[18]It seems almost unnecessary to remind the reader that five more years have added infinite additional testimony to that mentioned in the text as existing in 1849; and that, two years ago, in a special Act of Parliament, it was enjoined on the Water Companies of the Metropolis that, within seven years, they should follow the precedent so extensively established. In the face of such evidence—with the knowledge that Manchester has a constant supply and that Glasgow is arranging one, it certainly tests one’s credulity to hear it rumoured that our Metropolitan Water-Merchants are hoping to resist that requirement, on the ground that such a supply in London would beimpossible.—J. S., 1854.
[18]It seems almost unnecessary to remind the reader that five more years have added infinite additional testimony to that mentioned in the text as existing in 1849; and that, two years ago, in a special Act of Parliament, it was enjoined on the Water Companies of the Metropolis that, within seven years, they should follow the precedent so extensively established. In the face of such evidence—with the knowledge that Manchester has a constant supply and that Glasgow is arranging one, it certainly tests one’s credulity to hear it rumoured that our Metropolitan Water-Merchants are hoping to resist that requirement, on the ground that such a supply in London would beimpossible.—J. S., 1854.
On the relative merits or demerits of the two competing systems of supply, I have only to speak so far as their adaptation to sanitary purposes is concerned. In this respect, I have no hesitation in saying that the system of constant supply is immeasurably superior to its rival; so superior, that unless competent engineering authorities should decide on its practical inapplicability to the City of London, I would strongly recommend its adoption as the only one, in my judgment, by which the growing necessities of the population can be fully and effectively satisfied.
III. With respect to offensive trades and occupations pursued within the city of London, my task of recommendation is an easy one. To any person conversant with the simplest physiological relations of cause and effect, it is quite notorious that the decomposition of organic matter within a certain distance of human habitations unfailingly tends to produce disease; and every one who is competent by knowledge and impartiality to pronounce an opinion on the subject, must feel 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.
1. First, in regard to slaughter-houses, I may remind you that, on the 23rd of January last, when your Hon. Commission first met under the new Act of Parliament, I recommended to you on sanitary grounds, that in such rules as you might make for the regulation of slaughter houses, all underground slaughtering should be absolutely prohibited. It was laid down, however, that your Act of Parliament would not enable you to establish this restriction, which (it was argued) would be equivalent to a direct suppression of many existing slaughter-houses.[19]
[19]Slaughtering in cellars was rendered illegal by the amended City Sewers Act, 1851, and since that year has been entirely discontinued in the City. Seepage 192.—J. S., 1854.
[19]Slaughtering in cellars was rendered illegal by the amended City Sewers Act, 1851, and since that year has been entirely discontinued in the City. Seepage 192.—J. S., 1854.
Considering that, in my first recommendations to the Commission I ought to confine myself to objects attainable by means of the Act of Parliament then just coming into operation, I felt myself precluded for the time from entering on the subject (however important in itself) of the total abolition of urban slaughtering. Now, however, while treating generally of sanitary improvement for the City, I can have no hesitation in repeating an opinion which I have already submitted to the Health-Committee of the Common Council; and I beg accordingly to state, that I consider slaughtering within the City as both directly and indirectly prejudicial to the health of the population;—directly, because it loads the air with effluvia of decomposing animal matter, not only in the immediate vicinity of each slaughter-house, but likewise along the line of drainage which conveys away its washings and fluid filth;indirectly, because many very offensive and noxious trades are in close dependence on the slaughtering of cattle, and round about the original nuisance of the slaughter-house, within as narrow limits of distance as circumstances allow, you invariably find established the concomitant and still more grievous nuisances of gut-spinning, tripe-dressing, bone-boiling, tallow-melting, paunch-cooking, &c. Ready illustrations of this fact may be found in the gut-scraping sheds of Harrow-alley, adjoining Butchers’-row, Aldgate; or in the Leadenhall skin-market, contiguous to the slaughtering places, where the stinking hides of cattle lie for many hours together, spread out over a large area of ground, waiting for sale, to the great offence of the neighbourhood.
Such evils as those to which I have adverted are inseparable from the process of slaughtering, however carefullyand cleanlily conducted; and they may easily be aggravated to an unlimited extent by defects in drainage, in water supply, or in ventilation, or by the slovenly habits and impunctuality of those to whom the removal of filth and offal is intrusted.
In short, I believe it to be quite impossible, so to conduct the process of slaughtering within the City of London as to remove it from the category of nuisances, or to render it harmless to the health of the population; and I believe it to be equally impossible so to superintend the details of its performance as to prevent them, where ill-administered, from rising into considerable and fatal importance among the promoting causes of epidemic and infectious disease.
It is scarcely necessary, after this expression of my opinion, that I should say how strongly I would recommend that measures should be taken for the discontinuance of all slaughtering within the City; and that, with the abolition of slaughtering, all establishments which deal with animal matter approaching putrefaction, and all sheds and stalls for the continued keeping of cattle, should likewise be prohibited and suppressed.
