LONDON SANITARY IMPROVEMENTS. 317 



prevented them being blocked with refuse. The effects of a heavy 

 shower in the city are forcibly described by Swift in his usual plain 

 language: 



" Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, 

 And bear their trophies with them as they go; 

 Filths of all hues and odors seem to tell 

 What street they sailed from by their sight and smell. 



" Sweepings from the butchers' stalls, drugs, guts, and blood, 

 Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, 

 Deai cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood." 



Macaulay tells us that down to 1726 St. James' Square, though sur- 

 rounded by houses of the nobility, was a common receptacle for 

 refuse of all kinds, and that it required an Act of Parliament to stop 

 its being so used. Hogs were kept in St. George's, Hanover Square, 

 and in 1760 many were seized as a common nuisance. 



The numerous small streams which flowed through London from 

 the northern heigh ts Langbourne, Wallbrook, Fleet, Tybourne, and 

 "Westbourne which were in earlier times a source of health and 

 water supply, gradually became noisome open sewers, and one after 

 another were arched over. There were many wells in London, indi- 

 cated by such names as Holywell, Clerkenwell, and Aldgate Pump, 

 and there were also conduits in Cheapside and Cornhill; but it is cer- 

 tain that, from the filthy streets and house cesspools, all the water 

 derived from them must have been contaminated, and thus helped to 

 produce the terrible mortality from plague and fevers of the seven- 

 teenth century. It has been often suggested that the Great Fire of 

 London in 1666 was the cause of the final disappearance of the 

 plague, but how, except that the new houses were for once clean 

 and wholesome, has not, I think, been satisfactorily explained. I 

 believe, however, that it can be found in the action of the fire upon 

 the soil, which for more than a thousand years had been continu- 

 ously saturated with filth, and must, as we now know, have afforded 

 a nidus for every kind of disease germs. The long-continued fire 

 'not only destroyed the closely-packed houses, but in doing so must 

 have actually burnt the whole soil to a considerable depth, and thus 

 have destroyed not only the living germs, but all the organic matter 

 in it. The new city, for the first time in many centuries, had beneath 

 it a dry and wholesome soil, which to this day has not had time to 

 get so foully polluted as before the fire. 



When we come to consider how the people lived, the conditions 

 were equally bad. The houses were often sunk below the level of 



