Download Full Version ebook - Visit ebookmeta.

com

Pro SQL Server 2022 Wait Statistics: A Practical

Guide to Analyzing Performance in SQL Server and
Azure SQL Database, 3rd Edition Thomas Larock

https://ebookmeta.com/product/pro-sql-server-2022-wait-
statistics-a-practical-guide-to-analyzing-performance-in-
sql-server-and-azure-sql-database-3rd-edition-thomas-
larock-2/

OR CLICK HERE

DOWLOAD NOW

Discover More Ebook - Explore Now at ebookmeta.com

 Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) ready for you
Download now and discover formats that fit your needs...

Start reading on any device today!

Pro SQL Server 2022 Wait Statistics: A Practical Guide to

Analyzing Performance in SQL Server and Azure SQL
Database, 3rd Edition Thomas Larock
https://ebookmeta.com/product/pro-sql-server-2022-wait-statistics-a-
practical-guide-to-analyzing-performance-in-sql-server-and-azure-sql-
database-3rd-edition-thomas-larock/
ebookmeta.com

Pro SQL Server 2019 Wait Statistics: A Practical Guide to

Analyzing Performance in SQL Server - Second Edition
Enrico Van De Laar
https://ebookmeta.com/product/pro-sql-server-2019-wait-statistics-a-
practical-guide-to-analyzing-performance-in-sql-server-second-edition-
enrico-van-de-laar/
ebookmeta.com

Expert Performance Indexing in Azure SQL and SQL Server

2022 Fourth Edition Edward Pollack

https://ebookmeta.com/product/expert-performance-indexing-in-azure-
sql-and-sql-server-2022-fourth-edition-edward-pollack/

ebookmeta.com

The Philosophers Library Books that Shaped the World Liber

Historica Dr. Adam Ferner

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-philosophers-library-books-that-
shaped-the-world-liber-historica-dr-adam-ferner/

ebookmeta.com
Search-Based Software Engineering: 13th International
Symposium, SSBSE 2021, Bari, Italy, October 11–12, 2021,
Proceedings 1st Edition Una-May O'Reilly (Editor)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/search-based-software-engineering-13th-
international-symposium-ssbse-2021-bari-italy-
october-11-12-2021-proceedings-1st-edition-una-may-oreilly-editor/
ebookmeta.com

Tessa 1st Edition Bayleigh Rae

https://ebookmeta.com/product/tessa-1st-edition-bayleigh-rae/

ebookmeta.com

Grandpa s Photos Margo Gates

https://ebookmeta.com/product/grandpa-s-photos-margo-gates/

ebookmeta.com

The Secret Recipe of Ella Dove 1st Edition Karen Hawkins

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-secret-recipe-of-ella-dove-1st-
edition-karen-hawkins/

ebookmeta.com

The Wicked Bargain 1st Edition Gabe Cole Novoa

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-wicked-bargain-1st-edition-gabe-
cole-novoa-3/

ebookmeta.com
An Introduction to Language Processing with Perl and
Prolog An Outline of Theories Implementation and
Application with Special Consideration of English French
and German 2006th Edition Pierre M Nugues
https://ebookmeta.com/product/an-introduction-to-language-processing-
with-perl-and-prolog-an-outline-of-theories-implementation-and-
application-with-special-consideration-of-english-french-and-
german-2006th-edition-pierre-m-nugues/
ebookmeta.com
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
RETURN OF THE PERCENTAGE ON THE TOTAL RATEABLE ANNUAL
VALUE OF THE PROPERTY ASSESSED, to which the Rates collected
under the separate Commissions, between January, 1845, and
November, 1847, amounted; Similar Return as to the combined and
consolidated Commissions, from November, 1847, to October, 1849;
and as to the present Commission, from October, 1849, to July 31,
1851.

Total Rateable
Annual Value of
Amount of the
the Districts on Average
Percentage of
November 30, Amount
the Rates
1847, and collected
collected on the
October 8, 1849, for One
Rateable
and July 31, Year.
Annual Value.
1851,
respectively.
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
Under the old
separate or 2¾d.
Commissions of ·72 in
Sewers, the
6,683,896 0 0 81,738 11 0 1 4 5
between pound
January, 1845, per
and November annum.
30, 1847
Under the
combined and
consolidated or 2¼d.
Commissions, ·11 in
from November the
7,128,111 0 0 67,707 16 3 0 18 11¾
30, 1847, to pound
October 8, 1849 per
(including first annum.
Metropolitan
Commission)
 or 2½d.
·52 in
Under the the
8,135,090[69] 0 0 1 1 11
pound
present
Metropolitan per
Commission of annum.
89,341 16 0
Sewers, from or 2¼d.
October 8, ·72 in
1849, to July the
21, 1851 8,820,325[70] 0 0 1 0 3
pound
per
annum.
August, 1851.
THOMAS COGGIN,
Clerk of Rates and Collections.
return of the present annual amount of the local rates in England
and Wales.

I. RATES.
A. Rates of Independent Districts.
1. On the basis of the poor rate.
The poor rate, including the purposes of—
The workhouse building rate
The survey and valuation rate
Relief of the poor £4,976,093
Other objects 567,567
Contributions to county and borough rates (see below).
Jail fees rate
unknown
Constables rate
Highway rates 1,312,812
Lighting and watching rate unknown
Militia rate not needed
 2. Not on the basis of the poor rate.
Church rates 506,812
Sewers rate—
General sewers tax—
In the metropolis 82,097
In the rest of the country unknown
Drainage and inclosure rates
Inclosure rate unknown
Regulated pasture rate
B. Rates of Aggregate Districts.
County rates
Hundred rate Contributed from the poor rate. 1,356,457
Borough rates
Total rates of England and Wales £8,801,834
The amount of the taxation in the shape of tolls, dues, and fees is as
follows:—

II. TOLLS, DUES, AND FEES.

Turnpike tolls £1,348,085
Borough tolls and dues £172,911
City of London 205,100
378,011
Light dues 257,776
Port dues 554,645
Church dues and fees
Marriage fees unknown
Registration fees
Justiciary fees—
Clerks of the Peace £11,057
Justices’ clerks 57,668
68,725
Total tolls, dues, and fees of England and
£2,607,241
Wales
The subjoined, then adds the same work, founded on the preceding
details, may be regarded as exhibiting an approximate estimate of
the present amount of the local taxes in England and Wales, being,
however, obviously below the actual total.
Rates £8,801,838
Tolls, dues, and fees 2,607,241
£11,409,079
“The annual amount of the local taxation of England and Wales may
at the present time be stated, in round numbers, at not less than
£12,000,000;” or we may say that the local taxation of the country is
one-fourth of the amount of the general taxation.

RETURN OF THE COST OF MANAGEMENT PER ANNUM ON

THE TOTAL RATEABLE ANNUAL VALUE OF THE DISTRICTS.
Rate per Cent.
per Annum of
Total Rateable Cost of Cost of
YEARS. Annual Value of Management Management
the Districts. per Annum. on the Rateable
Annual Value
of the Districts.
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
1845 6,320,331 0 0 18,591 4 3 0 5 10½
1846 6,423,909 0 0 18,097 5 1 0 5 7½
1847 6,683,896 0 0 24,371 16 9 0 7 3½
1848 6,783,111 0 0 20,008 7 10 0 5 10¾
1849 8,077,591 0 0 20,005 7 6 0 4 11¼
1850 8,791,967 0 0 23,465 18 7 0 5 4

August 7, 1851.
 G. S. HATTON,
Accountant.