The number of slaughter-houses at present registered and tolerated within the City amounts to 138, and in 58 of these the slaughtering occurs in vaults and cellars. How overwhelming an amount of organic decomposition must be furnished by these establishments, can neither be estimated nor conceived; but the influence of that decomposition admits of being measured in its effects on the population, and in the high zymotic mortality which denotes an atmosphere over-laden with organic poison.
Before leaving this subject, I think it right very briefly to allude to an argument which is often objected to the view here stated. The objector looks to a particular district, or to a particular slaughter-house, and says that the mortality of the district is an average one; or he points to Mr. A. or Mr. B.—the butcher or the butcher’s man, saying, ‘Who can be healthier than A. or B.? Surely, if the pursuit be injurious, these men ought to have been poisoned long ago.’ Now, to this I reply;—first, as regards the men employed in these crafts, we have no statistics of any value to decide on their mortality, and judgment on the matter cannot be deduced from some half-dozen cases, known to any of us individually; but, further, if we admit (which I by no means know to be the case) that they are persons of average longevity and healthiness, then it must be remembered that their activity, their out-door exercise, and, above all, their unlimited supply of animal food, are circumstances conducing to give them health beyond the average of their station; and it must be remembered that these palliating circumstances, though they may counteract the evil for those persons most nearly concerned in it, contribute nothing towards deodorising the neighbourhood, or towards preserving its poorer inhabitants from the depressive influence of putrid emanations.
And, as regards the district—although we have certain evidence that organic decomposition is a chief cause of disease, yet we do not invariably find disease generated in immediate proximity to the source of nuisance. Drainage beneath the soil, and currents of air above it, convey the materials of decomposition to a distance; and if the particular slaughter-houses be placed on a high level amidst thesurrounding City, so that their drainage be effectual and their ventilation complete, then obviously their influence must be sought for, not so much in any special aggravation of the local mortality, as in certain remoter effects of their diffused emanation; in effects, namely, which are discoverable along their lines of drainage and ventilation, and in the various consequences of a highly zymotic atmosphere generally through the entire town.
2. With regard to such trades as are considered to be simply offensive, and where the evidence of injury to health is indirect and uncertain, I can hardly doubt that a wise legislation would exclude them also from the circle of the metropolis. Tallow-melting, whalebone-boiling, gas-making, and various other chemical proceedings, if not absolutely injurious to life, are nuisances, at least in the ordinary language of the law, or are apt to become such. It is the common right of the neighbourhood to breathe an uncontaminated atmosphere; and, with this common right, such nuisances must, in their several degrees, be considered to clash. It might be an infraction of personal liberty to interfere with a proprietor’s right to make offensive smells within the limits of his own tenement, and for his own separate inhalation; but surely it is a still greater infraction of personal liberty when the proprietor, entitled as he is to but the joint use of an atmosphere which is the common property of his neighbourhood, assumes what is equivalent to a sole possession of it, and claims the right of diffusing through it some nauseous effluvium which others, equally with himself, are thus obliged to inhale. Such, as it appears to me, is the rational view of this matter; and although I amnot prepared to speak of these trades in the same terms as I applied to slaughtering and its kindred occupations,—although, that is to say, I cannot speak of them as injurious to health on any large scale, yet I would respectfully submit to your Hon. Court that your Act of Parliament empowers you to deal with such nuisances in respect of their being simply offensive.[20]
[20]City Sewers Act, 1848, § 113.
[20]City Sewers Act, 1848, § 113.
3. Under the same head, I would likewise beg leave to suggest whether it might not be practicable for your Hon. Court to regulate the operation of establishments which evolve large volumes of smoke. The exterior dirtiness and dinginess of London depend mainly on this cause; and the same influence, by rendering domestic cleanliness difficult and expensive, creates an additional impediment to its cultivation. People naturally despair of cleansing that which a day’s exposure to the atmosphere blackens again with soot; or they keep their windows shut, breathing a fusty and unwholesome air, in the hope of excluding the inconvenience. Now, when it is remembered that all the smoke of London is but so much wasted fuel, it must surely be felt that the enforcement of measures for its consumption would be to the interest of all parties; amply economizing to the manufacturer whatever might be the trifling expense of appropriate arrangements, while it would relieve the public of that which, called by the mildest name, is a nuisance and a source of heavy expense.
IV. The subject of intramural burial is the next on which I have to report, as affecting the health of the City.
In compliance with an order of the Health Committee, I have examined as fully as circumstances would allow into the requirements of the City of London in respect of burial accommodation, and the result of my inquiry obliges me to express my conviction, that the City can no longer with safety or propriety be allowed to furnish intramural interment to its dead.
In all those larger parochial burying-grounds where the maintenance of a right to bury can be considered important,—in all such, and in most others, too, the soil is saturated and super-saturated with animal matter undergoing slow decomposition. There are, indeed, few of the older burial-grounds of the City where the soil does not rise many feet above its original level, testifying to the large amount of animal matter which rots beneath the surface. The vaults beneath churches are, in many instances, similarly overloaded with materials of putrefaction, and the atmosphere, which should be kept pure, and without admixture for the living, is hourly tainted with the fœtid emanations of the dead. For the most part, houses are seen to rise on all sides in immediate contiguity to the burial-ground, forbidding the possibility of even such ventilation as might diminish the evil; and the inhabitants of such houses complainbitterly, as they well may, of the inconvenience which they suffer from this confined and noxious atmosphere.
