 6,084 26-73 119 1/9.02 1/2.24 4.02 Metropolis 1,950,526 342,565 139,612 25 93 1/8.45 1/2.45 3.45 Holborn 39,616 7,365 3,340 26 115 1/8.98 1/2.20 4.08 St. Giles 54,292 10,192 4,542 27 122 1/9.85 1/2.24 4.39 St. Martin 24,488 4,104 1,692 24 120 1/10.64 1/2.42 4.39 Bristol 64,266 13,094 5,160 29 107 1/8.73 1/2.53 3.45 Liverpool 223,003 52,563 27,485 33 143 1/7.35 1/1.91 3.85 Lancashire 1,727,138 323,780 159,812 26-76 102 1/7.19 1/2.02 3.56 Surrey 187,868 23,777 7,364 18 48 1/7.98 1/3.22 2.48 South-east divn. of England 1,502,877 201,756 66,497 19 52 1/7.76 1/3.03 2.56 Glendale Bellingham 37,628 2,708 678 14 28 1/10.32 1/3.99 2.58 Haltwhistle* * In various parts of the country the general mortality, even for large populations and long periods, falls below 17, in some below 16; but the instance quoted above (part of Northumberland) is the only one I find at so low a figure as 14. Among the metropolitan districts only two show a higher figure under this column than that assigned to the East and West London Unions ; viz., that of St. Martin in the Fields, where the deaths of male children under five years of age are stated at 120 per thousand per annum, and that of St. Giles, where they are stated at 122. The lowest metropolitan figure is that of Lewisham, 53. 118 APPENDIX. Note to Column I. of No. V. Speaking generally, this column may be taken to express the number of houses in each Ward. Exception must be made, however,in respect of the fourwards marked with asterisks: for in them the real number of houses somewhat exceeds the number of assessments. This discrepancy depends on the fact that, in the specified wards, a court containing several houses is often assessed by composition as a single property. Mr. Daw informs me that in order to correct on this score the numbers which stand opposite the wards in question, addition should be made as follows : to Bishopsgate Without, 80—raising its number to 1100 ; to Cripplegate Without, 150—raising its number to 1112; to Farringdon Without, 100—raising its number to 3633 ; to Portsoken, 150—raising its number to 1408. This would raise the total number to 16,384, which is about the estimated number of houses in the City. From the results of the last census it appeared that the population of the City was distributed as follows : within the district of the City of London Union on an average of 7.1 persons to each house ; within the district of the East and West London Unions on an average of 8.8 persons to each house. ??? I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. Number of Assessments. vide Note. WARDS. Total for the biennial period, from Oct. I, 1848, to Sept. 28, 1850. Separate Totals of the two years ending respectively Sept. 29, Cholera, Dysentery, Epidemic Diarrhea. Year ending Sept. Fever, 4c. Year ending Sept. Small Pox, 4rc. Year ending Sept. Erysipelas, Puerp. Fever, Phlebitis, If c. Year ending Sept. Scarlet Fever, Cynanche Maligna, $rc. Year ending Sept. DiarThcea, Pneumonia, & Bronchitis of Infants. Year ending Sept. Infantile Zymotic Disord Hooping-cough, Croup, Measles, tfc. Year ending Sept. Hydrocephalus, Convulsions, &c. Year ending Sept. 1849. 1850. 1849. 1850. 1849. 1850. 1849. 1850. 1849. 1850. 1849. 1850. 1849. 1850. 1849. 1850. 1849. 1850. 184 Aldersgate Within 30 15 15 1 .... 1 1 .... .... .... 1 4 2 3 7 2 2 4 2 572 Aldersgate Without 179 122 57 32 4 15 5 1 5 4 3 14 .... 27 12 13 9 16 19 809 Aldgate 102 66 36 3 1 7 7 2 .... 2 2 5 2 18 9 9 5 20 10 133 7 5 2 3 .... .... 1 .... .... 1 .... .... .... .... .... .... .... 1 1 314 Billingsgate 33 28 5 15 .... 2 .... .... .... 2 .... 3 .... 2 1 4 .... .... 4 334 Bishopsgate Within 60 43 17 20 .... 1 3 .... .... 1 1 2 .... 8 5 6 5 5 3 *1020 Bishopsgate Without 329 231 98 88 7 18 13 4 5 3 5 10 3 41 19 32 15 35 31 251 Bread Street 22 16 6 2 .... 3 .... .... .... 1 1 .... .... 6 3 .... .... 4 2 205 Bridge 18 12 6 4 .... .... .... .... .... .... 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 1 2 536 Broad Street 42 29 13 7 .... 4 1 .... .... 1 .... 3 3 4 6 7 1 3 2 194 Candlewick 13 12 1 7 .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... 2 .... 3 1 499 Castlebaynard 103 75 28 28 .... 5 5 1 .... 1 .... 4 .... 6 11 10 5 20 7 341 Cheap 32 22 10 4 1 3 .... .... .... 2 1 3 .... 5 3 .... 2 5 3 626 Coleman Street 66 42 24 1 3 8 3 .... .... 2 .... 3 .... 10 9 6 2 12 7 294 Cordwainer 5 5 ....... 2 .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... 3 158 Cornhill 4 2 2 .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... 2 .... .... 1 .... 1 471 Cripplegate Within . 80 50 30 8 .... 4 1 .... .... 2 2 3 .... 12 8 7 7 14 12 *962 Cripplegate Without 299 207 92 86 11 15 6 3 7 3 3 17 .... 33 29 31 15 19 21 232 Oowgate 25 20 5 12 .... .... .... .... 2 .... .... 1 1 2 .... 1 1 4 1 961 Farringdon Within . 153 117 36 67 .... 