Of the Cleansing of the Sewers—Ventilation.

There are two modes of purifying the sewers; the one consists in
removing the foul air, the other in removing the solid deposits. I shall
deal first with that mode of purification which consists in the
mechanical removal or chemical decomposition of the noxious gases
engendered within the sewers.
This is what is termed the Ventilation of the Sewers, and forms a
very important branch of the inquiry into the character and working
of the underground refuse-channels, for it relates to the risk of
explosions and the consequent risk of destruction to men’s lives;
while, if the sewer be ill-ventilated, the surrounding atmosphere is
often prejudicially affected by the escape of impure air from the
subterranean channels.
A survey as to the ventilation, &c., of the sewers was made by Mr.
Hawkins, Assistant-Surveyor, and Mr. Jenkins, Clerk of the Works.
Four examinations took place of sewers; of those in Bloomsbury;
those from Tottenham-court-road to Norfolk-street, Strand; from the
Guard-room in Buckingham Palace to the Horseferry-road, Millbank;
and in Grosvenor-square and the streets adjacent. There were
difficulties attending the experiment. From Castle-street to Museum-
street there was a drop of 4 feet in the levels, so that the examiners
had to advance on their hands and knees, and it was difficult to
make observations. In some places in Westminster also the water
and silt were knee deep, and the lamps (three were used) splashed
all over. In Bloomsbury the sewers gave no token of the presence of
any gas, but in the other places its presence was very perceptible,
especially in a sewer on the west side of Grosvenor-square, a very
low one, in which the gas was ignited within the wire shade of one
of the lamps, but without producing any effect beyond that of
immediately extinguishing the light. There was also during the route,
in the neighbourhood of Sir Henry Meux’s brewery and of an
adjoining distillery in Vine-street, a considerable quantity of steam in
the sewer, but it had no material effect upon the light.
The examiners came to the conclusion that where there was any
liability to an explosion from the presence of carburetted hydrogen,
or other causes, the Improved Davy Lamp afforded an almost certain
protection.
The attention of the Commissioners seems to have been chiefly
given of late, as regards ventilation and indeed general
improvement, to the sewers on the Surrey side of the metropolis.
Among these a new sewer along Friar-street, running from the
Blackfriars to the Southwark-bridge-road, is one of the most
noticeable.
Friar-street is one of the smaller off thoroughfares, the character of
which is, perhaps, little suspected by those who pass along the open
Blackfriars-road. As you turn out of that road to the left hand,
advancing from the bridge, almost opposite the Magdalen Hospital,
is Friar-street. On its left hand, as you proceed along it, are gas-
works, and the factories, or work places, of tradesmen in the soap-
boiling, tallow-melting, cat and other gut manufacturing, bone-
boiling, and other noisome callings. On the right hand are a series of
short and often neatly-built streets, but the majority of them have
the look of unmistakable squalor or poverty, though not of the
poverty of the industrious. Across Flint-street, Green-street, and
other ways, few of them horse thoroughfares, hang, on a fair day,
lines of washed clothes to dry. Yellow-looking chemises and
petticoats are affixed alongside men’s trowsers and waistcoats;
coarse-featured and brazen-looking women, with necks and faces
reddened, as if with brick-dust, from exposure to the weather, stand
at their doors and beckon to the passers by. Perhaps in no part of
the metropolis is there a more marked manifestation of moral
obsceneness on the one hand, and physical obsceneness on the
other. With the low prostitution of this locality is mixed the low and
the bold crime of the metropolis. Some of the off-shoots from Friar-
street communicate with places of as nefarious a character. Hackett,
whom his newspaper admirers seem to wish to elevate into the fame
of a second Jack Sheppard, resided in this quarter. The gang who
were last winter repulsed in their burglarious attack on Mr. Holford’s
villa in the Regent’s-park favoured the same locality, and were
arrested in their old haunts. Public-houses may be seen here and
there—houses, perhaps, not greatly discouraged by the police—
which are at once the rendezvous and the trap of offenders, for to
and from such resorts they can be readily traced. And all over this
place of moral degradation extends the stench of offensive
manufactures and ill-ventilated sewers. Certainly there is now an
improvement, but it is still bad enough.
A Report of the 21st September, 1848, shows that a new sewer,
1500 feet in length, had been “put in along Friar-street, with a fall of
15 inches from the level of the sewer in Blackfriars-road to Suffolk-
street. The sewer,” states the Report, “with which it communicates at
its upper end in the Blackfriars-road contains nearly 2 feet in depth
of soil; it in consequence has silted up to that level with semi-fluid
black filth, principally from the factories, of the most poisonous and
sickening description, forming an elongated cesspool 1500 feet in
length, the filth at its lower end being upwards of 3 feet in depth.
Since the building of this sewer, the foul matter so discharged into it
has been in a state of decomposition, constantly giving off
pestilential and poisonous gases, which have spread into and filled
the adjoining sewers; thence they are being drawn into the houses
by the house-drains, and into the streets by the street-drains, to
such a fearful extent as to infect the whole atmosphere of the
neighbourhood, and so to cause the very offensive odour so
generally complained of there. Sulphuretted hydrogen is present in
these sewers in large quantities, as metals, silver and copper, are
attacked and blackened by it; and the smell from it is so sickening as
to be almost unbearable.”
On the question of how best to deal with sewers such as the Friar-
street, Messrs. John Roe and John Phillips (surveyors) and Mr. Henry
Austin (consulting engineer) have agreed in the following opinion:—
“The most simple and convenient method would be by placing large
strong fires in shafts directly over the crown of the sewers. The
expense of each furnace, with the inclosure around it, will be about
20l. The fires would be fed almost constantly, by which little smoke
would be generated. The heat to be produced from these fires would
rarefy the air so much as to create rapidly ascending currents in the
shafts, and strong draughts through the sewers, the foul air in which
would then be drawn to the fires and there consumed; and as it was
being destroyed fresh air would be drawn in at all the existing inlets
of house and street drains, pushing forward and supplying the place
of the foul air.”
Concerning the explosions of, or deaths in, the sewers from the
impure gases, there is, I believe, no statistical account. The most
remarkable catastrophe of this kind was the death of five persons in
a sewer in Pimlico, in October, 1849; of these, three were regular
sewer-men, and the others were a policeman and Mr. Wells, a
surgeon, who went into the sewer in the hopes of giving assistance.
Mr. Phillips, the then chief surveyor of the Commission of Sewers,
stated that the cause of these deaths in the sewers was entirely an
exceptional case, and the gas which had caused the accident
inquired into was not a sewer gas. “There is often,” he said, “a great
escape of gas from the mains, which found its way into the sewers.
The gas, however, which has done the mischief in the present
instance would not explode.”
Dr. Ure’s opinion was, that the deceased men died from asphixia,
caused by inhaling sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid gas in
mixture with prussic vapour, and that these noxious emanations
were derived from the refuse lime of gas-works thrown in with other
rubbish to make up the road above the sewer. Other scientific
gentlemen attributed the five deaths to the action of sulphuretted
hydrogen gas, or, according to Dr. Lyon Playfair, to be chemically
correct, hydro-sulphate of ammonia. The coroner (Mr. Bedford), in
summing up, said that Mr. Phillips wished it to be supposed that gas
lime was the cause of the foul gas; and Dr. Ure said that gas lime
had to do with the calamity. But Dr. Miller, Mr. Richard Phillips, Mr.
Campbell, and Dr. Playfair, more especially the latter, were perfectly
sure that lime had nothing to do with it. The verdict was the
following:—“We find that Daniel Pert, Thomas Gee, and John
Attwood died from the inhalation of noxious gas generated in a
neglected and unventilated sewer in Kenilworth-street. And we find
that Henry Wells and John Walsh met their deaths from the same
cause, in their laudable endeavours to save the lives of the first
three sufferers. The jury unanimously consider the commissioners
and officers of the Metropolitan Sewers are much to blame for
having neglected to avail themselves of the unusual advantages
offered, from the local situation of the Grosvenor-canal, for the
purpose of flushing the sewers in this district.”