With respect to burial in vaults, which prevails to a very great and dangerous extent in this City, I may observe that, among persons who are ill-informed on the subject, there exist erroneous notions as to the preservation of bodies under these circumstances. They are supposed, from the complete closure of their coffins, to remain unchanged for ages, like the embalmed bodies of Egypt and Peru; or at least—if perhaps they undergo some interior and invisible change (as the chrysalis within its sheath) that there is no interference with the general arrangement, no breach in the compactness of the envelope. Nothing can be less correct than this supposition.
It is unnecessary that I should detail to you the process of decay, as it occurs within the charnel-house; nor need I inquire for your information whether indeed it be true, as alleged, that part of the duty of a sexton consists in tapping the recent coffins, so as to facilitate the escape of gases which otherwise would detonate from their confinement. It is sufficient to state, that—whether such be or be not the duty of the functionary in question, the time certainly comes, sooner or later, when every corpse buried in the vault of a church spreads the products of its decomposition through the air as freely as though no shell had enclosed it. It is matter of the utmost notoriety that, under all ordinary conditions of vault-sepulture, the wooden case of the coffin speedily decays and crumbles, while the interior leaden one, bending with the pressure of whatever mass may be above it (or often with its own weight) yields, bulges, and bursts, assurely as would a paper hat-box under the weight of a laden portmanteau.
If the accuracy of this description be doubted, let inquiry be made on a large scale after the coffins of 40 years back[21]—let it be seen how many will appear! If, on the contrary, its accuracy be granted, then I apprehend nothing further need be urged, to establish the importance of abolishing a system which maintains on so large a scale the open putrefaction of human remains within places of frequent resort, and in the midst of populous habitations.
[21]Perhaps the expressions in my text are somewhat too general; not indeed as to the fact of the coffinsultimatelygiving vent to their fœtid contents (which is the real point at issue) but as to the time within which this occurs. In the dryer and better kept vaults, a longer period certainly elapses than that suggested; in the worse, probably a shorter one. The sooner or later is of little practical importance: but, on re-perusing my Report, I think it right to add this qualification.—J. S., 1854.
[21]Perhaps the expressions in my text are somewhat too general; not indeed as to the fact of the coffinsultimatelygiving vent to their fœtid contents (which is the real point at issue) but as to the time within which this occurs. In the dryer and better kept vaults, a longer period certainly elapses than that suggested; in the worse, probably a shorter one. The sooner or later is of little practical importance: but, on re-perusing my Report, I think it right to add this qualification.—J. S., 1854.
It is a very serious matter for consideration, that close beneath the feet of those who attend the services of their church, there often lies an almost solid pile of decomposing human remains, co-extensive with the area of the building, heaped as high as the vaulting will permit, and generally (as I have shown) but very partially confined. And if it be the case, as perhaps it may be, that the frequenters of the place of worship do not complain of any vitiation of their atmosphere, or perhaps do not experience it, not the less is it true that such a vitiation occurs, and—whether to the special detriment of the congregation or not, contributes to the overladen putrefactiveness of our London atmosphere.
In respect of such vaults, I do not consider that themere cessation of burial in them will be sufficient; seeing that at the present moment they contain amongst them many thousand coffins, as yet tenanted by the materials of decomposition; and year after year, if left in their present state, these will be poisoning the air with successive instalments of their progressive decay. It seems to me quite indispensable that some comprehensive measure should be undertaken, for abolishing at once and for ever all burial within the City of London. Conjointly with the general application to Parliament, for prohibition of further intramural sepulture, I would recommend that authority be obtained by the City for its several parishes to procure the decent removal to extramural cemeteries of such coffins as already occupy their vaults; or, failing this measure, I would recommend that all coffins now lying within vaults, be walled up in their present resting-places with uniform impermeable masonry. For very obvious reasons, I should prefer the former plan to the latter.[22]
[22]Probably the most successful attempt at hermetical enclosure of organic matters would not reach beyond effecting a postponement of their diffusion through the atmosphere. The true principles for burial of the dead lie rather in recognising their decomposition as inevitable, and in providing only lest it be offensive or injurious to the living. This is best attained by interment in a well-chosen soil, at a depth proportioned to the qualities of the ground; with no pretence of everlasting coffins and impenetrable cerements; but with ample vegetation above, to relieve the upper earth from whatever products of decay may mount and mingle there; and especially with thorough drainage below, so that down-currents of air and rainfall may freely traverse the putrefactive strata, ventilating and washing the soil, and diffusing its organic contents through deeper levels, till their oxidation is complete and their new inodorous combinations are discharged in watery solution.—J. S., 1854.
