Chapter 114 of 137 · 3895 words · ~19 min read

Part 114

There is no difference in the system of flushing in the Metropolitan and City jurisdictions, except that for the greater facilities of the process, the City provides water-tanks in Newgate-market, where the heads of three sewers meet, and where the accumulation of animal garbage, and the fierceness and numbers of the rats attracted thereby, were at one time frightful; at Leadenhall-market, and elsewhere, such tanks were also provided to the number of ten, the largest being the Newgate-market tank, which is a brick cistern of 8000 gallons capacity. Of these tanks, however, only four are now kept filled, for this collection of water is found unnecessary, the regular system of flushing answering the purpose without them; and I understand that in a little time there will be no tanks at all. The tank is filled, when required, by a water company, and the penstocks being opened, the water rushes into the sewers with great force. There is also another point peculiar to the City--in it all the sewers are flushed regularly twice a week; in the metropolitan sewers, only when the inspector pronounces flushing to be required. The City plan appears the best to prevent the accumulation of deposit.

There still remains to be described the system of “_plonging_,” or mode of cleansing the open sewers, as contradistinguished from “_flushing_,” or the cleansing of the covered sewers.

“When we go plonging,” one man said, “we has long poles with a piece of wood at the end of them, and we stirs up the mud at the bottom of the ditches while the tide’s a going down. We has got slides at the end of the ditches, and we pulls these up and lets out the water, mud, and all, into the Thames.” “Yes, for the people to drink,” said a companion drily. “We’re in the water a great deal,” continued the man. “We can’t walk along the sides of all of ’em.”

The difference of cost between the old method of removal and the new, that is to say, between carting and flushing, is very extraordinary.

This cartage work was done chiefly by contract and according to a Report of the surveyors to the Commissioners (Aug. 31, 1848), the usual cost for such work (almost always done during the night) was 7_s._ the cubic yard; that is, 7_s._ for the removal of a cubic yard of sewage by manual labour and horse and cart. In February, 1849 (the date of another Report on the subject), the cost of removing a cubic yard by the operation of flushing, was but 8_d._ This gives the following result, but in what particular time, instance, or locality, is not mentioned:--

79,483 cubic yards of deposit removed by the contract flushing system, at 8_d._ per cubic yard £2,649

Same quantity by the old system of casting and cartage, 7_s._ per cubic yard 27,819 ------- Difference £25,170 -------

“It appears, therefore,” says Mr. Lovick, “that by the adoption of the contract flushing system, a saving has been effected within the comparatively short period of its operation over the filthy and clumsy system formerly practised, of 25,170_l._, showing the cost of this system to be ten and a half times greater than the cost of flushing by contract.”

An official Report states: “When the accumulations of years had to be removed from the sewers, the rate of cost per lineal mile has varied from about 40_l._ to 58_l._, or from 6_d._ to 8_d._ per lineal yard. The works in these cases (excepting those in the City) have not exceeded nine lineal miles.”

“On an average of weeks,” says Mr. Lovick, in his Report on flushing operations, a few months after the introduction of the contract system, in Sept., 1848, “under present arrangements, about 62 miles of sewers are passed through each week, and deposit prevented from accumulating in them by periodic (weekly) flushing. The average cost per lineal mile per week is about 2_l._ 10_s._

“The nature of the agreements with the contractors or gangers are now for the prevention of accumulations of deposit in a district. For this purpose the large districts are subdivided, each subdivision being let to one man. In the Westminster district there are four, in the Holborn and Finsbury two, in the Surrey and Kent, seven subdivisions.

“The Tower Hamlets and Poplar districts are each let to one man.

“In the Tower Hamlets it will be perceived that a reduction of 8_l._ has been effected for the performance of precisely the same work as that heretofore performed; the rates of charge standing thus:--

“Under the day-work system 23_l._ per week. „ contract „ 15_l._ „

“In those portions specially contracted for, the work has been let by the lineal measure of the sewer, in preference to the amount of deposit removed.