Of “Flushing” and “Plonging,” and other Modes of

Washing the Sewers.
The next step in our inquiry—and that which at present concerns us
more than any other—is the mode of removing the solid deposits
from the sewers, as well as the condition of the workmen connected
with that particular branch of labour. The sewers are the means by
which a larger proportion of the wet refuse of the metropolis is
removed from our houses, and we have now to consider the means
by which the more solid part of this refuse is removed from the
sewers themselves. The latter operation is quite as essential to
health and cleanliness as the former; for to allow the filth to collect
in the channels which are intended to remove it, and there to remain
decomposing and vitiating the atmosphere of the metropolis, is
manifestly as bad as not to remove it at all; and since the more solid
portions of the sewage will collect and form hard deposits at the
bottom of each duct, it becomes necessary that some means should
be devised for the periodical purgation of the sewers themselves.
 FLUSHING THE SEWERS.
(Partly from a Daguerreotype by Beard, and partly from a Sketch kindly lent by Mr. Whiting.)

There have been two modes of effecting this object. The one has been the
carting away of the more solid refuse, and the other the washing of it away,
or, as it is termed, flushing in the case of the covered sewers, and plonging
in the case of the open ones. Under both systems, whether the refuse be
carted or flushed away, the hard deposit has to be first loosened by manual
labourers—the difference consisting principally in the means of after-
removal.
The first of these systems—viz., the cartage method—was that which
prevailed in the metropolis till the year 1847. I shall therefore give a brief
description of this mode of cleansing the sewers before proceeding to treat
of the now more general mode of “flushing.”
Under the old system, the clearing away of the deposit was a “nightman’s”
work, differing little, except in being more toilsome, offensive to the public,
and difficult. A hole was made from the street down into the sewer where
the deposit was thickest, and the deposit was raised by means of a tub,
filled below, drawn up to the street, and emptied into a cart, or spread in
mounds in the road to be shovelled into some vehicle. A nightman told me
that this mode of work was sometimes a great injury to his trade, because
“when it was begun on a night many of the householders sleeping in the
neighbourhood used to say to themselves, or to their missusses, as they
turned in their beds, ‘It’s them ere cussed cesspools again! I wish they was
done away with.’ An’ all the time, sir, the cesspools was as hinnocent and as
sweet as a hangel.”
This clumsy and filthy process is now but occasionally resorted to. A man
who had superintended a labour of this kind in a narrow, but busy
thoroughfare in Southwark, told me that these sewer labourers were the
worst abused men in London. No one had a good word for them.
But there have been other modes of removing the indurated sewage,
besides that of cartage; and which, though not exactly flushing, certainly
consisted in allowing the deposit to be washed away. Some of these
contrivances were curious enough.
I learn from a Report printed in 1849, that the King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer,
in the city of Westminster, running near the Abbey, contained a continuous
bed of deposit, of soil, sand, and filth, from 10 to 30 inches in depth, and
this for a mile and a half next the river—the first mile yielding more than
6000 loads of matter. This sewer was to be cleansed.
“We first used a machine,” says Mr. J. Lysander Hale, “in the form of a
plough and harrow combined; a horse dragged it through the deposit in the
sewer; one man attended the horse, and another guided the plough. The
work done by this machine, in cutting a channel through the soil and
causing the water to move through it quickly, was effectual to remove the
deposit; but as the sewer is a tidal sewer, and its sole entrance for a horse
being its outlet, the machine could only be used for a small part of any day.
Sometimes with a strong breeze up the river, the tide would not recede
sufficiently to permit the horse to get in at all (and it did not appear
advisable to incur the expense of 50l. to build a sideway entrance for the
animal), so that under these circumstances we were obliged to discontinue
the use of the horse and plough; which, under other circumstances, would
have been very effective.” From this time, I understand, the sewers of
London have remained unploughed by means of horse labour.
But the plough was not altogether abandoned, and as horse-power was not
found very easily applicable, water-power was resorted to. The plough and
harrow were attached to a barge, which was introduced into the sewer. The
sluice gates were kept shut until the ebb of the tide made the difference of
level between the contents of the sewer and the surface of the Thames
equal to some eight feet. “The gates were then suddenly opened, and the
rapid and deep current of water following, was then sufficient to bring the
barge and plough down the sewer with a force equal to five or six horse-
power.”
This last-mentioned method was also soon abandoned. We now come to
the more approved plan of “flushing.”
“The term ‘flushing sewers’ implies,” says Mr. Haywood, in his Report,
“cleansing by the application of bodies of water in the sewers; this is
periodically effected, varying in intervals according to the necessities of the
sewerage or other circumstances.”
The flushing system has a two-fold object, viz., to remove old deposits and
prevent the accumulation of new. When the deposit is not allowed to
accumulate and harden, “flushing consists,” says Mr. Haywood, “simply in
heading back and letting off flush at once” (hence the origin of the term)
“that which has been delivered into the sewers in a certain number of hours
by the various houses draining into them, diluted with large quantities of
water specially employed for the purpose.”
Though the operation of “flushing” is one of modern introduction, as
regards the metropolis—one, indeed, which may be said to have originated
in the modern demand for improved sanitary regulations—it has been
practised in some country parts since the days of Henry VIII.
Flushing was practised also by those able engineers, the ancient Romans.
One of the grand architectural remains of that people, the best showing
their system of flushing, is in the Amphitheatre at Nismes, in France. The
site of the ruined amphitheatre presents a large elliptical area, 114,251
superficial feet comprising its extent. Around the arena ran a large sewer 3
feet 6 inches in width, and 4 feet 9 inches in height. With this sewer,
elliptical in shape, 348 pipes communicated, carrying into it the rain-fall and
the refuse caused by the resort of 23,000 persons, for the seats alone
contained that number. “The system of flushing, practised here,” says Mr.
Cresy, “with such advantage, deserves to be noticed, there being means of
driving through this elliptical sewer a volume of water at pleasure, with
such force that no solid matter could by any possibility remain within any of
the drains or sewers. An aqueduct, 2 feet 8 inches in width, and 6 feet in
height, brought this water from the reservoirs of Nismes, not only to fill but
to purge the whole of these sewers; after traversing the arena, it deviated a
little to the south-west, where it was carried out at the sixth arcade, east of
the southern entrance. Man-holes and steps to descend into this capacious
vaulted aqueduct were introduced in several places; and there can be no
doubt that by directing for some hours such a stream of water through it,
the greatest cleanliness was preserved throughout all the sewers of the
building.”
The flushing of sewers appears to have been introduced into the metropolis
by Mr. John Roe in the year 1847, but did not come into general use till
some years later. There used to be a partial flushing of the London sewers
twelve years ago. The mode of flushing as at present practised is as
follows:—
In the first instance the inspector examines and reports the condition of the
sewer, and receives and issues his orders accordingly. When the sewer is
ordered to be flushed—and there is no periodical or regular observance of
time in the operation—the men enter the sewers and rake up the deposit,
loosening it everywhere, so as to render the whole easy to be swept along
by the power of the volume of water. The sewers generally are, in their
widest part, provided with grooves, or, as the men style them, “framings.”
Into these framings are fitted, or permanently attached, what I heard
described as “penstocks,” but which are spoken of in some of the reports as
“traps,” “gates,” or “sluice gates.” They are made both of wood and iron. By
a series of bolts and adjustments, the penstocks can be fixed ready for use
when the tide is highest in the sewer, and the volume of water the greatest.