[22]Probably the most successful attempt at hermetical enclosure of organic matters would not reach beyond effecting a postponement of their diffusion through the atmosphere. The true principles for burial of the dead lie rather in recognising their decomposition as inevitable, and in providing only lest it be offensive or injurious to the living. This is best attained by interment in a well-chosen soil, at a depth proportioned to the qualities of the ground; with no pretence of everlasting coffins and impenetrable cerements; but with ample vegetation above, to relieve the upper earth from whatever products of decay may mount and mingle there; and especially with thorough drainage below, so that down-currents of air and rainfall may freely traverse the putrefactive strata, ventilating and washing the soil, and diffusing its organic contents through deeper levels, till their oxidation is complete and their new inodorous combinations are discharged in watery solution.—J. S., 1854.
Intramural burial is an evil, no doubt, that varies in its intensity according to the numbers interred; becoming appreciable in its effects on health, so far as the rough measure of statistics can inform us, only when many interments occur annually, or when ground is disturbed wherein much animal matter had previously been left to decay. But, be the evil large or little in any particular case, evil undoubtedly it is in all, and an unmitigated evil.
The atmosphere in which epidemic and infectious diseases most readily diffuse their poison and multiply their victims is one, as I have already often stated, in which organic matters are undergoing decomposition. Whence these may be derived signifies little. Whether the matter passing into decay be an accumulation of soaking straw and cabbage leaves in some miserable cellar, or the garbage of a slaughter-house, or an overflowing cesspool, or dead dogs floated at high water into the mouth of a sewer, or stinking fish thrown overboard in Billingsgate-dock, or the remains of human corpses undergoing their last chemical changes in consecrated earth, the previous history of the decomposed material is of no moment whatever. The pathologist knows no difference of operation between one decaying substance and another; so soon as he recognises organic matter undergoing decomposition, so soon he recognises the most fertile soil for the increase of epidemic diseases; and I may state with certainty, that there are many churchyards in the City of London where every spadeful of soil turned up in burial sensibly adds to the amount of animal decomposition which advances too often inevitably around us.
Nor can I refrain from adding, as a matter claiming attention, that, in the performance of intramural interment, there constantly occur disgusting incidents dependent on overcrowdedness of the burial-ground; incidents which convert the extremest solemnity of religion into an occasion for sickness or horror; perhaps mingling with the ritual of the Church some clamour of gravediggers who have mis-calculated their space; perhaps diffusing amidst the mourners some nauseous evidence and conviction, that a prior tenant of the tomb has been prematurely displaced, or that the spade has impatiently anticipated the slower dismembering of decay. Cases of this nature are fresh in the memory of the public; cases of extreme nuisance and brutal desecration in place of decent and solemn interment; and it is unnecessary that I should revive the record of transactions inconsistent with even the dawn of civilisation.[23]
[23]It happened that during the few months preceding the presentation of this Report, there had occurred some of the most flagrant and disgusting illustrations of the evils adverted to.—J. S., 1854.
[23]It happened that during the few months preceding the presentation of this Report, there had occurred some of the most flagrant and disgusting illustrations of the evils adverted to.—J. S., 1854.
From the circumstances which I have mentioned, it can hardly fail to appear most desirable to you, that the use of some spacious and open cemetery at a distance from the City should be substituted for the present system of intramural interment, and the urgency of this requirement will be demonstrated all the more cogently, when it is remembered that the annual amount of mortality in the City averages above 3000, and that under the present arrangements every dead body buried within our walls receives itsaccommodation at the expense of the living, and to their great detriment.
In recommending that consideration be given, at as early a period as possible, to the means for establishing some sufficient municipal cemetery (a consideration which, for obvious reasons, must be prior to any Parliamentary proceedings for the prohibition of intramural interments) there are three points to which, even now, I think it advisable to advert, as essential to the admissibility of such a plan. I would submit, first, that the site of any such cemetery must be sufficiently remote from the metropolis to obviate any repetition of the present injury to a resident population; and I hardly know how this purpose can be attained, without going some distance beyond the immediate suburbs of London as indicated by the Bills of Mortality:—secondly, that the space required for the proper inhumation of the dead of the City of London[24]would be not less than 54 acres; and, thirdly, I would suggest that the charter of such an establishment ought to contain provisions against the erection of houses within a certain distance of the burial-ground, so that this may at all times and under all circumstances be surrounded, exterior to its wall, by a considerable belt of land totally devoid of resident population. The absence of such a provision as the last would very soon lead to the extramural cemetery becomingintramuralisedby the growth of a new suburb around it, and would again evince, by new and unnecessary illustrations, how incompatible with each other are the Dead and the Living as tenants of one locality.
[24]See Special Report on Extramural Interment,page 285.
[24]See Special Report on Extramural Interment,page 285.
V. Under the last heads of my Report I have touched on matters, which (in so far as they cannot be adjusted without Parliamentary interference) may be considered to lie beyond the present jurisdiction of the Commissioners of Sewers; and the topic which I now approach may, perhaps, be considered equally foreign to the scope of your ordinary functions.
I have to report that there are houses and localities within the City which are irremediably bad;—places, which the uninterrupted presence of epidemic disease has stamped as absolutely unfit for human habitation; places, where drainage and water-supply, indeed, are defective, but where the perfection of these necessaries might exist, in all probability, without giving healthiness to the inhabitants. The predominant evil in the localities referred to is their thorough impossibility of ventilation.
