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Danger in the Drains: Sewer Gas, Sewerage Systems and the Home, 1850–1900

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Abstract

Crook’s chapter analyses some of the contestation surrounding the introduction of large-scale, technologised, water-borne sewerage systems in towns and cities. It focuses on the early installation of water-closets in middle-class homes and the danger of ‘sewer gas’. He argues that these problems were managed in much the same way as other hazards created by urban infrastructural projects: standards were set and revised; inspectors were called in; and technological solutions were implemented and reviewed. Sewer gas is particularly significant because it targeted the home, arousing fear on account of its ability to infiltrate what was supposed to be an inviolable sphere of familial intimacy and safety. Thus, sewer gas was very much a composite risk: a risk defined as much by public fear and dispute as by expert ‘rationality’ and technological savvy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    S.S. Hellyer, The Plumber and Sanitary Houses: A Practical Treatise on the Principles of Internal Plumbing Work, or the Best Means for Effectually Excluding Noxious Gases from our Houses (London, 1877), p. v.

  2. 2.

    T. Alborn, Regulated Lives: Life Insurance and British Society, 1800–1914 (Toronto, 2009).

  3. 3.

    R. Palmer, The Water-Closet: A New History (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp. 46–8.

  4. 4.

    A.S. Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (London, 1984), Chapters 8–9; B. Luckin, Pollution and Control: A Social History of the Thames in the Nineteenth Century (Bristol, 1986); S. Mosley, The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester (Cambridge, 2001); C. Otter, The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800–1910 (Chicago, 2008), Chapters 4–6; M. Whitehead, State, Science and the Skies: Governmentalities of the British Atmosphere (Chichester, 2009).

  5. 5.

    C. Hamlin, ‘William Dibdin and the Idea of Biological Sewage Treatment’, Technology and Culture 29 (1988), pp. 189–218; and D. Schneider, Hybrid Nature: Sewage Treatment and the Contradictions of the Industrial Ecosystem (Cambridge, MA, 2011).

  6. 6.

    This excludes some reports on the related subject of metropolitan water supplies and sewers. See P. Cockton, Subject Catalogue of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 1801–1900: Volume IV (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 31–3.

  7. 7.

    The address was subsequently reissued in 1880, along with embellishments by Chadwick and others, as ‘Circulation or Stagnation; Being the Translation of a Paper by F.O. Ward on the Arterial and Venous System for the Sanitation of Towns’, Transactions of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain 2 (1880), pp. 267–71.

  8. 8.

    C. Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain, 1800–1854 (Cambridge, 1998), Chapter 10.

  9. 9.

    On the politics of water supply, see, among other accounts, D. Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England: The Structure of Politics in Victorian Cities (London, 1979), Chapter 7; and J. Broich, London: Water and the Making of the Modern City (Pittsburgh, PA, 2013). On the technical-engineering aspect, see G.M. Binnie, Early Victorian Water Engineers (London, 1981); and Luckin, Pollution and Control, Chapter 2.

  10. 10.

    S. Halliday, The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis (Stroud, 2001).

  11. 11.

    A useful overview is provided in M.J. Daunton, House and Home in the Victorian City: Working-Class Housing, 1850–1914 (London, 1983), Chapter 10.

  12. 12.

    Metropolitan Sanitary Commission: First Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire Whether any and what Special Means may be Requisite for the Improvement of the Health of the Metropolis (Parl. Papers 1847–8 [888]), p. 31.

  13. 13.

    ‘The Sanitation of London’, Public Health Engineer, 3 May 1902, p. 341.

  14. 14.

    Figures provided in W.M. Egglestone, House Drainage and Sanitary Catalogue (Stanhope, 1889), p. 18.

  15. 15.

    S.S. Brown, A Lay Lecture on Sanitary Matters, with a Paper on Sewer Ventilation (London, 1873), p. 31.

  16. 16.

    Reports by Neil Arnott, Esq., M.D. and Thomas Page, Esq., C.E. on an inquiry ordered by the Secretary of State, relative to the prevalence of disease at Croydon, and to the plan of sewerage, together with an abstract of evidence accompanying the reports (Parl. Papers 1852–3 [1648]), pp. 8–10, 33–5; and Statement of the preliminary inquiry by T. Southwood Smith, Esq., M.D., and John Sutherland, Esq., M.D. on the epidemic at Croydon; together with reports by R.D. Grainger, Esq. and Henry Austin, Esq. to the General Board of Health, on the circumstances connected with the epidemic attack of fever at Croydon (Parl. Papers 1852–3 [1683]), pp. 43–4.

  17. 17.

