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"It" bad drainage "was a defect
from which they, the East districts,
suffered in common with the City,"
the Strand, Westminster, Clerkenwell,
Brompton, Chelsea, Kensington,
and St. James's.''— Mr. Radcliife's
Report.
which at every 100 yards of its
course, after traversing a circuit of
5 miles, there now happens here
what never occurs in the City, and
the 7 districts which Mr. RadclifFe
names; the whole of the poisonous
exhalation from other quarters culminate
in the Limehouse District
in the three great centres of the
pestilence— North Street, Raid iff
Cross, and Limekiln Dock.
5. Mr. Radclifle, in his apology
for the sewerage, says, moreover,
"it was a defect (had drainage)
"exercising no influence east of the
River Lea." Why the whole of
the 70,000 inhabitants, as already
noticed, east of this limit, a good
proportion below high-water mark,
all about Victoria Docks, West
Ham, all Stratford, &c., have no
drainage at all unless a pair of
engines of 40-horse power were
kept in action, and doing the work
of the sewers; and not a few, I
imagine, will be ready to say, as a
substitute for better drainage—
"Badly done too."
6. There is another point to
remember, of importance too: these
great sewers are all tide-locked.,
that is, they are open wide enough
at the ebb, but at each returning
tide, the valves at the river's edge
are closed, so that by this process