While treating of the manner in which noxious emanations are conveyed to a distance, and are enabled to diffuse their influence over a whole town, instead of concentrating it in some single slaughter-house or burial-ground, I indirectly suggested what I have now to illustrate; that all the evils of all the nuisances in existence acquire their utmost local intensity of action when the diffusion of their gaseous products is interfered with, and when, from absence of ventilation,these are retained in the immediate vicinity of their source.
The inhabitants of open streets can hardly conceive the complicated turnings, the narrow inlets, the close parallels of houses, and the high barriers of light and air, which are the common characteristics of our courts and alleys, and which give an additional noxiousness even to their cesspools and their filth. There are very few who, without personal verification, would credit an account that might be given of the worst of such dwelling-places. Let any one, however, who would do full justice to this frightful subject, visit the courts about Bishopsgate, Aldgate, and the upper portion of Cripplegate, which present some of the worst, though by no means the only instances of pestilential residence. A man of ordinary dimensions almost hesitates, lest he should immovably wedge himself, with whomsoever he may meet, in the low and narrow crevice which is called the entrance to some such court or alley; and, having passed that ordeal, he finds himself as in a well, with little light, with less ventilation, amid a dense population of human beings, with an atmosphere hardly respirable from its closeness and pollution. The stranger, during his visit, feels his breathing constrained, as though he were in a diving-bell; and experiences afterwards a sensible and immediate relief as he emerges again into the comparatively open street.
Now, I am prepared to show that there are many, very many, courts within the City, to which the above description accurately applies; courts and alleys hemmed in on all sides by higher houses; having no possibility of any currentof air; and (worst of all) sometimes so constructed back to back, as to forbid the advantage of double windows or back doors, and thus to render the house as perfectly acul-de-sacout of the court, as the court is acul-de-sacout of the next thoroughfare.
It is surely superfluous to observe, that these local conditions are utterly incompatible with health. Among their dense population, it is rare to see any other appearance than that of squalid sickness and misery; and the children, who are reproduced with the fertility of a rabbit-warren, perish in early infancy. In the worst localities probably not more than half the children born survive their fifth year, and of the 3763 deaths registered last year in the City of London generally, 1410 were at or under seven years of age.
The diseases of these localities are well marked. Scrofula more or less completely blights all that are born: often extinguishing life prematurely; in childhood, by hydrocephalus; in youth, by pulmonary and renal affections, which you read of as consumption and dropsy; often scarring and maiming where it does not kill, and rendering life miserable by blindness, decrepitude, or deformity; often prolonging itself as a hereditary curse in the misbegotten offspring of those who, under such unnatural conditions, attain to maturity and procreation.
Typhus prevails there too, not as an occasional visitor, but as an habitual pestilence.
It is impossible for me, by numbers, to give you an exact knowledge of the fatality of such spots; because, in the greater part of the City, hospitals, dispensaries, and privatepractice, divide with the parochial officers the treatment of the sick, and diminish the returns of sickness which those officers would otherwise have to show. But this I may tell you, as an illustration of what I mean;—that in the few houses of Seven-Step-alley and its two offsets, (Amelia-place and Turner-square,) there occurred last year 163 parochial cases of fever; in Prince’s-place and Prince’s-square, 176 cases—think, Gentlemen, if this had occurred in Southampton-place and Russell-square! that behind the east side of Bishopsgate, in the very small distance from Widegate-street to New-street, there were 126 cases; that behind the west side, from Primrose-street to Half-moon-street, there were 245 cases; that the parish of Cripplegate had 354 cases over and above the number (probably a very large one) treated by private practitioners, by hospitals, and especially by dispensaries. Similarly, though with less perfect information, I am enabled to trace fever to a terrible extent in very many other localities of the City, even on the verge of its better residences, and close behind its wealthiest thoroughfares; in Plumtree-court, in Plough-court and place, in Poppin’s-court, Neville’s-court, Blackhorse-alley, Union-court, Plough-court in Holborn, Field-lane; in the courts right and left of King-street, Smithfield, in Hanging-sword-alley and its vicinity, in Peahen-court, in Bell-alley and its neighbourhood, in Priest’s-alley, in Beer-lane, in Friar’s-alley, in Bromley’s-buildings, and in the whole large space which stretches from Ludgate-hill to beside the river.
And in most of these localities, in addition to other sanitary errors, there predominates that particular one towhich I am now inviting your attention—the absence, namely, of sufficient ventilation.