    H. Letheby, Report to the Honourable Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London, on Sewage and Sewer Gases, and on the Ventilation of Sewers (London, 1858).

  18. 18.

    Ibid., pp. 23–48.

  19. 19.

    W.H. Corfield and L.C. Parkes, ‘The Disposal of Refuse’, in T. Stevenson and S.F. Murphy (eds), A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health: Volume I (London, 1892), pp. 841–2.

  20. 20.

    ‘A New Danger from Sewer Gas’, British Medical Journal, 8 May 1875, p. 617.

  21. 21.

    ‘Sewer Gas Explosion at Burton’, Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 14 November 1896, p. 6.

  22. 22.

    M. Worboys, Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865–1900 (Cambridge, 2000).

  23. 23.

    B.W. Richardson, Diseases of Modern Life (London, 1876), pp. 388–91.

  24. 24.

    Reviews of the relevant literature were produced at the time. See especially P.H. Bird, Hints on Drains, Traps, Closets, Sewer Gas, and Sewage Disposal (Blackpool, 1877), pp. 6-22, and Sewer Gas and its Effects: Extracts from the Work of the Leading Sanitary Authorities (Liverpool, 1879).

  25. 25.

    Public Health: Ninth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, with Appendix (Parl. Papers 1867 [3949]), pp. 194–5.

  26. 26.

    ‘Enteric Fever at Caius College, Cambridge’, Public Health: Reports of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council and Local Government Board. New Series, no. II (Parl. Papers 1874 [C. 1066]), pp. 63–78; ‘On Enteric Fever at Croydon, by Dr Buchanan’, Public Health: Reports of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council and Local Government Board. New Series, no. VII (Parl. Papers 1876 [C. 1508]), pp. 40–71.

  27. 27.

    ‘On Enteric Fever at Croydon, by Dr Buchanan’, Public Health, p. 48.

  28. 28.

    A useful overview is L.C. Parkes, ‘Review of Books: “Is Sewer Air a Source of Disease?”’, Journal of the Sanitary Institute 16 (1896), pp. 142–52.

  29. 29.

    W.A. Guy, ‘On the Health of Nightmen, Scavengers and Dustmen’, Journal of the Statistical Society of London 11 (1848), pp. 72–81.

  30. 30.

    Corfield and Parkes, ‘The Disposal of Refuse’, pp. 841–2.

  31. 31.

    T. Rowan, Disease and Putrescent Air: Some Principles which Must Govern the Efficient Ventilation of Sewers and the Effective Hygienic Treatment of ‘Sewer Gas’ (London, 1888), p. 11. The experiments are detailed in T. Carnelly and J.S. Haldane, ‘The Air of Sewers’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 42 (1887), pp. 501–22; J.P. Laws, London County Council: Reports and Sewer Air Investigations (London, 1893); and J.P. Laws and F.W. Andrewes, London County Council: Report on the Result of Investigations on the Micro-organisms of Sewage (London, 1894).

  32. 32.

    Laws, London County Council: Reports and Sewer Air Investigations, p. 11.

  33. 33.

    R.H. Reeves, Reports and Investigations on Sewer Air and Sewer Ventilation (London, 1894); ‘Diseases Occasioned by Emanations from Sewer-Drained Cesspools and other Organic Refuse’, The Sanitary Record, 8 September 1894, pp. 1003–6; and ‘Bacteriology of Sewer Air’, The Sanitary Record, 10 November 1894, pp. 1160–2.

  34. 34.

    Parkes, ‘Review of Books’, p. 152.

  35. 35.

    See especially C. Hamlin, A Science of Impurity: Water Analysis in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Berkeley, CA, 1990); and A. Hardy, ‘On the Cusp: Epidemiology and Bacteriology at the Local Government Board, 1890–1905’, Medical History 42 (1998), pp. 328–46.

  36. 36.

    H.A. Roechling, Sewer Gas and its Influence upon Health (London, 1898), pp. 84–5.

  37. 37.

    C. Hamlin, ‘Public Sphere to Public Health: The Transformation of “Nuisance”’, in S. Sturdy (ed.), Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1600–2000 (London, 2002), pp. 189–204; J.G. Hanley, ‘Parliament, Physicians and Nuisances: The Demedicalization of Nuisance Law, 1831–1855’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80 (2006), pp. 702–32; and T. Crook, ‘Sanitary Inspection and the Public Sphere in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain: A Case Study in Liberal Governance’, Social History 32 (2007), pp. 369–93.

  38. 38.

    M. Allen, Cleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian London (Athens, OH, 2008), pp. 42–53.

  39. 39.