“In the Surrey and Kent districts the open ditches have been cleansed thrice as often as formerly.

“A large proportion of the deposit removed is from the open ditches; in these the accumulations are rapid and continuous, caused chiefly by their being the receptacles for the ashes and refuse of the houses, the refuse of manufactories, and the sweepings of the roads.

“In the covered sewers one of the chief sources of accumulation is the detritus and mud from the streets, swept into the sewers.

“The accumulations from these sources will not, I think, be over-estimated at two-thirds of the whole amount of deposit removed.

“The contracts in operation, February, 1849, with the districts which they embrace, are as follows:--

“TABLE NO. I.

------------------+--------------+-------------+------------- | | Average Rate| |Sewers let for| of Work | Contract | Prevention of| performed in| Charge Districts. | Accumulations|Sewers passed| per | of Deposit. | through each| Week. | | Week. | ------------------+--------------+-------------+------------- | Lineal Feet. | Lineal Feet.| £ _s._ _d._ Westminster | 485,795 | 150,615 | 40 0 0 Holborn & Finsbury| 355,085 | 118,000 | 23 0 0 Tower Hamlets | 223,738 | 30,000 | 15 0 0 Surrey and Kent | 440,642 | 40,000 | 75 0 0 Poplar | 26,000 | 2,000 | 6 16 0 ------------------+--------------+-------------+------------- | 1,531,260 | 340,615 |159 16 0 ------------------+--------------+-------------+ Westminster--Attendance on Flaps, &c. 4 0 0 -------------- £163 16 0 -------------------------------------------------------------

“The weekly cost prior to the contract system was in the several districts as follows:--

“TABLE NO. II.

Hence there would appear to have been a saving of 25_l._ 12_s._ effected. But by what means was this brought about? It is the old story, I regret to say--a reduction of the wages of the labouring men. But this, indeed, is the invariable effect of the contract system. The wages of the flushermen previous to Sept., 1848, were 24_s._ to 27_s._ a week; under the present system they are 21_s._ to 22_s._ Here is a reduction of 4_s._ per week per man, at the least; and as there were about 150 hands employed at this period, it follows that the gross weekly saving must have been equal to 30_l._, so that, according to the above account, there would have been about 5_l._ left for the contractors or middlemen. It is unworthy of _gentlemen_ to make a parade of economy obtained by such ignoble means.

The engineers, however, speak of flushing as what is popularly understood as but “a make-shift”--as a system imperfect in itself, but advantageously resorted to because obviating the evils of a worse system still.

“With respect to these operations,” says Mr. Lovick, in a Report on the subject, in February, 1849, “I may be permitted to state that, although I do not approve of the flushing as an ultimate system, or as a system to be adopted in the future permanent works of sewerage, or that its use should be contemplated with regulated sizes of sewers, regulated supplies of water, and proper falls, it appears to be the most efficacious and economical for the purpose to which it is adapted of any yet introduced.”

A gentleman who was at one time connected professionally with the management of the public sewerage, said to me,--

“Mr. John Roe commenced the general system of flushing sewers in London in 1847. It is, however, but a clumsy expedient, and quite incompatible with a perfect system of sewerage. It has, nevertheless, been usefully applied as an auxiliary to the existing system, though the cost is frightful.”

OF THE WORKING FLUSHERMEN.

When the system of sewer cleansing first became general, as I have detailed, the number of flushermen employed, I am assured, on good authority, was about 500. The sewers were, when this process was first resorted to, full of deposit, often what might be called “coagulated” deposit, which could not be affected except by constantly repeated efforts. There are now only about 100 flushermen, for the more regularly flushing is repeated, the easier becomes the operation.

Until about 18 months ago, the flushermen were employed directly by the Court of Sewers, and were paid (“in Mr. Roe’s time,” one man said, with a sigh) from 24_s._ to 27_s._ a week; now the work is _all done by contract_. There are some six or seven contractors, all builders, who undertake or are responsible for the whole work of flushing in the metropolitan districts (I do not speak of the City), and they pay the working flushermen 21_s._ a week, and the gangers 22_s._ This wage is always paid in money, without drawbacks, and without the intervention of any other middleman than the contractor middleman. The flushermen have no perquisites except what they may chance to find in a sewer. Their time of labour is 6-1/2 hours daily.