It was in districts such as these, that in the year 1665, the Great Plague of London found the readiest facilities for its reception; and it was by the destruction of such districts that the Great Fire of the following year rendered the utmost conceivable service to the sanitary progress of the people, and completed their emancipation from the horrors of an unparalleled pestilence. Long intervening years have sufficed to reconstruct these miserable habitations almost after their first type, and to re-exemplify all the evils which belong to them; so completely indeed, that if the infection of that same plague should light again amongst us, I scarcely know why it might not traverse the City and decimate its population as quickly and as virulently as before. Meanwhile, however, typhus with its kindred disorders, and the occasional epidemics of influenza and cholera, maintain their attachment to the soil, and require no further re-inforcement from the pestilence of other climates. From these fatal diseases we no longer hope to be rescued by the recurrence of the former casualty. The almost two centuries which have elapsed since the period referred to, have taught men better methods than a general conflagration for remedying such evils; and it is a satisfaction to believe that the wisdom and humanity of the Corporation of the City of London will apply those methods with effect.
As a palliative measure, applicable in many of the least aggravated instances, I may suggest the removal of unnecessary walls which intercept the current of air from place to place; the formation of counter-openings in variousblind courts; and, not least, in regard of many houses thus situated, the admission of light and air by additional windows. I cannot pass this portion of the subject without recording my opinion that the operation of the window-tax is in direct opposition to the sanitary interests of the people; and I must venture to express my hope that some different method of assessment may presently be adopted, in place of one which presses on the occupier in proportion to the healthiness of his tenement.[25]I think it very desirable, indeed almost indispensable, that your Hon. Court should have the power, under certain circumstances, to order and enforce the opening of additional windows in houses occupied by large numbers of persons, when your Officer of Health may report their ventilation defective; and if it should seem expedient to you to seek this authority from the Legislature, it might with the greatest advantage be accompanied by some concession from her Majesty’s Government, to the effect that the formation of additional windows, occurring thus under your orders for the immediate necessities of health and life, should not occasion any further assessment on the occupiers of the house.
[25]I ought not to pass this page without a grateful mention of Lord Duncan’s name in connexion with the removal of the Window Tax, at length happily effected. It remains, however, greatly to be desired, in respect of certain specifiable houses inhabited by the poorer classes, that Local Boards of Health should have power to enforce improvements of ventilation.—J. S., 1854.
[25]I ought not to pass this page without a grateful mention of Lord Duncan’s name in connexion with the removal of the Window Tax, at length happily effected. It remains, however, greatly to be desired, in respect of certain specifiable houses inhabited by the poorer classes, that Local Boards of Health should have power to enforce improvements of ventilation.—J. S., 1854.
But, Gentlemen, within the City of London there exist, to a very large extent, architectural evils for which no suchpalliative treatment is possible; evils against which I would venture to say (borrowing a metaphor from my profession) that no safety can be found except in amputation.
To dwell in hovels like pits, low-sunken between high houses, hemmed in by barriers which exclude every breath of direct ventilation—this can never be otherwise than a cause of sickness and mortality to those whose necessities allot them such residence; and, if it be an incontrovertible fact that subsistence in closed courts is an unhealthy and short-lived subsistence in comparison with that of the dwellers in open streets, then, I apprehend, it cannot be doubted that such a manner of life ought to be dealt with as a great evil, and ought as much as possible to be interrupted.
A surveyor’s inspection of the City would reveal to you many places answering to the description I have given; places to which no ventilation could arrive except by removal of whole streets of houses which wall them in.
To remove the well-constructed houses of the City, in order that its wretched courts and alleys should participate in the blessings of light and air, might seem one method of conquering the difficulty which is before you; but I apprehend the opposite alternative, of proceeding to a gradual suppression of all residence in the former class of dwellings, may more naturally have your approbation.
To the latter aim, sooner or later, the sanitary efforts of the Corporation must be directed.
There are many parts of the City where great and immediate advantage would arise from an expenditure of money applied solely to the purpose of destruction; parts, where the purchase of an entire court, or series of courts, for the sole object of pulling down houses, and leavingopen spaces in their stead, would be the cheapest as well as the most effective manner of dealing with their sanitary difficulties. And I have earnestly to suggest for your consideration, that proceedings of this nature will require to be pursued to a very great extent, and at a large annual expense, within the City, before the cleanliness and habitability of its poorer localities will stand in their legitimate proportion to the modern stateliness of thoroughfare and grandeur of public buildings which attest the magnificence of the Corporation.
I would, therefore, beg to recommend that a survey be made of the worst districts which I have specified, with a view to the immediate purchase and destruction of some considerable portion of the court-property lying in them; and, still more, I would urge that this is an exertion, which for some years must proceed systematically, in order to thin the density of a population which now breeds pestilence and augments mortality by its overcrowding and excess.
I am aware that considerable difficulties lie in the way of accomplishing an object of this sort with immediate rapidity. It is my great hope, however, that the principle may be distinctly recognised; and that the City will not tolerate within its municipal jurisdiction the continuance of houses absolutely incompatible with healthy habitation. This principle being once established, and a certain annual expenditure devoted to enforce it, I feel assured that within a few years opportunities will have arisen for that outlay to have been made in the most judicious manner, and for its results amply to have demonstrated the advantages of the system which I recommend.
