185 



SEVENTH. 



SEWERS. 



486 



wife's present and future personal estate, the husband, or his personal 

 representative (in case of his predeceasing his wife), will be entitled 

 to claim the whole under the contract. 



When the husband has not entitled himself by contract to the choscs 

 in action of the wife, there is no bar to his getting possession of such 

 of them as are recoverable at law ; but if he require the assistance of a 

 Court of Equity for the recovery of them, and the wife does not con- 

 sent to his obtaining the whole, that court will not lend its aid, except 

 upon the terms of the husband's making a provision for the wife and 

 her children, by way of settlement, out of the fund. Most frequently 

 one half of the fund is directed to be settled, but the proportion given 

 in each case depends upon the circumstances, though it never amounts 

 to the whole. The rules of the Court of Equity in directing settlements 

 out of the wife's equitable choxi in action are the same, whether the 

 application to it is made by the husband himself or by his creditors. 

 Settlements out of the wife's equitable chases in action, when made by 

 the husband, are no less valid against his creditors than when made 

 under the direction of the court ; and even a settlement by him of the 

 entire fund, which the court would not have directed, has in some 

 cases been held valid against his creditors ; though the decisions in 

 those cases seem hardly consistent with the law as laid down under 

 the 13 Eliz., c. 5. It should be added, that now by the stat. 20 & 21 

 Viet., c. 57, a married woman is empowered to release, with the concur- 

 rence of her husband, her equity to a settlement in property to which 

 she may be entitled under any deed dated subsequently to December 

 31, 1857; also to dispose of reversionary interests under such settle- 

 ments. But these enactments do not interfere with the principles 

 above stated. (SEPARATE USE; Bright on Hmband and Wife.) 



SEVENTH, in music, a dissonant interval, of which there are three 

 kinds, the minor or ordinary seventh, from a to F ; the diminished 

 seventh, from c sharp to B flat ; and the major or sharp seventh, from 

 c to B. Ex. : 



For the chord of the seventh, its inversions and treatment, ee 

 CHORD. 



SEWERS. In its original acceptation, the word Sewers meant 

 simply the banks, or sea-weirs, erected for the purpose of protecting 

 the low lands by the sides of tidal rivers, from the effects of inunda- 

 tions or high tides ; but, by extension, the word has been applied 

 firstly to all artificial channels which discharge the surface drainage 

 of lands on a comparatively speaking high level into a natural water 

 course, by outlets on its shores (whence the old synonyme for sewer, 

 Aon) ; and of late years the word has been so exclusively applied to 

 the 'subterranean artificial water-courses of towns destined to relieve 

 them of both the surface drainage, and the liquid refuse of the houses, 

 as to have caused the original meaning to be entirely lost sight ol 

 It is however so convenient to adopt a special name for town drains, 

 and the modern sense of the word teictr is so universally received, that 

 in the succeeding remarks, it will be exclusively so employed ; or, in 

 other words, whenever mccr is used, it* will be in the sense "of an 

 artificial channel for the removal of surface, subsoil, or house waters." 



The earliest recorded instances of the use of sewers is in the palace 

 of Nimroud, and hi the more celebrated Cloaca; of ancient Rome ; but 

 none of the drains of this deHcription executed by the ancients were 

 used for the purposes to which they are applied in the more highly 

 civilised countries of modern times. The cloaca maxima itself was 

 formed for the purpose of draining the Campus Martius, and the low 

 swampy lands between the Seven Hills, in precisely the same manner 

 that the figut de ceinture of Paris drains the valley of the Harais, 

 Menilmontant, and Hontmartre of that city ; and though no doubt the 

 house waters of the capital of the ancient world found their way 

 illy into this huge drain, it is notorious that the Romans never 

 were acquainted with the modes of house sewerage we have lately 

 ;i|.]ili>-i|. One of the first legislative enactments of modern times on 

 the subject of sewers was an act, 9 Henry III. (about 1225), which 

 was followed by others, 6 Henry VI. ; 8 Henry VI. ; 4 Henry VII. ; 

 Henry VIII. ; and the whole of the legislation then prevailing was 

 carefully reviewed and condensed, by Sir Thomas More, in the 

 celebrated ' Bill of Sewers,' which became law in 25 Henry VIII. (or hi 

 1581). In France attention had also been directed to the subject of 

 the drainage of the capital towards the close of the mediaeval period, 

 for in 1412 the grand Egout de ceinture (then called the ruisseau de 

 Menilmontant) was built; and in 1550, Philibert de 1'Orme was 

 instructed to examine and improve the drainage of Paris. The govern- 

 ments of both England and France continued from these periods 

 actively to interfere with the regulation of these important works ; 

 but, in accordance with the respective idiosyncracies of the two 

 nations, the courses adopted were essentially different. In the one 

 case, the power was handed over to local commissions ; in the other, it 

 was retained exclusively in the hands of the central government ; the 

 consequence being, as might have been expected, that hi the former 

 case there was displayed much irregular energy and enterprise, in the 

 latter there was displayed a singular amount of scientific indifference. 

