View report page

37
from which they suffered in common
with the City, much of Clerkenwell,
the Strand, Westminster,
Chelsea, Brompton, part of Kensington,
and St. James'.
Moreover, it was a defect exercising
no influence east of the River
Lea. These considerations preclude
the supposition that imperfect
drainage from this source could
have played any active part in the
limitation of the outbreak," Ac., Ac.
such as the City, the Strand, Westminster,
and the rest mentioned by
Mr. Radcliffe, had a short drainage
and emptied themselves into the
Thames direct. But the Limehouse
District especially, with another or
two in a less degree, constituting
the very heart of the Cholera field,
receive the sewage of the outlying
parts of the East of London, comprising
not less than probably
400,000 inhabitants.
1. The Limekiln Dock Sewer
takes part of the sewage of White,
chapel, the principal part of Mile
End, part of Limehouse, then pasting
down Vincent Street, a fatal
Cholera Street, under Carr Street,
another street of wailing in the
epidemic, down North Street, a
street where the first series of deaths
occurred, it is then conveyed by a
syphon beneath the Regents Canal
into a point of Mile End. A syphon,
in sewer language, is half a circle
or a half-moon channel entering on
one side, emerging on the other,
then emptying itself into the continuation
of the sewer. In this
syphon, it will be seen, the current
is checked, so that at this very
focus of the pestilence, some thousand
gallons of sewage are stagnant,
and consequently a large deposit of
the more solid filth is left for all