VI. Last, and not least, among the influences prejudicial to health in the City of London, as elsewhere, must be reckoned the social condition of the lower classes; and I refer to this the more especially, because often, in discussion of sanitary subjects before your Hon. Court, the filthy, or slovenly, or improvident, or destructive, or intemperate, or dishonest habits of these classes, are cited as an explanation of the inefficiency of measures designed for their advantage. It is constantly urged, that to bring improved domestic arrangements within the reach of such persons is a waste and a folly; that if you give them a coal-scuttle, a washing-basin, and a watercloset, these several utensils will be applied indifferently to the purposes of each other, or one to the purposes of all; and that meanwhile the objects of your charitable solicitude will remain in the same unredeemed lowness and misery as before. Now it is unquestionable, and I admit it,—that in houses containing all the sanitary evils which I have enumerated—undrained, and waterless, and unventilated—there do dwell whole hordes of persons, who struggle so little in self-defence against that which surrounds them, that they may be considered almost indifferent to its existence, or almost acclimated to endure its continuance. It is too true that, among these classes, there are swarms of men and women, who have yet to learn that human beings should dwell differently from cattle; swarms, to whom personalcleanliness is utterly unknown; swarms, by whom delicacy and decency in their social relations are quite unconceived. Men and women, boys and girls, in scores of each, using jointly one single common privy; grown persons of both sexes sleeping in common with their married parents; a woman suffering travail in the midst of the males and females of three several families of fellow-lodgers in a single room; an adult son sharing his mother’s bed during her confinement;—such are instances recently within my knowledge (and I might easily adduce others) of the degree and of the manner in which a people may relapse into the habits of savage life, when their domestic condition is neglected, and when they are suffered to habituate themselves to the uttermost depths of physical obscenity and degradation.
Here again, as in an earlier part of my Report, I think it requisite to remark, that I do not mean in any degree to suggest that the evils adverted to present themselves within the City to a greater extent than in sundry other parts of the metropolis. My sphere of duty lies within the City boundary, and it would be an impertinence in me to comment, either favourably or unfavourably, on districts which lie within another jurisdiction than that of the Commission which I have the honour to address. Simply to guard myself against the possibility of being misunderstood, I again draw attention to the fact that I studiously refrain from instituting comparisons with other metropolitan localities. Let me likewise observe that I am far from insinuating, or suspecting, that the majority of the poorer population of the city has fallen to that extreme debasement which I have just illustrated as affecting some portion (perhapsnot an inconsiderable portion) of the poorest; but I dare not suppress my knowledge that such instances exist, nor can I refrain from stating my belief, that ignorance and poverty will soon contribute to increase them, if sanitary and social improvement do not co-operate against their continuance.
Contemplating such cases, I feel the deepest conviction that no sanitary system can be adequate to the requirements of the time, or can cure those radical evils which infest the under-framework of society, unless the importance be distinctly recognised, and the duty manfully undertaken, of improving the social condition of the poor.
Those who suffer under the calamitous sanitary conditions which I have disclosed, have been led, perhaps, to consider them as inseparable from poverty; and after their long habituation to such influences, who can wonder if personal and moral degradation conform them more and more to the physical debasement of their abode? In the midst of inevitable domestic filth, who can wonder that personal cleanliness should be neglected? In an atmosphere which forbids the breath to be drawn freely, which maintains habitual ill health, which depresses all the natural spring and buoyancy of life, who can wonder that frequent recourse should be had to stimulants, which, however pernicious in themselves, still for a moment dispel the malarious languor of the place, give temporary vigour to the brain, and cheer the flagging pulses of a poisoned circulation? Who can wonder that habits of improvidence and recklessness should arise in a population, which not only has much ignorance and prejudice amongst it, but is likewise often unaccustomed to consideration and kindness? Who can wonder that thelaws of society should at times be forgotten by those whom the eye of society habitually overlooks, and whom the heart of society often appears to discard?
I believe that now there is a very growing feeling abroad, that the poor of a Christian country can no longer, in their own ignorance and helplessness, be suffered to encounter all the chances which accompany destitution, and which link it often indissolubly to recklessness, profligacy, and perdition. The task of interfering in behalf of these classes, however insensible they may be of their own danger and frequent degradation, begins at length to be recognised as an obligation of society; and as such an interference may be fraught with the utmost advantage to sanitary progress, I shall now proceed to point out the manner in which, with this view only, it may most usefully and most humanely be made.