 Without dwelling on this political part of the questions connected 



with the execution of public works, it is to be observed that ultimately, 

 about the year 1834, there were no less than eight separate com- 

 missions entrusted with the superintendence of the sewerage and 

 drainage of London ; and so great were the evils then found to result 

 from the variety of practice tolerated by the different boards, and from 

 their discordant jurisdictions, that at last, after many efforts, the local 

 boards were suppressed, and in 1848 the " Metropolitan Commissioners 

 of Sewers " were appointed, with extensive powers over the whole of 

 the Metropolis. A few years later the management of the sewerage 

 of the Metropolis was transferred to the Metropolitan Board of 

 Works instituted by the Act of 18 & 19 Viet. c. 120 (passed 

 14th August, 1855). The sewerage of the provincial towns of 

 England is now either left under the control of the local paving 

 and draining commissions, or of the municipal corporations acting 

 under special acts of parliament ; or it is carried on under a species 

 of government superintendence, under the powers of the Public 

 Health Act, 11 & 12 Viet. c. 63 (passed 31st August, 1848), which has 

 been limited by the passing of some subsequent acts, such as the Act 

 of 1854, and the local government act of 1858. In France the 

 administration of the laws regulating the figouts remains under the 

 control of the Department of Public Works, and the Municipalities 

 have practically no power over the matter. 



Until a very recent , period, the subterranean channels of London 

 were exclusively used as drains for the removal of surface, subsoil, and 

 ordinary house waters ; and the discharge " of any filth or soil into any 

 common, or public drain, or sewer" was even, by the Act 57 Geo. III. 

 c. 29, made punishable by a fine. Subsequently to that period, how- 

 ever, the universal application of the water closet system has forced 

 the various authorities connected with the sewers to tolerate in the 

 first place, and finally to regulate, the discharge of the excreta of the 

 inhabitants of towns into the sewers. To such an extent does this 

 now take place, that the modern use of those subterranean channels 

 has become of infinitely more importance than the original one, and 

 the word " sewerage," or sewage, has been invented for the purpose of 

 expressing the waters employed for the removal of house refuse of the 

 description alluded to. Unfortunately the legislature has hitherto 

 neglected to direct its attention to the evil produced by the new 

 system, by thus discharging, eventually, the whole of the town refuse 

 into the natural water courses of the country ; and though no doubt 

 many of the details of the sewerage of our towns have of late years 

 been much improved, much still remains to be done, not only for the 

 purpose of securing the purity of the rivers and streams, but also for 

 the useful application of the fertilising matters now so sadly wasted. 



One advantage appears to have resulted from the discussions 

 which have taken place with respect to the legislative, administra- 

 tive, and executive measures required to meet the case of the metro- 

 politan sewerage, namely, that at last many of the exclusive .theories 

 propounded by the admirers of hydraulic engineering, as it is not 

 practised by eminent hydraulic engineers, have been set aside ; whilst 

 all that was good in the technical modes of operation introduced by 

 this new school has been retained. At the present day the principles 

 most generally admitted as being applicable in designing a complete 

 system of town sewerage may be stated to have been elicited from the 

 discussions thus referred to, and to be as follows, in all normal cases at 

 least. It must, however, be understood that they are based upon the 

 supposition that the town in question is in a thriving condition, and 

 likely to double its population in fifty years ; that its relief is such as 

 to afford tolerably favourable rates of inclination in the main sewers ; 

 and that there is a good water supply to every house. The rain-flow 

 to be provided for from the paved and non-absorbent parts of the town, 

 may be taken at about 4 inch in 24 hours if proper storm overflows 

 can be obtained; that from open gardens, cultivated lands, &c., may 

 vary according to the nature of the soil, from % inch to J an inch 

 per day Under-ground springs must be allowed for, if they should 

 exist in any serious quantities, as is frequently the case in towns 

 situated upon the outcrop of a geological stratum, or upon a bed of 

 permeable materials surrounded by high lauds able to drain into 

 them. In some cases, the latter condition may even require that a 

 system of intercepting/ drains should be formed, so as to isolate the 

 area of the town from the hydrographical basin surrounding it, and to 

 confine the sewerage operations to that especial purpose. 



These conditions premised, before settling the dimensions of the main 

 sewers, it is necessary to divide the town into sections corresponding 

 with the great physical divisions of the district, and to ascertain for 

 each of the latter : 1, the area to be relieved ; 2, its actual and prospec- 

 tive population ; 3, the amount of the house sewerage it would be 

 likely to furnish (this is usually at the rate of 5 or 7 cubic feet per 

 individual, and it is found that at least one-fourth of that quantity is 

 discharged between the hours of eleven and one, so that it is advisable to 

 calculate the house sewerage at nearly 1 cubic foot per head per hour) ; 

 4, the rain-flow ; 5, the length of the sewer, and the inclination it would 

 be possible to give to its invert, because the two last named conditions 

 will affect the dimensions of the cross section. As to the house sewers, 

 it is useless to attempt to proportion their area and fall to the quantity 

 of waters they may discharge, because it has been found practically that 

 the public in general is so careless in its manner of treating those sewers, 

 that anything less than a 6-inch pipe drain will infallibly be choked 

 within a very short time. So long as the pipe drains thus referred to 