9 4 1 1 1 1 4 1 15 17 9 2 11 10 *3533 Farringdon Without 845 613 232 370 19 48 40 2 10 13 12 34 10 56 72 33 31 57 38 409 Langbourn 29 12 17 3 1 1 2 1 .... .... 2 1 1 1 2 3 2 2 7 166 Lime Street 8 4 4 1 .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... 1 1 .... 2 2 1 *1258 Portsoken 143 82 61 29 5 7 14 .... 2 2 1 9 1 14 10 12 10 9 18 343 Queenhithe 59 36 23 14 1 2 4 2 1 1 1 7 2 5 4 4 4 1 6 611 Tower 46 22 24 9 .... 4 3 .... .... 1 3 1 2 3 8 .... 1 4 7 253 Vintry 14 11 3 5 .... 2 1 .... .... .... .... 1 .... 1 .... 1 .... 1 2 235 Walbrook 24 15 9 3 1 .... 2 .... .... .... .... 2 2 4 3 1 1 5 City of London Union 25 18 7 1 .... 7 2 .... .... 1 .... 2 1 3 3 1 .... 3 1 15904 480 TheDeaths from all causes within same period were 6551 2795 1932 863 825 54 166 118 17 33 44 40 135 32 285 243 196 124 264 219 2795 879 284 50 84 167 528 320 483 16384 120 APPENDIX. No. VI.—Letter by Mr. Thomas Taylor, Lecturer on Chemistry at the Medical School of the Middlesex Hospital, on the Chemical Qualities of certain Waters. 4, Vere street, Oxford street, Dear Sir, November, 1850. Having, by your desire, submitted the following samples of water to chemical analysis, I now beg leave to lay before you the result; and also, at the same time, to reply to certain questions which you likewise proposed. The samples of water taken for examination were derived from the following sources : A. Water supplied by the New Rivet Company. B. Water supplied by the East London Company. C. Water from a spring in the neighbourhood of Haslemere, D. Water from a well in Bishopsgate street. [Surrey. A. This water was taken from an upright pipe in a court-yard of the Guildhall. It was slightly opalescent, inodorous, and tasteless ; numerous small particles floated in it, which took a considerable time to subside. The matter deposited was of a rust colour, and consisted of peroxide of iron, with a little sulphate and carbonate of lime, and organic matter. It is to be observed that, as the water from this pipe is seldom used, these impurities collect in the pipe, and are therefore in some measure accidental, although, prior to collecting the water, a considerable quantity had been allowed to run away. The water was allowed to free itself from these impurities bv subsidence, before beiner submitted to analysis. By evaporation to dryness, an imperial gallon left a solid residue, weighing 17.33 grs., which consisted of— Carbonate of lime, with a little oxide of iron 11.12 Carbonate of magnesia 0.60 Sulphate of lime 1.56 Chloride of sodium 2.40 Silicic acid 0.37 Organic matter 1.19 17.24 APPENDIX. 121 When heated, this water became turbid; and, by continued boiling for two hours in an apparatus so arranged that the whole of the steam was condensed and returned to the water, 10.95 grs. of the earthy carbonates, coloured by oxide of iron, were deposited. The relative hardness of this water, as determined by the Soap test, distilled water being taken as unity, was 13.3. B. The second sample of water was taken from a small tap in the house of Mr. Hall, Bishopsgate street. The tap was attached to the main. This water was without smell or taste, and free from floating matter. After standing some time, it deposited a very small quantity of oxide of iron. Although clear and transparent, it was not bright. It contained 19.10 grs. of solid matter in the imperial gallon. The solid matter consisted of— Carbonate of lime, with a little oxide of iron 14.58 Carbonate of magnesia 0.44 Sulphate of lime 1.54 Chloride of sodium 1.71 Silicic acid 0.32 Organic matter 0.72 19.31 Like the preceding water it became turbid when heated to the boiling point, and by continued ebullition for two hours, 12.90 grs. of carbonate of lime, coloured by oxide of iron, were precipitated. Hardness in reference to distilled water as unity = 19. C. This water was taken by ourselves from a spring-head near Haslemere, Surrey. The spring issued from the foot of a low sand-hill covered with bushes, and was received into a natural basin, about four or five feet in diameter, the bottom of which was lined with pebbles and small gravel. From this basin the water flowed into a large shallow pond. The temperature of the spring at its source was 49° Fahr., that of the air being 56° Fahr. This water was perfectly clear and brilliant, but not sparkling. It had no appreciable taste, but was peculiarly soft and agreeable. K 122 APPENDIX. It did not contain carbonic acid in a free state, for when mixed with a solution of chloride of calcium and of ammonia, not the slightest turbidity was produced. When boiled it did not lose its transparency, nor produce any deposit, until concentrated to about one sixth of its volume, when glittering scales of hydrated silicic acid separated. An imperial gallon, when evaporated to dryness, left a solid residue, which weighed 5.24 grs. This residue was