The state of the tide, however, sometimes, as a matter of course, compels the flushermen to work at every hour of the day and night. At all times they carry lights, common oil lamps, with cotton wicks; only the inspectors carry Davy’s safety-lamp. I met no man who could assign any reason for this distinction, except that “the Davy” gave “such a bad light.”

The flushermen wear, when at work, strong blue overcoats, waterproofed (but not so much as used to be the case, the men then complaining of the perspiration induced by them), buttoned close over the chest, and descending almost to the knees, where it is met by huge leather boots, covering a part of the thigh, such as are worn by the fishermen on many of our coasts. Their hats are fan-tailed, like the dustmen’s. The flushermen are well-conducted men generally, and, for the most part, fine stalwart good-looking specimens of the English labourer; were they not known or believed to be temperate, they would not be employed. They have, as a body, no benefit or sick clubs, but a third of them, I was told, or perhaps nearly a third, were members of general benefit societies. I found several intelligent men among them. They are engaged by the contractors, upon whom they call to solicit work.

“Since Mr. Roe’s time,” and Mr. Roe is evidently the popular man among the flushermen, or somewhat less than four years ago, the flushermen have had to provide their own dresses, and even their own shovels to stir up the deposit. To contractors, the comforts or health of the labouring men must necessarily be a secondary consideration to the realization of a profit. New men can always be found; safe investments cannot.

The wages of the flushermen therefore have been not only decreased, but their expenses increased. A pair of flushing-boots, covering a part of the thigh, similar to those worn by sea-side fishermen, costs 30_s._ as a low price, and a flusherman wears out three pairs in two years. Boot stockings cost 2_s._ 6_d._ The jacket worn by the men at their work in the sewers, in the shape of a pilot-jacket, but fitting less loosely, is 7_s._ 6_d._; a blue smock, of coarse common cloth (generally), worn over the dress, costs 2_s._ 6_d._; a shovel is 2_s._ 6_d._ “Ay, sir,” said one man, who was greatly dissatisfied with this change, “they’ll make soldiers find their own regimentals next; and, may be, their own guns, a’cause they can always get rucks of men for soldiers or labourers. I know there’s plenty would work for less than we get, but what of that? There always is. There’s hundreds would do the work for half what the surveyors and inspectors gets; but it’s all right among the nobs.”

Nor is the labour of the flushermen at all times so easy or of such circumscribed hours as I have stated it to be in the regular way of flushing. When small branch-sewers have to be flushed, the deposit must first be loosened, or the water, instead of sweeping it away, would flow over it, and in many of these sewers (most frequent in the Tower Hamlets) the height is not more than 3 feet. Some of the flushermen are tall, bulky, strong fellows, and cannot stand upright in less than from 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet, and in loosening the deposit in low narrow sewers, “we go to work,” said one of them, “on our bellies, like frogs, with a rake between our legs. I’ve been blinded by steam in such sewers near Whitechapel Church from the brewhouses; I couldn’t see for steam; it was a regular London fog. You must get out again into a main sewer on your belly; that’s what makes it harder about the togs, they get worn so.”

The division of labour among the flushermen appears to be as follows:--

The _Inspector_, whose duty it is to go round the several sewers and see which require to be flushed.

The _Ganger_, or head of the working gang, who receives his orders from the inspector, and directs the men accordingly.

The _Lock-keeper_, or man who goes round to the sewers which are about to be flushed, and fixes the “penstocks” for retaining the water.

The _Gang_, which consists of from three to four men, who loosen the deposit from the bottom of the sewer. Among these there is generally a “for’ard man,” whose duty it is to remove the penstocks.

The ganger gets 1_s._ a week over and above the wages of the men.