They then, of course, are in the nature of dams, the water having
accumulated in consequence of the stoppage. The deposit having been
loosened, the bolts are withdrawn, when the gates suddenly fly back, and
the accumulated water and stirred-up sewage sweeps along impetuously,
while the men retreat into some side recesses adapted for the purpose. The
same is done with each penstock until the matter is swept through the
outlet. The men always follow the course of this sewage-current when the
sewer is of sufficient capacity to enable them to do so, throwing or pushing
forward any more solid matter with their shovels.
“To flush we generally go and draw a slide up and let a flush of water
down,” said one man to me, “and then we have iron rakers to loosen the
stuff. We have got another way that we do it as well; one man stands here,
when the flush of water’s coming down, with a large board; then he lets the
water rise to the top of this board, and then there’s two or three of us on
ahead, with shovels, loosening the stuff—then he ups with this board and
lets a good heavy flush of water come down. Precious hard work it is, I can
assure you. I’ve had many a wet shirt. We stand up to our fork in the water,
right to the top of our jack-boots, and sometimes over them.” “Ah, I should
think you often get over the top of yours, for you come home with your
stockings wet enough, goodness knows,” exclaimed his wife, who was
present. “When there’s a good flush of water coming down,” he resumed,
“we’re obligated to put our heads fast up against the crown of the sewer,
and bear upon our shovels, so that we may not be carried away, and taken
bang into the Thames. You see there’s nothing for us to lay hold on. Why,
there was one chap went and lifted a slide right up, when he ought to have
had it up only 9 or 10 inches at the furthest, and he nearly swamped three
of us. If we should be taken off our legs there’s a heavy fall—about 3 feet—
just before you comes to the mouth of the sewer, and if we was to get
there, the water is so rapid nothing could save us. When we goes to work
we nails our lanterns up to the crown of the sewer. When the slide is lifted
up the rush is very great, and takes all before it. It roars away like a wild
beast. We’re always obliged to work according to tide, both above and
below ground. When we have got no water in the sewer we shovels the dirt
up into a bank on both sides, so that when the flush of water comes down
the loosened dirt is all carried away by it. After flushing, the bottom of the
sewer is as clean as this floor, but in a couple of months the soil is a foot to
15 inches deep, and middling hard.”
“Flushing-gates,” an engineer has reported, “are chiefly of use in sewers
badly constructed and without falls, but containing plenty of water; and
they are of very little use where the gate has to be shut 24 hours and
longer, before a head of water has accumulated; but where intermittent
flushing is practised, strong smells are often caused solely by the
stagnation of the water or sewage while accumulating behind the gate.”
The most general mode of flushing at present adopted is not to keep in the
water, &c., which has flowed into the sewer from the streets and houses, as
well as the tide of the river, but to convey the flushing water from the plugs
of the water companies into the kennels, and so into the sewers. I find in
one of the Reports acknowledgments of the liberal supplies granted for
flushing by the several companies. The water of the Surrey Canal has been
placed, for the same object, at the disposal of the Sewer Commissioners.
It is impossible to “flush” at all where a sewer has a “dead-end;” that is,
where there is a “block,” as in the case of the Kenilworth-street sewer,
Pimlico, in which five persons lost their lives in 1848.
There is no difference in the system of flushing in the Metropolitan and City
jurisdictions, except that for the greater facilities of the process, the City
provides water-tanks in Newgate-market, where the heads of three sewers
meet, and where the accumulation of animal garbage, and the fierceness
and numbers of the rats attracted thereby, were at one time frightful; at
Leadenhall-market, and elsewhere, such tanks were also provided to the
number of ten, the largest being the Newgate-market tank, which is a brick
cistern of 8000 gallons capacity. Of these tanks, however, only four are now
kept filled, for this collection of water is found unnecessary, the regular
system of flushing answering the purpose without them; and I understand
that in a little time there will be no tanks at all. The tank is filled, when
required, by a water company, and the penstocks being opened, the water
rushes into the sewers with great force. There is also another point peculiar
to the City—in it all the sewers are flushed regularly twice a week; in the
metropolitan sewers, only when the inspector pronounces flushing to be
required. The City plan appears the best to prevent the accumulation of
deposit.
There still remains to be described the system of “plonging,” or mode of
cleansing the open sewers, as contradistinguished from “flushing,” or the
cleansing of the covered sewers.
“When we go plonging,” one man said, “we has long poles with a piece of
wood at the end of them, and we stirs up the mud at the bottom of the
ditches while the tide’s a going down. We has got slides at the end of the
ditches, and we pulls these up and lets out the water, mud, and all, into the
Thames.” “Yes, for the people to drink,” said a companion drily. “We’re in
the water a great deal,” continued the man. “We can’t walk along the sides
of all of ’em.”
The difference of cost between the old method of removal and the new,
that is to say, between carting and flushing, is very extraordinary.
This cartage work was done chiefly by contract and according to a Report
of the surveyors to the Commissioners (Aug. 31, 1848), the usual cost for
such work (almost always done during the night) was 7s. the cubic yard;
that is, 7s. for the removal of a cubic yard of sewage by manual labour and
horse and cart. In February, 1849 (the date of another Report on the
subject), the cost of removing a cubic yard by the operation of flushing,
was but 8d. This gives the following result, but in what particular time,
instance, or locality, is not mentioned:—
79,483 cubic yards of deposit removed by the contract flushing
£2,649
system, at 8d. per cubic yard
Same quantity by the old system of casting and cartage, 7s. per
27,819
cubic yard
Difference £25,170
“It appears, therefore,” says Mr. Lovick, “that by the adoption of the
contract flushing system, a saving has been effected within the
comparatively short period of its operation over the filthy and clumsy
system formerly practised, of 25,170l., showing the cost of this system to
be ten and a half times greater than the cost of flushing by contract.”
An official Report states: “When the accumulations of years had to be
removed from the sewers, the rate of cost per lineal mile has varied from
about 40l. to 58l., or from 6d. to 8d. per lineal yard. The works in these
cases (excepting those in the City) have not exceeded nine lineal miles.”
“On an average of weeks,” says Mr. Lovick, in his Report on flushing
operations, a few months after the introduction of the contract system, in
Sept., 1848, “under present arrangements, about 62 miles of sewers are
passed through each week, and deposit prevented from accumulating in
them by periodic (weekly) flushing. The average cost per lineal mile per
week is about 2l. 10s.
“The nature of the agreements with the contractors or gangers are now for
the prevention of accumulations of deposit in a district. For this purpose the
large districts are subdivided, each subdivision being let to one man. In the
Westminster district there are four, in the Holborn and Finsbury two, in the
Surrey and Kent, seven subdivisions.
“The Tower Hamlets and Poplar districts are each let to one man.
“In the Tower Hamlets it will be perceived that a reduction of 8l. has been
effected for the performance of precisely the same work as that heretofore
performed; the rates of charge standing thus:—
“Under the day-work system 23l. per week.
„ contract „ 15l. „
“In those portions specially contracted for, the work has been let by the
lineal measure of the sewer, in preference to the amount of deposit
removed.
“In the Surrey and Kent districts the open ditches have been cleansed thrice
as often as formerly.
“A large proportion of the deposit removed is from the open ditches; in
these the accumulations are rapid and continuous, caused chiefly by their
being the receptacles for the ashes and refuse of the houses, the refuse of
manufactories, and the sweepings of the roads.
“In the covered sewers one of the chief sources of accumulation is the
detritus and mud from the streets, swept into the sewers.
“The accumulations from these sources will not, I think, be over-estimated
at two-thirds of the whole amount of deposit removed.
“The contracts in operation, February, 1849, with the districts which they
embrace, are as follows:—