perfectly white when dried at 300° Fahr.; when heated to low redness, it charred slightly at the edges. The quantity of organic matter was therefore exceedingly small. Hardness in reference to distilled water as unitv = 2.4. On analysis, an imperial gallon was found to contain— Carbonate of lime 2.00 Chloride of sodium 1.46 Sulphate of soda 0.407 Silicic acid 1.143 Organic matter 0.23 5.24 Traces of an alkaline nitrate were also detected. During the short visit I made with you to Farnham, we examined several other springs near to their sources. In their general characters these waters closely resembled the preceding sample, all of them being remarkably soft, clear, transparent, inodorous, and free from any excess of organic matter, or of oxide of iron. By your desire two samples were subsequently sent to me ; one marked " Barford," the other " Boorley." The water marked Barford contained 6.30 grs. of solid matter in the imperial gallon; when evaporated, scales of silicic acid separated from it in the same manner as from the water taken at Haslemere. Neither of these waters contained any trace of carbonic acid. Their relative hardness (distilled being unity) was— Barford 2.4, Boorley 1.5. D. The fourth sample of water was drawn from the pump near the church in Bishopsgate street. This water was selected as exemplifying the general composition of the shallow well-water of the City of London, when the well is situated near to a burial-ground, as is frequently the case with the parochial wells. APPENDIX. 123 The water from this well is perfectly bright, clear, and even brilliant; it has an agreeable soft taste, and is much esteemed by the inhabitants of the parish, although, as will be seen by the subjoined analysis, it is an exceedingly hard water, and the large quantity of earthy salts it contains renders it unfit for all culinary and for most domestic purposes. When heated to the boiling point, this water becomes turbid, and by continued boiling of an imperial gallon of the water for two hours, 23.03 grs. of solid matter were deposited, consisting of 22.15 grs. carbonate of lime, and 0.88 carbonate of magnesia, with a trace of phosphate of lime. An imperial gallon of this water, when evaporated to dryness and the residue dried at a temperature of about 300° Fahr. left a residue which amounted to 88.07 grs. From another sample of the same water taken a month afterwards, 84.53 grs. of solid residue were obtained. By analysis, an imperial gallon of the water gave— Carbonate of lime 28.97 Carbonate of magnesia 2.61 Sulphate of lime 17.85 Chloride of sodium 16.95 Nitrate of potass 12.40 Nitrate of soda 1.50 Nitrate of magnesia 4.92 Nitrate of ammonia 4.01 Silica 0.80 Phosphate of lime traces Organic matter 90.01 The residue left by evaporation was of a light brown colour; when calcined at a low red heat it became slightly charred; but I could not, with any degree of certainty, determine the precise quantity of organic matter it contained : it was certainly very small. The excess of solid matter, as shown by the analysis, over the quantity obtained by evaporating the water to dryness, is owing to the decomposition of the nitrate of ammonia. The quantity of alkaline and earthy nitrates in this water is very remarkable. These salts are doubtless derived from the decomposition of animal matter in the adjacent churchyard. Their presence, conjoined with the inconsiderable quantity of organic matter which K 2 124 APPENDIX, the water contains, illustrates in a very forcible manner the power the earth possesses of depriving the water that percolates it of any animal matter it may hold in solution ; and moreover shows in how complete and rapid a manner this process is effected. In this case the distance of the well from the churchyard is little more than the breadth of the footpath, and yet this short extent of intervening ground has, by virtue of the oxidizing power of the earth, been sufficient wholly to decompose and render inoffensive the liquid animal matter that has oozed from the putrefying corpses in the churchyard. The result of these analyses confirms the general statement that the water derived from the sandy districts of Farnham and Bagshot is of eminent purity, and therefore peculiarly fitted for all those purposes of domestic and manufacturing economy which require the use of a very soft water. When regarded in conjunction with the analyses made by other chemists, of the water taken from the streams, pools, and other collections of water in the same locality, it also points out that, if it be desirable to secure the water in its utmost state of purity, it should be collected at its very source, before it has had time to become impregnated with the various mineral and saline ingredients of the different soils through which it would have to pass. The total absence of free