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16
Vieing at most times with the water supply as a major anxiety for
the Local Board was the problem of sewage disposal The first ventures
in this field in 1852 and 1853, when the procedure had been simply to
pour the crude matter from the sewer direct into the river, had brought
the Board into sharp conflict with both the River Lea Trustees, who had
a healthy distaste for having their waters so flagrantly polluted and
the General Board, which on good sanitary grounds strongly condemned the
practice. By a stroke of luck Tottenham was able in 1854 to embark on
arrangements which satisfied its critics. Mr. William Higgs, chemical
and manure manufacturer of Westminster, agreed to rent the Board's rudimentary
sewage works at Page Green, extend them at his own cost, deodorise
the sewage by a secret process of which he was the patentee, collect for
his own profit the residual manure and leave only an unexceptional effluent
to run off into the Lea. Mr. Higgs seems to have had a genius for
the business and was as good as his word. To quote the Tottenham and
Edmonton Advertiser of 1857 (a paper established the previous year), "the
water from the main sewer when it has passed through Mr Higgs' hands is
perfectly clear and inoffensive: the river at Tottenham is rendered far
purer than it has probably been for centuries, and matter of high fertilising
power is rescued from waste and at the same time made perfectly innocuous.
We strongly recommend agriculturalists and gardeners of all
kind to try Mr. Higgs' guano."
Alas, with Mr Higgs' death in 1858 these beneficent activities were
brought to an end. For a year the Page Green Works wallowed in a mire
of untreated sewage, while the Board vainly endeavoured to find a successor,
until in desperation it bought from Mr Higgs' executors for £500
the sewage plant on which he, out of his profits, was said to have spent
£5,000 The Board's surveyor was put in charge: the manufacture of manure
was abandoned: and there was a return to the former bad practices of
sewage, but slightly deodorised by lime, being passed straight into the
river, - the main source of supply, incredible though it may appear, of
the great East London Water Company. It is scarcely surprising that when
cholera broke out in 1866, Lord Salisbury, Chairman of the River Lea
Trustees publicly accused Tottenham of being the primary cause of an epidemic
which effected the untimely death of 3,909 Londoners.
Poor Tottenham - a pioneer of sanitary services - without let or
hindrance from the central authorities for public health was well on the
road to poisoning through deficiencies in its arrangements not only its
own inhabitants but vast numbers of others further afield.
At this point a small digression from Tottenham's story to the wider
issues seems justified. With the aid of the Local Board's well ordered
(and fortunately well preserved) minutes we have material for reflecting
on the contemporary circumstances which had permitted such a deplorable
state of affairs to come about. We can observe that during the period
1850 to 1855, whenever the Local Board applied, as it was bound to do, to
the General Board of Health for borrowing powers in connection with any