But what might have been good enough for London in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries was certainly not adequate in the nineteenth, when London had extended her borders in every direction, and her population had reached almost two and a half millions. Successive Parliaments had not troubled themselves about such a matter; and this neglect, which now appears almost incredible, was typical of the habitual attitude of the governing classes to the sanitary requirements of the masses of the population of the metropolis.
In the eighteen hundred and forties, five such bodies of Commissioners were in existence in London, each with a separate portion of the metropolis under its charge and exercising an independent sway in its own district; and when we collect the best testimony of that time as to their work and that of their predecessors, we have the clearest demonstration of their glaring incapacity, and of the utter inadequacy and inefficiency of the sewerage in their respective districts.
Many miles of sewers had, it is true, in process of time been constructed, and did exist, but much of the work had been so misdone that the cure was little better than the disease.
A river is always a great temptation to persons to get rid of things they want to get rid of, particularly when the things are nasty and otherwise not easily disposed of. Londoners only followed the general practice when they constructed their sewers so that they discharged their contents direct into the Thames. The majority of these sewers emptied themselves only at the time of low water; for as the tide rose the outlets of the sewers were closed, and the sewage was dammed back and became stagnant. When the tide had receded sufficiently to afford a vent for the pent-up sewage, it flowed out and deposited itself along the banks of the river, evolving gases of a foul and offensive character. And then the sewage was not only carried up the river by the rising tide, but it was brought back again into the heart of the metropolis, there to mix with each day's fresh supply of sewage; the result being that "the portion of the river within the metropolitan district became scarcely less impure and offensive than the foulest of the sewers themselves."