carbonic acid in these waters is a very remarkable fact, and one which I believe has not been hitherto noticed. It will also be perceived that the principal solid constituent of the water supplied by the New River and the East London companies is carbonate of lime, held in solution by an excess of carbonic acid, an opinion already expressed by several chemists. These waters also contain an appreciable quantity of oxide of iron. When the water from these sources is boiled, or simply brought to the boiling temperature, the excess of carbonic acid is driven off, and the carbonate of lime being thus deprived of its solvent, the greater portion of it, together with the oxide of iron, is thrown down in the form of an insoluble crystalline powder, while the water is rendered comparatively soft and pure. Were it therefore possible that means could be devised by which the quantity of water necessary for the daily supply of London could be deprived of its excess of earthy carbonates in a manner sufficiently economic, comprehensive, and effectual, the APPENDIX. 125 citizens of the metropolis would enjoy the advantage of a tolerably pure soft water, free from those inconveniences which attend the use of the present hard-water supply. Confining myself wholly to a chemical view of the subject, the principal disadvantages attending the use of hard river waters are— First, The precipitation of earthy matter on the inside of vessels in which the water is heated. This furring of the vessel, as it is called, leads to its more rapid destruction, and has also the inconvenience of rendering it more difficult to cleanse, so that the flavour and odour of the various substances cooked in it are not readily removed. From the non-conducting power of the earthy crust, an increased consumption of fuel is also required for the due heating of the vessel. Secondly, The admixture of the earthy salts with the various articles of food submitted to the action of hot water. Thirdly, Diminished solvent power, as required for the purposes of the chemist, the brewer, and for many domestic purposes, as in the making of tea, soups, &c. Fourthly, Diminished cleansing power, both as regards the direct solvent action of the water, and also as causing the decomposition of soap, and consequent increased consumption of that article. I must, however, remark that the annual loss reported to arise from this cause appears to me considerably overrated, since water is rarely used for the washing of linen until previously boiled, and the common practice of adding carbonate of soda to the water completely destroys the ill effects resulting from the hardness of the water. The additional expense of the carbonate of soda, thus added, is too trifling to merit notice; but when this salt is used in excess, as is generally the case, it produces the more serious evil of materially impairing the strength of the fabric submitted to its action. The only real advantage which hard water possesses over soft (and in the present state of things one of considerable importance), is, that it does not act upon or erode the lead of the pipes and cisterns in which it is contained. There are also some particular cases of minor importance in which hard water is preferred; thus dyers prefer hard water for rinsing of their goods, soft water extracting too much of the colour; but these cases are comparatively rare, and might be easily accomplished by an artificial hardening of the water. 126 126 APPENDIX. The following Table indicates the relative hardness of the different waters as determined by the Soap test; distilled water being taken as unity, as proposed by Professor Brande. It also shows the effect of boiling in reducing the hardness of the water. The numbers express the direct quantity of an alcoholic solution of soap which an equal bulk of each water requires in order to form a lather remaining permanent for from five to ten minutes. Distilled water 1-0 Water from Haslemere 2.4 Boorley 1.5 Barford 2.4 Water of the New-River Company 13.3 Ditto after being boiled 4.7 Water of East-London Company 19.0 Ditto after being boiled 5.6 Water from the Well in Bishopsgate st. 47.4 Ditto after being boiled 26.6 The experiments which I have recently made on the action of pure water upon lead, clearly point out the necessity of keeping the pipes always full, especially in those instances in which the water has a tendency, however slight, to erode the lead. As the importance of this part of the question does not appear to have been sufficiently appreciated by the advocates of a constant instead of an intermittent supply, I will briefly recount the facts of the case, although I do not offer them as presenting anything particularly novel. If a piece of bright lead be placed in a stoppered bottle, completely filled with recently distilled water, so that the