“Table No. I.
Sewers let for Average Rate of
Contract
Prevention of Work performed in
Districts. Charge per
Accumulations of Sewers passed
Week.
Deposit. through each Week.
Lineal Feet. Lineal Feet. £ s. d.
Westminster 485,795 150,615 40 0 0
Holborn &
355,085 118,000 23 0 0
Finsbury
Tower
223,738 30,000 15 0 0
Hamlets
Surrey and
440,642 40,000 75 0 0
Kent
Poplar 26,000 2,000 6 16 0
1,531,260 340,615 159 16 0
Westminster—Attendance on Flaps, &c. 4 0 0
£163 16 0
“The weekly cost prior to the contract system was in the several districts as
follows:—

“Table No. II.

£ s.d.
In the Westminster District 78 10 0
„ Holborn and Finsbury do. 24 17 0
„ Tower Hamlets do. 23 0 0
„ Surrey and Kent do. 56 8 0
„ Poplar do. 6 13 0
189 8 0
Hence there would appear to have been a saving of 25l. 12s. effected. But
by what means was this brought about? It is the old story, I regret to say—
a reduction of the wages of the labouring men. But this, indeed, is the
invariable effect of the contract system. The wages of the flushermen
previous to Sept., 1848, were 24s. to 27s. a week; under the present
system they are 21s. to 22s. Here is a reduction of 4s. per week per man,
at the least; and as there were about 150 hands employed at this period, it
follows that the gross weekly saving must have been equal to 30l., so that,
according to the above account, there would have been about 5l. left for
the contractors or middlemen. It is unworthy of gentlemen to make a
parade of economy obtained by such ignoble means.
The engineers, however, speak of flushing as what is popularly understood
as but “a make-shift”—as a system imperfect in itself, but advantageously
resorted to because obviating the evils of a worse system still.
“With respect to these operations,” says Mr. Lovick, in a Report on the
subject, in February, 1849, “I may be permitted to state that, although I do
not approve of the flushing as an ultimate system, or as a system to be
adopted in the future permanent works of sewerage, or that its use should
be contemplated with regulated sizes of sewers, regulated supplies of
water, and proper falls, it appears to be the most efficacious and
economical for the purpose to which it is adapted of any yet introduced.”
A gentleman who was at one time connected professionally with the
management of the public sewerage, said to me,—
“Mr. John Roe commenced the general system of flushing sewers in London
in 1847. It is, however, but a clumsy expedient, and quite incompatible with
a perfect system of sewerage. It has, nevertheless, been usefully applied as
an auxiliary to the existing system, though the cost is frightful.”

Of the Working Flushermen.