TABLE SHOWING THE DISTRICTS UNDER THE MANAGEMENT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS; ALSO THE NUMBER AND SALARIES OF THE CLERKS OF THE WORKS, ASSISTANT CLERKS OF THE WORKS, AND INSPECTORS OF FLUSHING, PAID BY THE COMMISSIONERS, AND THE NUMBER AND WAGES PAID TO THE FLUSHERMEN BY THE GENERAL CONTRACTORS.

--------------------+------------------------------------------------------ | Paid by the Commissioners of Sewers. +----------------------+----------+----------+--------- | | Assist. |Inspectors| Flap & | |Clerks of | Clerks of | of | Sluice | DISTRICTS. |Works. | Works[71].|Flushings.| Keepers. | | | | | |Aggregate --------------------+---+------+---+-------+---+------+---+------+ Total. | |Annual| | | |Annual| |Yearly| | |Salary| |Rate of| |Salary| |Wages | |No.|of the|No.| Annual|No.|of the|No.|of the| | |whole.| |Salary.| |whole.| |whole.| --------------------+---+------+---+-------+---+-----------------+--------- | | £ | | £ | | £ | | £ | £ Fulham and | | | | | | | | | Hammersmith.-- | | | | | | | | | Counter’s | | | | | | | | | Creek and | | | | | | | | | Ranelagh | | | | | | | | | Districts | 3| 450 | 4| 400 | 1| 120 | ..| .. | 970 Westminster | | | | | | | | | Sewers.-- | | | | | | | | | Western Division, | | | | | | | | | Eastern Division, | | | | | | | | | Regent-street | | | | | | | | | District, | | | | | | | | | Holborn Division | 4| 600 | 3| 300 | 1| 80 | 6| 390 | 1370 Finsbury Division.--| | | | | | | | | Tower Hamlets | | | | | | | | | Levels, and | | | | | | | | | Poplar and | | | | | | | | | Blackwall | | | | | | | | | Districts | 3| 450 | 2| 200 | 3| 280 | 1| 70 | 1000 Districts south of | | | | | | | | | the Thames | 3| 450 | 6| 600 | 4| 320 | 12| 374 | 1744 --------------------+---+------+---|-------+---+------+---+------+--------- Total | 13| 1950 | 15| 1500 | 9| 800 | 19| 834 | 5084 CITY | ..| .. | ..| .. | 1| 80 | 3| 148 | 228 --------------------+---+------+---+-------+---+------+---+------+---------

--------------------+--------------------------------- | Paid by Contractors. +-----------+-----------+--------- | Gangers. | Flushers. | DISTRICTS. +---+-------+---+-------+ | | Weekly| | Weekly|Aggregate |No.|Wage of|No.|Wage of|Total. | | each. | | each. | --------------------+---+-------+---+-------+--------- | | _s._ | | | £ _s._ Fulham and | | | | | Hammersmith.-- | | | | | Counter’s | | | | | Creek and | | | | | Ranelagh | | | | | Districts | 2| 22 | 13| 21 | 824 4 Westminster | | | | | Sewers.-- | | | | | Western Division, | | | | | Eastern Division, | | | | | Regent-street | | | | | District, | | | | | Holborn Division | 3| 22 | 30| 21 |1809 12 Finsbury Division.--| | | | | Tower Hamlets | | | | | Levels, and | | | | | Poplar and | | | | | Blackwall | | | | | Districts | 3| 22 | 27| 21 |1645 16 Districts south of | | | | | the Thames | 2| 22 | 22| 21 |1315 12 --------------------+---+-------+---|-------+--------- Total | 10| .. | 92| .. |5595 4 CITY | 1| 22 | 9| 21 | 548 12 --------------------+---+-------+---+-------+---------

Total cost of flushing the sewers £12,000 per annum.

⁂ The above division of districts is the one adopted by the Commissioners of Sewers, but the districts of the Flushermen are more numerous than those above given, being as follows:--

Ganger. Flushermen. Fulham and Hammersmith employing 1 and 6 } Counter’s Creek and Ranelagh }1st District of Districts. „ 1 „ 7 } Commissioners.

