View report page

47
market, and St. James's Street. Evelyn, writing in the same
year, speaks of the way from St. James's, north, as being
quagmire. Macaulay tells us that St. James's Square was a
receptacle for all the offal and cinders, for all the dead cats
and dead dogs of Westminster; that at one time a cudgelplayer
kept a ring there, and at another time a squatter settled
and built a shed for rubbish there. It was, indeed, not until
the first year of George I. that the inhabitants, apparently
driven to desperation, obtained parliamentary authority to
enclose the square and plant it with trees.
Such being the condition of the wealthiest districts, it may
readily be imagined that the poorer localities were even in a
worse state. The streets were almost universally very narrow;
kerbstones were unknown, and there was no distinction
between the carriage-ways and footpaths, except in some of
the principal streets, where a line of posts and chains afforded
occasional protection. The general condition of the streets is
illustrated by a writer in a London Chronicle, who, speaking
of the proposed plan of paving the City and Liberties of
Westminster in 1762, says "all sorts of dirt and ashes, oyster
shells, and the offals of dead poultry and other animals, will
no longer be suffered to be thrown into the streets, but must
be kept until the dustman comes; nor will the annoyances
erected by coachmakers be permitted; and when a house is
pulled down, the rubbish must be carried to a proper place
and not left in the streets."
Bad as this picture of general comfort may be, matters had
slightly improved since the creation of the Parish in 1685.
Until the year 1670, rain water was generally discharged from
the roofs of buildings on to the street below, but the evil had
become so intolerable as to lead to the fixing of stackpipes
being made compulsory in the City of London, an example
which was subsequently followed in Westminster. Nor was
rain water the only or the worst nuisance to be encountered.
I