When the system of sewer cleansing first became general, as I have
detailed, the number of flushermen employed, I am assured, on good
authority, was about 500. The sewers were, when this process was first
resorted to, full of deposit, often what might be called “coagulated” deposit,
which could not be affected except by constantly repeated efforts. There
are now only about 100 flushermen, for the more regularly flushing is
repeated, the easier becomes the operation.
Until about 18 months ago, the flushermen were employed directly by the
Court of Sewers, and were paid (“in Mr. Roe’s time,” one man said, with a
sigh) from 24s. to 27s. a week; now the work is all done by contract. There
are some six or seven contractors, all builders, who undertake or are
responsible for the whole work of flushing in the metropolitan districts (I do
not speak of the City), and they pay the working flushermen 21s. a week,
and the gangers 22s. This wage is always paid in money, without
drawbacks, and without the intervention of any other middleman than the
contractor middleman. The flushermen have no perquisites except what
they may chance to find in a sewer. Their time of labour is 6½ hours daily.
The state of the tide, however, sometimes, as a matter of course, compels
the flushermen to work at every hour of the day and night. At all times they
carry lights, common oil lamps, with cotton wicks; only the inspectors carry
Davy’s safety-lamp. I met no man who could assign any reason for this
distinction, except that “the Davy” gave “such a bad light.”
The flushermen wear, when at work, strong blue overcoats, waterproofed
(but not so much as used to be the case, the men then complaining of the
perspiration induced by them), buttoned close over the chest, and
descending almost to the knees, where it is met by huge leather boots,
covering a part of the thigh, such as are worn by the fishermen on many of
our coasts. Their hats are fan-tailed, like the dustmen’s. The flushermen are
well-conducted men generally, and, for the most part, fine stalwart good-
looking specimens of the English labourer; were they not known or believed
to be temperate, they would not be employed. They have, as a body, no
benefit or sick clubs, but a third of them, I was told, or perhaps nearly a
third, were members of general benefit societies. I found several intelligent
men among them. They are engaged by the contractors, upon whom they
call to solicit work.
“Since Mr. Roe’s time,” and Mr. Roe is evidently the popular man among the
flushermen, or somewhat less than four years ago, the flushermen have
had to provide their own dresses, and even their own shovels to stir up the
deposit. To contractors, the comforts or health of the labouring men must
necessarily be a secondary consideration to the realization of a profit. New
men can always be found; safe investments cannot.
The wages of the flushermen therefore have been not only decreased, but
their expenses increased. A pair of flushing-boots, covering a part of the
thigh, similar to those worn by sea-side fishermen, costs 30s. as a low
price, and a flusherman wears out three pairs in two years. Boot stockings
cost 2s. 6d. The jacket worn by the men at their work in the sewers, in the
shape of a pilot-jacket, but fitting less loosely, is 7s. 6d.; a blue smock, of
coarse common cloth (generally), worn over the dress, costs 2s. 6d.; a
shovel is 2s. 6d. “Ay, sir,” said one man, who was greatly dissatisfied with
this change, “they’ll make soldiers find their own regimentals next; and,
may be, their own guns, a’cause they can always get rucks of men for
soldiers or labourers. I know there’s plenty would work for less than we get,
but what of that? There always is. There’s hundreds would do the work for
half what the surveyors and inspectors gets; but it’s all right among the
nobs.”
Nor is the labour of the flushermen at all times so easy or of such
circumscribed hours as I have stated it to be in the regular way of flushing.
When small branch-sewers have to be flushed, the deposit must first be
loosened, or the water, instead of sweeping it away, would flow over it, and
in many of these sewers (most frequent in the Tower Hamlets) the height is
not more than 3 feet. Some of the flushermen are tall, bulky, strong
fellows, and cannot stand upright in less than from 5 feet 8 inches to 6
feet, and in loosening the deposit in low narrow sewers, “we go to work,”
said one of them, “on our bellies, like frogs, with a rake between our legs.
I’ve been blinded by steam in such sewers near Whitechapel Church from
the brewhouses; I couldn’t see for steam; it was a regular London fog. You
must get out again into a main sewer on your belly; that’s what makes it
harder about the togs, they get worn so.”
The division of labour among the flushermen appears to be as follows:—
The Inspector, whose duty it is to go round the several sewers and see
which require to be flushed.
The Ganger, or head of the working gang, who receives his orders from the
inspector, and directs the men accordingly.
The Lock-keeper, or man who goes round to the sewers which are about to
be flushed, and fixes the “penstocks” for retaining the water.
The Gang, which consists of from three to four men, who loosen the
deposit from the bottom of the sewer. Among these there is generally a
“for’ard man,” whose duty it is to remove the penstocks.
The ganger gets 1s. a week over and above the wages of the men.

TABLE SHOWING THE DISTRICTS UNDER THE MANAGEMENT

OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS; ALSO THE NUMBER AND
SALARIES OF THE CLERKS OF THE WORKS, ASSISTANT CLERKS
OF THE WORKS, AND INSPECTORS OF FLUSHING, PAID BY THE
COMMISSIONERS, AND THE NUMBER AND WAGES PAID TO
THE FLUSHERMEN BY THE GENERAL CONTRACTORS.
Paid by the Commissioners of Sewers.
Assist. Inspectors Flap &
Clerks of Clerks of
of Sluice
Works. [71]
Districts. Works . Flushings. Keepers.
Aggregate
Annual Rate Annual Yearly Total.
Salary of Salary Wages
No. No. No. No.
of the Annual of the of the
whole. Salary. whole. whole.
£ £ £ £ £
Fulham and
Hammersmith
.—Counter’s
3 450 4 400 1 120 .. .. 970
Creek and
Ranelagh
Districts
Westminster 4 600 3 300 1 80 6 390 1370
Sewers.—
Western
Division,
Eastern
Division,
Regent-street
District,
Holborn
Division
Finsbury
Division.—
Tower
Hamlets
3 450 2 200 3 280 1 70 1000
Levels, and
Poplar and
Blackwall
Districts
Districts south
3 450 6 600 4 320 12 374 1744
of the Thames
Total 13 1950 15 1500 9 800 19 834 5084
City .. .. .. .. 1 80 3 148 228

Paid by Contractors.
Gangers. Flushers.
Districts. Weekly Weekly Aggregate
No. Wage of No. Wage of Total.
each. each.
s. £ s.
Fulham and Hammersmith.—
Counter’s Creek and 2 22 13 21 824 4
Ranelagh Districts
Westminster Sewers.—
Western Division, Eastern
3 22 30 21 1809 12
Division, Regent-street
District, Holborn Division
Finsbury Division.—Tower
Hamlets Levels, and Poplar 3 22 27 21 1645 16
and Blackwall Districts
Districts south of the Thames 2 22 22 21 1315 12
Total 10 .. 92 .. 5595 4
City 1 22 9 21 548 12

Total cost of flushing the sewers £12,000 per annum.

⁂ The above division of districts is the one adopted by the Commissioners
of Sewers, but the districts of the Flushermen are more numerous than
those above given, being as follows:—

Ganger. Flushermen.
Fulham and Hammersmith employing 1 and 6
1st District of
Counter’s Creek and
„ 1 „ 7 Commissioners.
Ranelagh Districts.
Westminster (Western
„ 1 „ 10
Division) 2nd District of
Ditto (Eastern Division) „ 1 „ 12 Commissioners.
Holborn Division „ 1 „ 8
Finsbury Division „ 1 „ 9
3rd District of
Tower Hamlets Levels „ 1 „ 10
Commissioners.
Poplar and Blackwall „ 1 „ 8
Districts south of the 4th District of
„ 2 „ 22
Thames Commissioners.
City „ 1 „ 9

Holborn and Finsbury districts are under one contractor, and so are the two
divisions of Westminster. The same men who flush Holborn flush the
Finsbury district also, 17 being the average number employed; but the
Finsbury district requires rather more men than the Holborn; and the same
men who work on the western division of Westminster flush also the
eastern, the number of flushers in the western district being more, on
account of its being the larger division.
The inspector receives 80l. per annum.
The table on p. 429 shows the number of clerks of the works, inspectors of
flushing, flap and sluice keepers, gangers, and flushermen employed in the
several districts throughout the metropolis, as well as the salaries and
wages of each and the whole.
None of the flushermen can be said to have been “brought up to the
business,” for boys are never employed in the sewers. Neither had the
labourers been confined in their youth to any branch of trade in particular,
which would appear to be consonant to such employment. There are now
among the flushermen men who have been accustomed to “all sorts of
ground work:” tailors, pot-boys, painters, one jeweller (some time ago
there was also one gentleman), and shoemakers. “You see, sir,” said one
informant, “many of such like mechanics can’t live above ground, so they
tries to get their bread underneath it. There used to be a great many
pensioners flushermen, which weren’t right,” said one man, “when so many
honest working men haven’t a penny, and don’t know which way to turn
theirselves; but pensioners have often good friends and good interest. I
don’t hear any complaints that way now.”
Among the flushermen are some ten or twelve men who have been
engaged in sewer-work of one kind or another between 20 and 30 years.
The cholera, I heard from several quarters, did not (in 1848) attack any of
the flushermen. The answer to an inquiry on the subject generally was,
“Not one that I know of.”
“It is a somewhat singular circumstance,” says Mr. Haywood, the City
Surveyor, in his Report, dated February, 1850, “that none of the men
employed in the City sewers in flushing and cleansing, have been attacked
with, or have died of, cholera during the past year; this was also the case in
1832-3. I do not state this to prove that the atmosphere of the sewers is
not unhealthy—I by no means believe an impure atmosphere is healthy—
but I state the naked fact, as it appears to me a somewhat singular
circumstance, and leave it to pathologists to argue upon.”
“I don’t think flushing work disagrees with my husband,” said a
flusherman’s wife to me, “for he eats about as much again at that work as
he did at the other.” “The smell underground is sometimes very bad,” said
the man, “but then we generally take a drop of rum first, and something to
eat. It wouldn’t do to go into it on an empty stomach, ’cause it would get
into our inside. But in some sewers there’s scarcely any smell at all. Most of
the men are healthy who are engaged in it; and when the cholera was
about many used to ask us how it was we escaped.”

