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44 Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
In the basements of two public houses, each of which contained casks of beer and
spirits, the sewage had risen l£ft. and 6in. respectively. In a third public-house
the beer cellar had escaped, but an adjoining chamber, used for storing pots, had
been flooded to a height of 1ft. 9in.
Below a milk shop I found a woman washing clothes in a cellar that had lately
been flooded with sewage. Amongst other flooded cellars were those of a model
dwelling, a sweetstuff shop, and a hank. Another was that of an auctioneer, in
whose shop a couple of hundred people or more were in the habit of congregating
together at one time. The concrete floor of the cellar was rent and cracked by the
backward pressure from the surcharged and inadequate main sewer. A portion of a
similarly damaged cellar in the next house was used as a kitchen, and in it a maidof-all-work
and three young shop girls were in the habit of taking their meals. The
last place I visited was a baker's shop, beneath which was a cellar used as a bakery.
Here the master and his journeyman were actually working as best they could in a
flood of sewage. In one corner of the workshop a row of sacks filled with flour
rested on a wooden platform 3in. in height. The sewage had risen to a height of
4in., as shown by the stain on the wall, and, by the baker's own admission, had
fouled the under surface of the sacks and caused a portion of the flour to cake
together in lumps. At the same time it was admitted that the flour from those
particular sacks had been made into bread.
The special danger connected with this form of basement flooding is that the
sewage is always more or less charged with the specific poison of typhoid fever,
and is at any time liable to that of cholera and of other deadly diseases. It is
obvious that such contaminated cellars are unfitted for the preparation of bread or
other articles of food, and almost equally so for use as workshops or dwelling rooms.
These facts have been recognised by Mr. Fowler, late President of the Local Government
Board, who declared in the House that it was the duty of the London County
Council to find a remedy for the grave dangers connected with the inadequacy of
certain main sewers within this district.
In reference to this Report a correspondence took place between your Vestry and
the London County Council. The latter, as you are aware, suggested that the less
costly remedy would be to fill up the cellars, rather than to enlarge the main sewer.
No mention was made, however, of the question of compensation for disturbance to
owners, nor did the Council state on whom it was proposed to lay the necessary
costs involved by filling up the cellars. Further, no answer of any kind was given
to my proposal contained in a previous Report that the Council should lay down a
separate system of drainage for carrying off storm water.