xvi THE REFORM OF LONDON 233 



structure. 1 These changes, which his prevision led him 

 to advise, might have been done at that day without an 

 immense cost to the community, but nearly a century 

 had to pass before their purpose was fulfilled by the 

 cutting of Farringdon Road and Moorgate Street. Other 

 letters referred to the police of the city ; another had 

 reference to the pavements, and expounded the best 

 methods, and the proper size and squaring of the stones 

 employed. There were then numerous sugar factories 

 in the city of London, some in narrow streets such as 

 Bow Lane and Knightrider Street ; and besides the smoke 

 and filth they engendered, devastating fires were of 

 frequent occurrence. Fothergill pleaded that no more 

 sugar-houses should be allowed in the city proper, but 

 only in one vacant tract outside its boundary. 



He turned his attention also to the burial of the dead, 

 which was still practised within the city, the coffins often 

 crowded together and covered with but a thin layer of 

 earth. He advocated the formation of public cemeteries 

 spaciously laid out in Moorfields, at that time an open 

 site on the north side of the town. He had a strong 

 conviction of the importance of bathing, a practice then 

 mostly confined to the wealthier members of society. 

 Not many days before his last illness he wrote a letter to 

 the directors of the New River Company, urging that they 

 would render an essential service to the community, if 

 they would build public bathing-houses in suitable places, 

 for men, women, boys and girls respectively, which 

 could be used at low prices, say from sixpence to one 

 penny per bath. 2 



Such was Fothergill as a philanthropist and social 

 reformer. What he did he did simply and naturally, as 

 the outcome of his own kindliness. He never posed ; one 

 could not quite say the same of his friend Lettsom. Nor 

 had the philanthropy of Fothergill anything in it priggish 

 or superior ; he did not set himself up to instruct others. 



1 In this he worked with Charles Dingley. See Works, Hi. p. cvii, and 

 C. Dingley, folio leaf addressed To the Citizens of London (no copy found in 

 Brit. Mus.). 



* Works, iii. pp. cv-cxvi ; MS. at Fds. Ref. Lib. ; Gazetteer, 1768, 1769, etc. 