The following statement contains the history of an individual flusherman:—

“I was brought up to the sea,” he said, “and served on board a man-of-war,
the Racer, a 16-gun brig, laying off Cuba, in the West Indies, and there-
away, watching the slavers. I served seven years. We were paid off in ’43 at
Portsmouth, and a friend got me into the shores. It was a great change
from the open sea to a close shore—great; and I didn’t like it at all at first.
But it suits a married man, as I am now, with a family, much better than
being a seaman, for a man aboard a ship can hardly do his children justice
in their schooling and such like. Well, I didn’t much admire going down the
man-hole at first—the ‘man-hole’ is a sort of iron trap-door that you unlock
and pull up; it leads to a lot of steps, and so you get into the shore—but
one soon gets accustomed to anything. I’ve been at flushing and shore
work now since ’43, all but eleven weeks, which was before I got engaged.
“We work in gangs from three to five men.” [Here I had an account of the
process of flushing, such as I have given.] “I’ve been carried off my feet
sometimes in the flush of a shore. Why, to-day,” (a very rainy and windy
day, Feb. 4,) “it came down Baker-street, when we flushed it, 4 foot plomb.
It would have done for a mill-dam. One couldn’t smoke or do anything. Oh,
yes, we can have a pipe and a chat now and then in the shore. The tobacco
checks the smell. No, I can’t say I felt the smell very bad when I first was in
a shore. I’ve felt it worse since. I’ve been made innocent drunk like in a
shore by a drain from a distiller’s. That happened me first in Vine-street
shore, St. Giles’s, from Mr. Rickett’s distillery. It came into the shore like
steam. No, I can’t say it tasted like gin when you breathed it—only
intoxicating like. It was the same in Whitechapel from Smith’s distillery. One
night I was forced to leave off there, the steam had such an effect. I was
falling on my back, when a mate caught me. The breweries have something
of the same effect, but nothing like so strong as the distilleries. It comes
into the shore from the brewers’ places in steam. I’ve known such a steam
followed by bushels of grains; ay, sir, cart-loads washed into the shore.
“Well, I never found anything in a shore worth picking up but once a half-
crown. That was in the Buckingham Palace sewer. Another time I found
16s. 6d., and thought that was a haul; but every bit of it, every coin,
shillings and sixpences and joeys, was bad—all smashers. Yes, of course it
was a disappointment, naturally so. That happened in Brick-lane shore,
Whitechapel. O, somebody or other had got frightened, I suppose, and had
shied the coins down into the drains. I found them just by the chapel
there.”
A second man gave me the following account of his experience in
flushing:—
“You remember, sir, that great storm on the 1st August, 1848. I was in
three shores that fell in—Conduit-street and Foubert’s-passage, Regent-
street. There was then a risk of being drowned in the shores, but no lives
were lost. All the house-drains were blocked about Carnaby-market—that’s
the Foubert’s-passage shore—and the poor people was what you might call
houseless. We got in up to the neck in water in some places, ’cause we had
to stoop, and knocked about the rubbish as well as we could, to give a way
to the water. The police put up barriers to prevent any carts or carriages
going that way along the streets. No, there was no lives lost in the shores.
One man was so overcome that he was falling off into a sort of sleep in
Milford-lane shore, but was pulled out. I helped to pull him. He was as
heavy as lead with one thing or other—wet, and all that. Another time, six
or seven year ago, Whitechapel High-street shore was almost choked with
butchers’ offal, and we had a great deal of trouble with it.”

Of the Rats in the Sewers.

