3,58 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[December, 



THE HEALTH OF TOWNS QUESTION AND THE 

 ENGINEERS. 



It is owing in no small way to the engineers that the health of 

 towns is now so much thought of, anrl it behoves them to take care 

 tliev tlu'iuselves are not now lost sight of. The medical men have 

 worked hard and earned their reward, and the engineers must have 

 tlieirs ; hut unless they look out, the government will, as they com- 

 monly do, make the appointments a nest-egg of jobbery; and sons, 

 brothers, military men, and lawyers will take oif the hard-earned 

 meed of the engineers. We therefore most earnestly call on our 

 brethren to do their utmost so that neither the carrying out of 

 the health of towns plan is lost sight of, nor their own claims; and 

 they may make up their minds that, in upholding the public rights, 

 they are also in the best way upholding and strengthening their 

 own. 



Hitherto the engineers have called loudly for better works, hut 

 it is now they must show they can he got. To talk is one thing, 

 to work another ; and if it is in doubt whether doctors or engineers 

 have recommended or ought to recommend, there can be little 

 doubt who ought to do the work. Unless, however, the engineers 

 bestir themselves, the government will cheat them, as they did in 

 the Commission of Sewers and the Survey of London. Doctors 

 may say we ought to have good air to breathe, and clean dwellings 

 v. herein to live ; bishops, deans, and archdeacons preached this on 

 the thanksgiving day ; the press have said so with one tongue — 

 now the task lies with the engineers to answer to the common 

 call. 



While a huttful of water was thought enough for those who were 

 rich enough to pay for it, waterworks were small undertakings ; 

 but now the task is far greatei', and worthy of the highest minds. 

 Here in London, a great commonwealth of more than two millions 

 of men, one with as many men as the Netherlands in the height 

 and might of their pride and wealth, as Switzerland with its many 

 cantons; as Denmark, as Tuscany; with more than the kingdoms 

 of Hanover, Saxony, Wurtemberg, Sicily, or Norway ; with more 

 than Athens, or Sparta, or Corinth ever knew — this is the great 

 body of men, women, and children who are to be daily fed with 

 fresh and wholesome water. So great an undertaking has seldom 

 come within the reach of one mind, but it is to be done, and must 

 he done. The neighbourhood must be searched far and wide, 

 streams that flow farthest west must be bi'ought east ; if need be, 

 the bowels of the earth must be sought, hut water must be found ; 

 it must have room to settle down and be cleansed, and it must be 

 sent even to the roofs of the topmost dwellings in this town, not 

 of seven, but of many hills. Even the poorest man must have 

 water and enough to his hand ; the working man's wife must not, 

 as now, be left to drag the child at her breast in the wearisome 

 search for a pailful of heated and filthy water. If tlie rich are to 

 have health unharmed, if they are to have their span of life un- 

 shortejied by fever and by plague, it must be by taking care of the 

 poor and their abodes. 



So great is this town, so widely has it spread, that the task ot 

 the engineer is made e:'ery way harder. Already hills have 

 been brought down, dells filled up, springs choked ; wells, chaly- 

 lieate, suliduirous, and saline, buried; rivers swallowed up, and the 

 woods and fens which fed them built over ; nay, even the Thames 

 has bec(jme an outpouring of filth. The Fleet river, on which our 

 fathers fought the Danes, and on which for hundreds of years ships 

 traded, having become a sewor, has been hidden from the sight, 

 aiul now the great Thames is in judgment. Our store of wholesome 

 water lias been taken from us, the outfall of London filth is over- 

 worked, and another great and new task is set before us — that of 

 cleansing a mighty stream. By our own nnskilfulness has the 

 evil been done, and it needs more to do the work now than before 

 the mischief was brought about. We have here a great warning, 

 fcu', it may be said, knowledge run miid. We wished to cleanse 

 the houses, and we drained them into the sewers; theretofore the 

 sewers bore only the drainage water from the streets and houses; 

 but when the new load of filth was ])oured in, the sewers became 

 great dungheaps or cesspoids, fr(un wliicli hurtful and deadly 

 gases steiimed off. The drains which bring down the filth carry 

 up to tlie bedroom floors the sewer steams, and the heat of the 

 fires lends a draught for their so doing. 



