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richer inhabitants, so, few localities have such a multitude of small narrow streets and
blind alleys, inhabited by the poor. Exclusive of mews, there may be counted on the
map upwards of seventy streets, courts, and alleys, in which there is no thoroughfare,
or which are approached by passages under houses. On entering many of these places,
one instantly feels the change from the open atmosphere of the wider streets, and there
is no question, that in all of them the want of sunlight, and of free currents of air, is
harmful to their residents. These courts are by far the worst and most numerous in
the parish of St. Giles.
Section 2.—Geological Features: Soil, Water, Sewerage.—The soil of St.
Giles district is almost everywhere gravel, with, of course, a superstratum of various
depths, of that artificial " made earth" which covers the long inhabited parts of every
large town. Below the gravel, is the great bed of the London clay, which gives to the
district its general incline. The gravel begins to be found above the clay, not very far
beyond the northern limits of the district, about Euston Square; at the noith-west
border of the district, the gravel is about 20 feet deep, there is less of it as it is
traced eastward, and it disappears altogether about Brunswick Square. It increases in
thickness as it is traced to the south.
This stratum of gravel has a very important relation to the sanitary condition of
the district, and in two chief ways. In the first place, the natural drainage afforded by
it is of extreme advantage, especially where artificial sewerage is absent or imperfect.
The products of animal and vegetable decomposition are washed by the rains, and
elsewise, into this soil ; they there become converted into inorganic compounds, and
are in other ways rendered harmless. In this state, the diluted sewage filters through
the porous gravel towards the river, and some of it is intercepted and carried off by the
large sewers in which the district abounds. So far, the porous soil is of great use.
The other aspect under which it is necessary to view the surface gravel,
regards the water-sujpply derived from it.
Rain falling on a porous soil, and accumulating therein, by reason of the impermeability
of the subsoil, will furnish a supply of water when a well is dug : that
water will have obtained from the soil various soluble substances, which, if the soil be
natural and pure, will not affect the wholesomeness of the fluid.
But it would appear unnecessary to insist on a point so plain, that—if the soil
through which the rain first passes be not virgin and pure, but be composed of the
refuse of centuries, if it be riddled with cesspools and the remains of cesspools, with
leaky gas-pipes and porous sewers, if it has been the depository of the dead for generation
after generation—that then the soil so perverted cannot yield water of any degree
of purity. The more reason we have to be grateful to the soil for the natural
drainage it affords, the more carefully should we eschew the fluid that it contains. The
water which rises in the parish wells of St. Giles' district, is really nothing more nor
less than that highly-diluted sewage, which it is the great use of the porous soil to
carry away to the river.
It is beyond question true, that, as a rule, the products of animal and vegetable
decomposition in this sewage are rendered innocuous by the agencies to which they
are exposed in their passage, and exhibit themselves, for the most part, in the form of