I will now state what I have learned from long-experienced men, as to the
characteristics of the rats in the sewers. To arrive even at a conjecture as to
the numbers of these creatures—now, as it were, the population of the
sewers—I found impossible, for no statistical observations have been made
on the subject; but all my informants agreed that the number of the
animals had been greatly diminished within these four or five years.
In the better-constructed sewers there are no rats. In the old sewers they
abound. The sewer rat is the ordinary house or brown rat, excepting at the
outlets near the river, and here the water-rat is seen.
The sewer-rat is the common brown or Hanoverian rat, said by the
Jacobites to have come in with the first George, and established itself after
the fashion of his royal family; and undoubtedly such was about the era of
their appearance. One man, who had worked twelve years in the sewers
before flushing was general, told me he had never seen but two black (or
old English) rats; another man, of ten years’ experience, had seen but one;
others had noted no difference in the rats. I may observe that in my
inquiries as to the sale of rats (as a part of the live animals dealt in by a
class in the metropolis), I ascertained that in the older granaries, where
there were series of floors, there were black as well as brown rats. “Great
black fellows,” said one man who managed a Bermondsey granary, “as
would frighten a lady into asterisks to see of a sudden.”
The rat is the only animal found in the sewers. I met with no flusherman or
other sewer-worker who had ever seen a lizard, toad, or frog there,
although the existence of these creatures, in such circumstances, has been
presumed. A few live cats find their way into the subterranean channels
when a house-drain is being built, or is opened for repairs, or for any
purpose, and have been seen by the flushermen, &c., wandering about,
looking lost, mewing as if in misery, and avoiding any contact with the
sewage. The rats also—for they are not of the water-rat breed—are
exceedingly averse to wetting their feet, and “take to the sewage,” as it was
worded to me, only in prospect of danger; that is, they then swim across or
along the current to escape with their lives. It is said that when a luckless
cat has ventured into the sewers, she is sometimes literally worried by the
rats. I could not hear of such an attack having been witnessed by any one;
but one intelligent and trustworthy man said, that a few years back (he
believed about eight years) he had in one week found the skeletons of two
cats in a particular part of an old sewer, 21 feet wide, and in the drains
opening into it were perfect colonies of rats, raging with hunger, he had no
doubt, because a system of trapping, newly resorted to, had prevented
their usual ingress into the houses up the drains. A portion of their fur
adhered to the two cats, but the flesh had been eaten from their bones.
About that time a troop of rats flew at the feet of another of my informants,
and would no doubt have maimed him seriously, “but my boots,” said he,
“stopped the devils.” “The sewers generally swarms with rats,” said another
man. “I runs away from ’em; I don’t like ’em. They in general gets away
from us; but in case we comes to a stunt end where there’s a wall and no
place for ’em to get away, and we goes to touch ’em, they fly at us. They’re
some of ’em as big as good-sized kittens. One of our men caught hold of
one the other day by the tail, and he found it trying to release itself, and
the tail slipping through his fingers; so he put up his left hand to stop it,
and the rat caught hold of his finger, and the man’s got an arm now as big
as his thigh.” I heard from several that there had been occasionally battles
among the rats, one with another.
“Why, sir,” said one flusherman, “as to the number of rats, it ain’t possible
to say. There hasn’t been a census (laughing) taken of them. But I can tell
you this—I was one of the first flushermen when flushing came in general—
I think it was before Christmas, 1847, under Mr. Roe—and there was cart-
loads and cart-loads of drowned rats carried into the Thames. It was in a
West Strand shore that I saw the most. I don’t exactly remember which,
but I think Northumberland-street. By a block or a hitch of some sort, there
was, I should say, just a bushel of drowned rats stopped at the corner of
one of the gates, which I swept into the next stream. I see far fewer
drowned rats now than before the shores was flushed. They’re not so
plenty, that’s one thing. Perhaps, too, they may have got to understand
about flushing, they’re that ’cute, and manage to keep out of the way.
About Newgate-market was at one time the worst for rats. Men couldn’t
venture into the sewers then, on account of the varmint. It’s bad enough
still, I hear, but I haven’t worked in the City for a few years.”
The rats, from the best information at my command, do not derive much of
their sustenance from the matter in the sewers, or only in particular
localities. These localities are the sewers neighbouring a connected series
of slaughter-houses, as in Newgate-market, Whitechapel, Clare-market,
parts adjoining Smithfield-market, &c. There, animal offal being (and having
been to a much greater extent five or six years ago) swept into the drains
and sewers, the rats find their food. In the sewers, generally, there is little
food for them, and none at all in the best-constructed sewers, where there
is a regular and sometimes rapid flow, and little or no deposit.
The sewers are these animals’ breeding grounds. In them the broods are
usually safe from the molestation of men, dogs, or cats. These “breeding
grounds” are sometimes in the holes (excavated by the industry of the rats
into caves) which have been formed in the old sewers by a crumbled brick
having fallen out. Their nests, however, are in some parts even more
frequent in places where old rotting large house-drains or smaller sewers,
empty themselves into a first-class sewer. Here, then, the rats breed, and,
in spite of precautions, find their way up the drains or pipes, even through
the openings into water-closets, into the houses for their food, and almost
always at night. Of this fact, builders, and those best informed, are
confident, and it is proved indirectly by what I have stated as to the
deficiency of food for a voracious creature in all the sewers except a few.
One man, long in the service of the Commissioners of Sewers, and in
different capacities, gave me the following account of what may be called a
rat settlement. The statement I found confirmed by other working men,
and by superior officers under the same employment.
“Why, sir, in the Milford-lane sewer, a goodish bit before you get to the river,
or to the Strand—I can’t say how far, a few hundred yards perhaps—I’ve
seen, and reported, what was a regular chamber of rats. If a brick didn’t fall
out from being rotted, the rats would get it out, and send it among other
rubbish into the sewer, for this place was just the corner of a big drain. I
couldn’t get into the rat-hole, of course not, but I’ve brought my lamp to
the opening, and—as well as others—have seen it plain. It was an open
place like a lot of tunnels, one over another. Like a lot of rabbit burrows in
the country—as I’ve known to be—or like the partitions in the pigeon-
houses: one here and another there. The rat-holes, as far as I could tell,
were worked one after another. I should say, in moderation, that it was the
size of a small room; well, say about 6 yards by 4. I can’t say about the
height from the lowest tunnel to the highest. I don’t see that any one
could. Bless you, sir, I’ve sometimes heerd the rats fighting and squeaking
there, like a parcel of drunken Irishmen—I have indeed. Some of them
were rare big fellows. If you threw the light of your lamp on them sudden,
they’d be off like a shot. Well, I should say, there was 100 pair of rats there
—there might be more, besides all their young-uns. If a poor cat strayed
into that sewer, she dursn’t tackle the rats, not she. There’s lots of such
places, sir, here, and there, and everywhere.”
“I believe rats,” says a late enthusiastic writer on the subject, under the
cognomen of Uncle James, “to be one of the most fertile causes of national
and universal distress, and their attendants, misery and starvation.”
From the author’s inquiries among practical men, and from his own study of
the natural history of the rat, he shows that these animals will have six,
seven, or eight nests of young in the year, for three or four years together;
that they have from twelve to twenty-three at a litter, and breed at three
months old; and that there are more female than male rats, by ten to six.
The author seems somewhat of an enthusiast about rats, and as the
sewerage is often the head-quarters of these animals—their “breeding-
ground” indeed—I extract the following curious matter. He says:—
“Now, I propose to lay down my calculations at something less than one-
half. In the first place, I say four litters in the year, beginning and ending
with a litter, so making thirteen litters in three years; secondly to have eight
young ones at a birth, half male and half female; thirdly, the young ones to
have a litter at six months old.
“At this calculation, I will take one pair of rats; and at the expiration of
three years what do you suppose will be the amount of living rats? Why no
less a number than 646,808.
“Mr. Shaw’s little dog ‘Tiny,’ under six pounds weight, has destroyed 2525
pairs of rats, which, had they been permitted to live, would, at the same
calculation and in the same time, have produced 1,633,190,200 living rats!
“And the rats destroyed by Messrs. Shaw and Sabin in one year, amounting
to 17,000 pairs, would, had they been permitted to live, have produced, at
the above calculation and in the same time, no less a number than
10,995,736,000 living rats!
“Now, let us calculate the amount of human food that these rats would
destroy. In the first place, my informants tell me that six rats will consume
day by day as much food as a man; secondly, that the thing has been
tested, and that the estimate given was, that eight rats would consume
more than an ordinary man.
“Now, I—to place the thing beyond the smallest shadow of a doubt—will set
down ten rats to eat as much as a man, not a child; nor will I say anything
about what rats waste. And what shall we find to be the alarming result?
Why, that the first pair of rats, with their three years’ progeny, would
consume in the night more food than 64,680 men the year round, and
leaving eight rats to spare!”
The author then puts forth the following curious statement:—
“And now for the vermin destroyed by Messrs. Shaw and Sabin—34,000
yearly! Taken at the same calculation, with their three years’ progeny—can
you believe it?—they would consume more food than the whole population
of the earth? Yes, if Omnipotence would raise up 29,573,600 more people,
these rats would consume as much food as them all! You may wonder, but I
will prove it to you:—The population of the earth, including men, women,
and children, is estimated to be 970,000,000 souls; and the 17,000 rats in
three years would produce 10,995,736,000: consequently, at ten rats per
man, there would be sufficient rats to eat as much food as all the people on
the earth, and leaving 1,295,736,000. So that if the human family were
increased to 1,099,573,600, instead of 970,000,000, there would be rats
enough to eat the food of them all! Now, sirs, is not this a most appalling
thing, to think that there are at the present time in the British Empire
thousands—nay, millions—of human beings in a state of utter starvation,