    For a useful summary of the various investigations, see ‘The Illness of H.R.H., The Prince of Wales’, British Medical Journal, 9 December 1871, pp. 671–3.

  40. 40.

    The Standard, 11 December 1871, p. 4.

  41. 41.

    ‘The Sewerage Panic’, Liverpool Mercury, 15 December 1871, p. 6.

  42. 42.

    ‘Health and Sewage of Towns’, The Times, 21 September 1876, p. 5; The Times, 22 September 1876, p. 9.

  43. 43.

    The Times, 7 December 1871, p. 9.

  44. 44.

    G. Mather, Sewer Gas, Ventilation of the Sewers, Drainage and Ventilation of Buildings on an Improved Principle (London, 1872), p. 5.

  45. 45.

    Roechling, Sewer Gas and its Influence upon Health, p. 5.

  46. 46.

    M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (London, 1991), pp. 136–41.

  47. 47.

    S.M. Gaskell, Building Control: National Legislation and the Introduction of Local Bye-Laws in Victorian England (London, 1983), pp. 3–20.

  48. 48.

    D. Gibbons, The Metropolitan Buildings Act. 7th & 8th. Vict. Cap. 84; with Notes and an Index (London, 1844), pp. 146–9.

  49. 49.

    [Local Government Board], Model Bye-Laws for Sanitary Authorities (London, 1886), Part 4.

  50. 50.

    G.E. Cherry, Cities and Plans: The Shaping of Urban Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1988), p. 41.

  51. 51.

    A.W. Parry, ‘The Separate System of Sewerage as Carried Out at Reading’, in Proceedings of the Association of Municipal and Sanitary Engineers and Surveyors: Volume IX, 1882–83 (London, 1883), pp. 105–6.

  52. 52.

    H.P. Boulnois, The Municipal and Sanitary Engineers’ Handbook, 3rd edn (London, 1898), pp. 317–22; E.C.S. Moore, Sanitary Engineering: A Practical Treatise on the Collection, Removal and Final Disposal of Sewage, 2nd edn (London, 1901), pp. 16–20.

  53. 53.

    Bird, Hints on Drains, Traps, Closets, Sewer Gas, and Sewage Disposal, pp. 33–9.

  54. 54.

    [J. Niven], Health Officer Report: 1896 (Manchester, 1897), pp. 148–9.

  55. 55.

    C. Innes and W.K. Burton, Sanitary Inspection of Dwelling Houses, with Special Reference to London Houses (London, 1880).

  56. 56.

    ‘Sanitary Assurance’, The Sanitary Record, 15 June 1881, pp. 478–9; ‘London Sanitary Protection Association’, The Sanitary Record, 15 March 1882, p. 383.

  57. 57.

    T.E. Coleman, Sanitary House Drainage, its Principles and Practice (London, 1896), pp. 55–60, 71–4.

  58. 58.

    L.C. Parkes, ‘The Testing of Drains’, Public Health 15 (1902–3), pp. 272–8.

  59. 59.

    Useful overviews of testing include Coleman, Sanitary House Drainage, pp. 161–77; and G.J.G. Jensen, Modern Drainage Inspection and Sanitary Surveys (London, 1899), pp. 76–88.

  60. 60.

    Quoted in Boulnois, The Municipal and Sanitary Engineers’ Handbook, p. 340.

  61. 61.

    Useful overviews include ‘Cleansing and Ventilating Sewers’, The Surveyor, 13 October 1892, pp. 211–14; and Boulnois, The Municipal and Sanitary Engineers’ Handbook, pp. 340–7.

  62. 62.

    E.B. Ellice-Clark, ‘Ventilation of Sewers’, Proceedings of the Association of Municipal and Sanitary Engineers and Surveyors: Volume I, 1873–74 (London, 1875), p. 55.

  63. 63.

    ‘The Ventilation of Sewers’, Public Health Engineer, 14 May 1904, pp. 487–8.

  64. 64.

    G. Godwin, Another Blow for Life (London, 1864), p. 23.

  65. 65.

    R. Cooter, ‘The Moment of the Accident: Culture, Militarism and Modernity in Late-Victorian Britain’, in R. Cooter and B. Luckin (eds), Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities and Social Relations (Amsterdam, 1997), p. 112.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Philosophy and Religion, Oxford Brookes University, Tonge Building, Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane, Oxford, OX3 0BP, UK

    Tom Crook

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Tom Crook

  2. School of Social, Historical and Literar, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

    Mike Esbester

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Crook, T. (2016). Danger in the Drains: Sewer Gas, Sewerage Systems and the Home, 1850–1900. In: Crook, T., Esbester, M. (eds) Governing Risks in Modern Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46745-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46745-4_5

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