First of all I would point out to you, that within your Act of Parliament there are contained some enactments on this subject which might be of great value, were it not for their very limited application:—‘Whereas the owners and keepers of lodging-houses of an inferior description, for the accommodation of mendicants, strangers, and other persons for the night, or other short periods, allow the same to be crowded, by receiving more lodgers than such lodging-houses are adapted to contain with a due regard to health,’ therefore, and for some other reasons enumerated in the 91st clause, it is enacted that you may require the registration, and may order the periodical inspection of such houses; that you may from time to time fix and determine the number of lodgers who may be accommodated in each lodging-house; that you may issue ‘rules or instructionsregarding health, cleanliness, and ventilation;’ that you may ‘order that a ticket, containing the number of lodgers for which the house is registered,’ together with your rules and regulations, ‘shall be hung up, or placed in a conspicuous part of each room into which lodgers are received;’ and finally, ‘that if any keeper of such lodging-house shall offend against any of these provisions, he shall be liable for each such offence to a penalty not exceeding 5l., and the like penalty for every day after the first upon which any such offence shall be continued.’ The spirit of these enactments is excellent; but unhappily the definition given at the end of the clause excludes from the operation of the law those very cases which most need to fall within it. ‘Common lodging-house’ (it runs) ‘shall, for the purposes of this act, mean any public lodging-house, not being a licensed victualling-house, in which persons are harboured or lodged for hire, for a single night, or for less than a week at one time, or in which any room is let for hire to be occupied by more than one family at one time.’ Lodging-houses, according to this definition, are (I am informed) hardly to be found within the City of London; and the clause has remained, and seems in its present form likely to remain, quite inoperative. If, in any future renewal or amendment of your Act, the definition could be modified in such a manner, that the powers given in respect of lodging-houses should be extended to all the poorer tenements of the City, where the several floors are let separately at a weekly rent, the clause in question would be rendered one of the most serviceable in the Act, and one of the most general application. In its present form, the clause barely enables you to deal with the temporary bed-accommodationof trampers and vagrants,—a class happily not very numerous in the City; while, modified in the manner I suggest, it would put under your sanitary regulation the whole household economy of the permanent industrial population of the City; and, if effectively worked, would conduce beyond all estimation to the physical, social, and moral improvement of that class.
Secondly, and as a matter of even higher importance, I would beg you to consider the incalculable good which may be conferred on the poorer classes of society, by the direct educational influence of those in better and more enlightened circumstances than their own. When I say that all the social errors to which I now more particularly refer, would gradually but swiftly vanish under the influence of education, I do not mean that the cure would lie in learning to read and to write and to sum:—though these attainments, of course, would largely increase the power, usefulness, and market value of their possessor. The education to which I refer, as an all-important influence for sanitary progress, is that which would consist in exhibiting to the lowest classes of society frequent practical evidences of the attainability and the advantages of higher civilization; an education which, by model and examples, would lead them to know cleanliness from dirt, decency from grossness, human propriety from brutish self-abandonment; an education which, by sensible experience, would teach them to feel the comfort and the profit of sanitary observances, and would apply their instinct of self-preservation to the deliberate avoidance of disease.
It is in this point of view, gentlemen, that I wouldsolicit your attention to the useful and philanthropic exertions of three societies which have been established during the last few years, with the object of improving the condition of the labouring classes; and I would venture to suggest that the course which those societies have adopted in various parts of the metropolis, is one that might with the utmost advantage be pursued within the City of London.
The establishment ofModel DwellingandLodging-houses, and ofPublic BathsandLaundries, for the use of the labouring population, is now no longer a matter of recent speculation. Under the beneficent auspices of the Societies to which I have referred, the following experiments have beentried:—
The Committee for promoting the establishment of Baths and Wash-houses, having at first Mr. W. Cotton, and then Sir H. Dukinfield, for its Chairman, and including in its number, with other influential persons, several members of this Corporation, founded, at great pains and expense, a model institution at Goulston-square, Whitechapel. In spite of many circumstances conspiring to render this first and experimental establishment particularly expensive, it has more than supported itself by the small payments of the poor; and its arrangements are sufficiently extensive for it to have given in one day as many as 932 baths. This fact, having occurred in the first year of its establishment, shows how much the poor must have appreciated the additional comfort placed within their reach; and I may add that, from the first opening of the building, the annual receipts have been progressively on the increase. Somewhat earlier, and under the influence of the same parent-committee,though specially directed by a branch-committee, a similar establishment was founded in George-street, Euston-square. During the year 1848 the number of payments made here for bathing was 111,788; the number of payments for washing in the laundries, 246,760. This establishment has not only proved self-supporting, but has been enabled to accumulate a large surplus, which is now being applied to enlarge and improve the building. At Glasshouse-yard, near the entrance to the London Docks, there has been founded, on the same model, a small establishment of free baths and washhouses for the destitute poor. It was opened in May, 1845. In the first year the baths given amounted to 27,662; the usings of the laundry to 35,840; and its total working expenses were covered by £378.
No language, however eloquent—no comment, however instructive, could equal the significance of the figures which I have cited as illustrating the great utility of these institutions; and, as regards their pecuniary success, it is impossible to furnish you with better testimony than is comprised in the fact, that the Guardians of the Poor in a great metropolitan parish[26]have recently, out of the poor-rates, founded an institution of this nature. They have become witnesses to the financial economy of that sanitary and social boon. In their establishment, which is not only self-supporting, but amply remunerative, the poor are enabled to have baths at an expense of a penny for a cold bath, and twopence for a warm bath; and the women are enabled to do their washing, ironing, and drying, with an unlimitedwater-supply, and with other arrangements of most admirable completeness, at an expense of only twopence for the first two hours, during which they occupy the separate chambers allotted to them. A very considerable proportion of the expense is covered by the receipts for baths given at the higher price of sixpence, and with some additional luxuries, to persons of a higher grade in society than those who use the ordinary baths; the former, though used by a different class of persons, being sought with almost as much avidity as the latter.