This is a network of evil; hut this is not all; the very filth which 

 is in tlie sewers wrought up into deadly gase?-, is needful for dung- 

 ing the corn-lields: nor can food be grown without such help, or 

 without the husbandry of JIngland being put to great shifts. It 

 is the law in the working of this world that nothing sliall be lost: 

 corn is eaten — it takes anotlier shape; hut it is thereby made 

 ready, as it were, for being again grovvn. The earth has its lime, 



its clay, and its sand, — these are lasting; but the nitrf)gen is not 

 so, it grows up in the blade of grass or wheat, and is carried away; 

 and until it be brought back again there can be no yield of nitro- 

 genous crops. The farmer buys guano, bones, and oil-cake — of 

 these many hundreds of tons; hut it may fairly be said, the dung of 

 three millions of people in the great towns, and of their beasts of 

 burden, now wasted, would give greater crops than all the ship 

 loads from the shores of Peru or the East Sea, yearly brought at 

 a very heavy outlay. The dung of sea-birds can never be so fit 

 a manure for corn crops as the dung which is made from the corn 

 itself. 



To keep the sewers clean, the solid and liquid faeces must not be 

 sent into them, and, for the sake of the farmers likewise, they 

 must he saved. The great stumbling-block in the way of saving 

 street and town manure is the outlay for cartage, as was found by 

 the National Philanthropic Association, in their first trials of the 

 street orderlies. More must be laid out to carry a ton of street 

 dirt two miles by cart than to carry it fifty miles by railway; and 

 yet the same chemical constituents, when wrought up, will pay for 

 sending to the West Indies. 



It is needful, therefore, that steps should be taken to gather and 

 carry the street and house refuse cheaply, as a beginning. This is 

 much more wanted than plans for sewage-water, which can never 

 pay. The next thing wanted is to get rid of the waterclosets. 

 These need water, and which is either carried into the cesspools 

 or the sewers. If in the former, there is a greater weight to be 

 carted when they are emptied; if in the latter, there is a waste of 

 water, as well as of manure. In reckoning the water for two mil- 

 lions and a half in London, as much must be set down for water- 

 closets as for household wants: three hundred thousand waterclosets 

 must he daily fed. Plans have been brought forward for doing 

 without waterclosets, and they are well worthy of being looked 

 into.* 



Waterclosets have been for some time held to be a great good, 

 and they have been strongly recmnmended by the greatest masters 

 of the laws of health, to be set up in every dwelling, even in the 

 poorest. Now that the fearful state of the sewers is known, it is 

 vei-y much open to question v,'hether anything of the kind should 

 be done. A short time ago, no one would have been listened to 

 who talked of shutting up waterclosets and privies, and taking 

 away the faeces daily; and yet in the choice of evils it is against 

 waterclosets. 



VV^atei-closets, so far from being healthful, are unhealthful, by 

 bringing the sewer steams into the houses and dwelling-rooms; 

 they are wasteful in wasting water and in wasting manure, and, 

 most of all, the liquid manures. If waterclosets are to be set up 

 in every house, then they must have an outfall to themselves; a 

 new, troublesome, and costly sewage, free from the street sewage, 

 — ;uid yet the evil will not he wholly got rid of. 



It is quite within means to provide closets which shall not be 

 unwholesome or unpleasant, and which can be daily emptied, and 

 whereby the waste of manure and water shall be put a stop to, the 

 health of the dwellings be kept free from sewer nuisances, the 

 sewers themselves he in a more wholesome state, the gully-holes 

 be less hurtful, and the river less polluted. 



All this makes a great undertaking, and in a less way the same 

 things have to be done in all our towns; but it will not be enough 

 to lay down great and good works — they must he done cheaply. 

 To give water to every house is so great an undertaking that the 

 outlay and tlie income are among the first things to be borne in 

 mind; and he will be the best engineer who can do his work at the 

 least cost. Above all, there must he no rashness, there must he 

 no low beginnings and heavy reckonings — all must be well 

 settled at first; neither must we have any superfine or silver-fork 

 engineering, using stucco for brick, and stone for timber, making 

 things to last for ever, when at a tithe of the cost they may be 

 made to do for our grandcliildren, and setting up complicated 

 machines where there is little for them to do. The pay-sheet is 

 much nuu-e worth looking to than the drawing-board, though we 

 are sorry to say few bear this in mind. 



* 'Native Guano veisus Sewer Water.' London : Sherwood, 1849. 



Reclnmalion of Land from Rivers. — Tlie Lords Commissioners of Woods 

 and t'liresis liave served notices claiinin){ the l.uid taken in tram the river by 

 tlie Cork, lilaukrock, and Passage Railway Company, and they have written 

 to say that a valuator is instiucled to come over and value the property for 

 their lordships. 1 he corpiiration of Liverpool, within a ifvi days, com- 

 pletid a compromise wiih the Commissioners of Woods and forests, hy con- 

 senting to pay to the credit of their lordships a sum of 100,000/. for land 

 they took in from the liver. — Cork Conslitulion. 