Westminster (Western Division) „ 1 „ 10 } Ditto (Eastern Division) „ 1 „ 12 }2nd District of Holborn Division „ 1 „ 8 } Commissioners.

Finsbury Division „ 1 „ 9 } Tower Hamlets Levels „ 1 „ 10 }3rd District of Poplar and Blackwall „ 1 „ 8 } Commissioners.

Districts south of the Thames „ 2 „ 22 4th District of Commissioners.

City „ 1 „ 9

Holborn and Finsbury districts are under one contractor, and so are the two divisions of Westminster. The same men who flush Holborn flush the Finsbury district also, 17 being the average number employed; but the Finsbury district requires rather more men than the Holborn; and the same men who work on the western division of Westminster flush also the eastern, the number of flushers in the western district being more, on account of its being the larger division.

The inspector receives 80_l._ per annum.

The table on p. 429 shows the number of clerks of the works, inspectors of flushing, flap and sluice keepers, gangers, and flushermen employed in the several districts throughout the metropolis, as well as the salaries and wages of each and the whole.

None of the flushermen can be said to have been “brought up to the business,” for boys are never employed in the sewers. Neither had the labourers been confined in their youth to any branch of trade in

## particular, which would appear to be consonant to such employment.

There are now among the flushermen men who have been accustomed to “all sorts of ground work:” tailors, pot-boys, painters, one jeweller (some time ago there was also one gentleman), and shoemakers. “You see, sir,” said one informant, “many of such like mechanics can’t live above ground, so they tries to get their bread underneath it. There used to be a great many pensioners flushermen, which weren’t right,” said one man, “when so many honest working men haven’t a penny, and don’t know which way to turn theirselves; but pensioners have often good friends and good interest. I don’t hear any complaints that way now.”

Among the flushermen are some ten or twelve men who have been engaged in sewer-work of one kind or another between 20 and 30 years. The cholera, I heard from several quarters, did not (in 1848) attack any of the flushermen. The answer to an inquiry on the subject generally was, “Not one that I know of.”

“It is a somewhat singular circumstance,” says Mr. Haywood, the City Surveyor, in his Report, dated February, 1850, “_that none of the men employed in the City sewers in flushing and cleansing, have been attacked with, or have died of, cholera during the past year; this was also the case in 1832-3_. I do not state this to prove that the atmosphere of the sewers is not unhealthy--I by no means believe an impure atmosphere is healthy--but I state the naked fact, as it appears to me a somewhat singular circumstance, and leave it to pathologists to argue upon.”

“I don’t think flushing work disagrees with my husband,” said a flusherman’s wife to me, “for he eats about as much again at that work as he did at the other.” “The smell underground is sometimes very bad,” said the man, “but then we generally take a drop of rum first, and something to eat. It wouldn’t do to go into it on an empty stomach, ’cause it would get into our inside. But in some sewers there’s scarcely any smell at all. _Most of the men are healthy who are engaged in it; and when the cholera was about many used to ask us how it was we escaped._”

* * * * *

The following statement contains the history of an individual flusherman:--

“I was brought up to the sea,” he said, “and served on board a man-of-war, the _Racer_, a 16-gun brig, laying off Cuba, in the West Indies, and there-away, watching the slavers. I served seven years. We were paid off in ’43 at Portsmouth, and a friend got me into the _shores_. It was a great change from the open sea to a close _shore_--great; and I didn’t like it at all at first. But it suits a married man, as I am now, with a family, much better than being a seaman, for a man aboard a ship can hardly do his children justice in their schooling and such like. Well, I didn’t much admire going down the man-hole at first--the ‘man-hole’ is a sort of iron trap-door that you unlock and pull up; it leads to a lot of steps, and so you get into the _shore_--but one soon gets accustomed to anything. I’ve been at flushing and _shore_ work now since ’43, all but eleven weeks, which was before I got engaged.