Note 11 — II.—PUBLIC ARRANGEMENTS EXTERNAL TO THE RESIDENCES BY WHICH THE SANITARY CONDITION OF THE LABOURING POPULATION IS AFFECTED. (continued 2)

Mr. John Martin, the artist, has endeavoured to direct public attention to the sewerage of the metropolis, and proposed the erection of a grand cloaca maxima, and various architectural works along the Thames, with the meritorious objects of preventing the pollution of the river, and saving the refuse. His plan was to form a canal on each bank parallel to the river, so as to intercept the whole of the sewerage, and convey it to large reservoirs or places of deposit at a distance. His plan for the north bank was a canal, constructed of iron, costing 60,000l. per mile, extending from Westminster to the mouth of the Regent’s Canal, “where the grand receptacle should be from which the soil should be conveyed to barges, and transmitted by canals to various parts of the country.”—Committee on Sewers’ Report, p. 169. The primary objection to this plan is that it would send the refuse still further out of the reach of large districts, where it is wanted as manure, to a place where it would only be available to the places for which canal conveyance would be convenient; that it would leave untouched the great obstacle to the use of manure, namely, the cost of removal and application by cartage and hand labour. The construction of the canal would also involve the disturbance of the whole of the wharf property; as originally proposed, it involved their entire reconstruction, and the erection of a grand colonnade along the banks of the river. For the removal of the refuse, engineers of practical experience agree that the most eligible plan was by various small conduits, not larger, where iron pipes might be necessary, than the pipes used by the water companies in bringing water into the metropolis, at a cost not a fifth, perhaps, of one large canal, and without any disturbance of property. For the application of the refuse as manure, practical experience at Edinburgh, and of irrigation elsewhere, shows that the most effectual mode of distribution for use is by water-meadows or drainage and irrigation combined; forming an unseen, unostentatious, self-acting system of excretory ducts, altogether superseding cartage or hand labour, and conveying the refuse in closed streams, acting constantly and rapidly until they distribute the refuse into the field of production.