access of air be wholly excluded, the lead is but very slightly acted upon, and it is only after the lapse of three or four days that its surface becomes spangled with a few minute crystals of carbonate of lead. If the stopper of the bottle be now removed, the lead still remaining beneath the surface of the water, the erosive action of the water on the lead proceeds more rapidly, but still slowly. But if now a portion of the water be poured off, so as to leave the lead only partially immersed, rapid action on the lead immediately commences. In the course of thirty-six or forty-eight hours, its surface becomes coated with crystalline scales of carbonate of lead, which, falling off, are succeeded by others, so that after the APPENDIX. 127 lapse of a few days an abundant deposit of carbonate and hvdrated oxide of lead is found at the bottom of the vessel. If the experiment be made with distilled water that has been previously agitated with air, so as to completely aerate it, the lead is more rapidly acted upon, even in a closed vessel, thus clearly showing how much the action of the water upon the lead depends upon the presence or absence of atmospheric air. Now, in a minor degree, this is precisely what takes place in a leaden pipe conveying water capable of eroding lead. While the pipe is full, comparatively but little action occurs; but when the pipe is filled alternately with air and with water, it is placed under the most favourable circumstances to ensure a rapid erosion of its substance, and consequent contamination of the water. The rush of water necessarily produced by an intermittent flow must also detach portions of carbonate of lead from the sides of the pipe, even in those cases where the water has no very decided action on lead, and it is therefore far from improbable that in this manner the poison of lead is occasionally conveyed into our kitchens, and becomes mixed with our food. According to your desire, I have examined the action of the waters from the above-mentioned sources on clean lead, and have arrived at the following conclusions :—The water from Haslemere has a slow though decided action upon the metal, no effect taking place until the lead had been partially immersed for four or five days. After that time, a small deposit of carbonate of lead was perceptible at the bottom of the vessel, although none could be detected in solution. The absence of carbonic acid in the water from Haslemere, Boorley, and Barford, would in all probability prevent their acting upon lead, were atmospheric air at the same time excluded. A piece of lead that had been kept for a week in a closed bottle filled with water from Haslemere did not exhibit the least trace of carbonate of lead, nor could the presence of lead be detected in the water. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the water as drawn from the pipes of the New River and East London companies does not exhibit the least solvent action upon lead; when, however, purified by boiling, and placed in contact with lead, crystals of carbonate of lead were observable after the lapse of three days in the water of the New River Company, while, owing to its greater hardness, the water of the East London Company did not exhibit any traces of carbonate of lead until the expiration of more than 128 APPENDIX. a week, and even then only in a slight degree. The same waters purified by the patented process of Clark did not exhibit so decided an action upon lead as when purified by boiling; but after evaporating to dryness the water in which lead had been immersed for three weeks, and dissolving the residue in dilute nitric acid, the presence of a minute quantity of lead was rendered evident. It therefore appears that if leaden pipes, and especially if leaden cisterns, are to be employed in the distribution and storage of water, on the system of interrupted supply, it will be a necessary safeguard, that the water thus conveyed and stored should not be of less hardness than from six to seven degrees, compared with distilled water as unity ; and conversely, it also follows, that if the inhabitants of the metropolis are to gain the advantage of using a still purer and softer water, it will be requisite to do away with the existing leaden pipes and cisterns, and to substitute for them some material which shall not communicate any poisonous or noxious ingredient to the water. As matters now stand, we escape daily poisoning by the use of water loaded with earthy salts, and are thus compelled to drink an impure water on account of the impurity of our vessels. Would it not be better, and is it impossible, to drink the pure element from a pure cup ? I remain, dear sir, with much respect, Yours obediently, Thomas Taylor. To John Simon, Esq., F.R.S., Officer of Health to the City of London. Taylor, Printer, 39, Coleman street.