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7
UPON THE SANITARY STATE OP CLERKENWELL.
the provision of two rooms, at a rent of between 1s. and 2s. per week. Why
does not some philanthropic individual organize a company to provide these ?
If the present dwellings of the poor were in a more perfect sanitary state,
more rent would be obtained than at present, even if the charge were less;
for the interruption to employment, occasioned by sickness, death, and burials
arising from their wretched condition, would be done away with. One small
model lodging-house exists in the district; but the rent of the apartments
(5s. 6d. and 6s. per week) is too great for the poor to pay.
The gross estimated rental of the district is £260,278; the rateable
value £196,919 ; and the poor-rate in 1856 was 2s. 9d. in the pound,
whilst this year it is 3s.
DRAINAGE.
The general street drainage of the district is, on the whole, good; but
many streets have no sewers, and numberless houses do not drain into the
sewers, even when close at hand. This is particularly the case in the lower
or southern portion of the district, where the poorer inhabitants live, where
the level is the least, where the crowding is greatest; and, hence, where
good drainage is of the most importance.
WATER-SUPPLY.
In the district there are several shallow wells, and a few deep wells entering
the chalk.
I need scarcely remark that the water derived from the former is cold, very
hard, containing, mostly, more than 100 grains of saline matter in a gallon,
brisk and sparkling from the large amount of carbonic acid present, holding
carbonate of lime (chalk) in solution. The clearness, coldness, and briskness
of the shallow-well water has always given it the preference as a drinking
water. These qualities should not, however, be regarded, since it has been
shown that the pump-water of the Metropolis is almost invariably contaminated
with the contents of the sewers which has escaped into the wells. The idea
of drinking the excretions of other human beings is sufficiently repulsive to
counterbalance the attractive physical qualities of the pump-water ; but, in
addition to this, it has been shown, in several instances, that the cholera has
virulently attacked those who have drunk pump-water, in which this contamination
has been shown to have occurred, whilst those who have used an uninfected
water have escaped.*
Moreover, the shallow-well water receives the drainage-water of the
Highgate Cemetery, of numerous burial-grounds, and of the innumerable
cesspools in this district. The clay rises high at Highgate-hill, so that
the rain-water which percolates the soil on the London side of the Cemetery
* The injurious effects of water containing sewage has been otherwise strikingly
shown in the production of this fearful malady. In 1851, when the cholera prevailed
in the Metropolis, it was found in a large number of persons (about one-fifth
of the inhabitants), living side by side, as nearly as possible under the same circumstances
in every respect but one—viz., the water-supply being derived from two
sources—that the mortality among those who drank the Thames water, mixed with
the sewage of the Metropolis, suffered three and a half times as great mortality as
those who drank the Thames water taken at Thames Ditton, i.e. free from the
sewage ; and several other well-marked instances of the same kind have been
observed in other localities.