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being tolerably clear and quite inoffensive, became turbid, slate coloured,
very offensive to the sense of smell, and much increased in quantity. This
change was supposed by many passengers and others who, living near the
spot, were particularly and seriously annoyed, to proceed from the decomposition
of the dead, the number of burials having been notably increased at
or about the time of the outbreak of the Cholera in Broad Street,
Westminster. The unsatisfactory change was however shown to be derived
from a different source. The fluid pumped up in the Cemetery did not
contain the salts which result from the decomposition of the human body
in the earth, nor was the effluvium at all such as would be occasioned by any
such cause. It was proved to be identical with the refuse liquor known in
Gas Works by the name of blue billy, which is water containing some of
the most offensive impurities of coal gas, and highly charged with hydrosulpliuret
of lime. It was further discovered that the drain at the Tower
Hamlets' Cemetery was entered by the offensive fluid at a particular spot,
and in such quantity as to lead to the conclusion that it had not merely
percolated the gravel, but that it had found its way more directly and
rapidly through a reft in the soil. Many expedients were used by the
persons employed in charge of the Tower Hamlets' Cemetery to obviate the
difficulty and the nuisance, all of which were partly useful, but were so only
for a short time. Promises were made by the engineer of the Great Central
Gas Works and others there in authority, that no more of their waste water
or gas washings should be permitted to enter the soil, and that it should
instead be burnt in pans beneath the furnaces used in heating the retorts,
—none of which promises were kept.
Complaints have been made informally, but in great number, of the
offensive character of the exhalations which proceed from the ventilating
eyes of the Lime-kiln Dock sewer, throughout that part of its course which
extends from the Regent's Canal to the exit of the sewer at Liinehouse.
Meat is said to become rapidly tainted, silver blackened, white paint converted
to a dull lead colour, with many other injurious effects upon property
in the direct course of the sewer, from which effects the houses in the streets
but little removed, are exempt. Sickness, too, has been attributed, and in
all probability, correctly, to the same cause. Mr. Moon, an optician and
instrument maker, whose house is situated exactly on the outlet of the sewer
in Lime-kiln Dock, makes the strongest complaints of injury to health and
property, and it is likely that he is the greatest sufferer; his valuable metal
goods are clearly damaged by the proximity of the sewer; but how much
of the damage arises from oxydation, promoted by the inevitable dampness
of the spot he has selected for his business, and how much from the chemical
action of gases evolved from the sewer, it would not be very easy to
determine.
If all the refuse water which is supposed to give rise to the offensiveness