no one consents to have it. The hundred and
forty gentlemen who kindly came forward
uninvited to suggest a method of purifying the
metropolis, were compelled, in the main, to
suggest that some selected spots should receive
what London wished to reject. These spots
were not Stratford-on-Avon, Windsor Park, the
Crystal Palace, the South Kensington Museum,
or Belgrave-square, for very obvious reasons,
but interior settlements, inhabited by inferior
people, in the inferior outskirts. Most of these
unfortunate places showed no sign of indignation,
because they were ignorant of the dark
propositions for their defilement lurking in blue-
books, or hinted at amongst the technicalities of
a government engineering report. One favourite
proposition was to defile the sea, near the coast,
and poison the great salt-water baths to which
London resorts every summer for health and
pleasure. Fortunately for the bathers, the sea
opposed these propositions in a quiet chemical
way. The action of marine salts upon sewage—
not to speak too scientifically—is so offensive,
that fresh water must always be the first diluting
agent employed before the whole mass is pumped
into the sea.

Amongst the different schemes lately placed at
the service of the country for intercepting and
removing the London sewage, many proposed to
divide the metropolis into sewage districts, and
deal with the offensive material on true local
self-government principles. One gentleman
proposed to furnish each house with three iron-
tanks, hermetically sealed, in which the house
sewage was to be collected each week, and then
carried by drays to some railway, and then by
excursion trains thirty miles into the country.
Another gentleman proposed similar tanks
supplied with charcoal and ashes as deodorising
boxes; another proposed the Chinese plan of
preserving the sewage for certain companies,
under penalties, which companies were to
manufacture manure by boiling the sewage with clay
or sawdust. Other projectors proposed to favour
the mouth of the Kensington Canal, the bank of
the river Lea, the Deptford Creek at Greenwich,
and Battersea Creek, with four great
divisional depôts, where the whole of the London
sewage was to be deodorised. Another
gentleman proposed to bring half the southern
sewage across the river at the Thames
Tunnel, and the other half across the river in
iron pipes, at some higher spot not specified: the
material, when delivered, to be filtered,
deodorised, and utilised. The peculiarity of this
scheme was the bold proposal to defile the
Thames Tunnel, and wake up this wonder of
joint-stock credulity from its long sleep of idleness.
Another projector proposed to favour
Erith, Rainham, Wandsworth, and Putney, with
four great sewage receiving depôts; or else to
carry the whole mass to Newhaven, in Sussex,
and throw it into the sea. Another gentleman
suggested that the sewage should be collected
from the houses and streets into large portable
cisterns floating in the river, and that, at stated
times, steam-tugs should call at eaeli station
and tow this unsightly fleet far out to sea to get
rid of its contents. Several other gentlemen
proposed to moor vessels at the mouths of each
of the existing sewers which run into the river
—one hundred and eighty-five in number—and
to connect the vessels with the sewers by means
of iron or flexible pipes. The water of the
sewage was to pass off by filtration, and the
more valuable matter was to be left in the
vessels. When laden, these barks were to
hawk their contents about at any ports where
manure was likely to be in demand. No
provision seems to have been made for back
cargoes.

One gentleman wished to take the sewage
away in iron vessels, and drop it quietly, when
no one was looking, into the sea; while another
gentleman, evidently thinking that criminals
ought to suffer a little sewage infliction for their
offences, proposed to form great deodorising
caverns from Blackfriars-bridge to the House of
Correction. Another projector proposed to deal
with the mass as if it were gas or water, and
to lay it on to the country in main and branch
pipes. Several projectors hit upon this plan,
and two proposed to carry it out by pumping
the sewage up to a sufficient height to allow it
to gravitate along pipes radiating in different
directions into the country. Another projector
suggested that the railways should be favoured
with four great out of town main sewers running
parallel with their lines of roadway. Another
gentleman boldly proposed to cut the Thames in
half, by diverting the stream from the river at
Teddington to afford a pure water-supply for
London. The sewers were to be scoured by
this diverted stream, and the sewage was to be
removed by means of a tunnel, and emptied into
the sea at Rochford, in Essex. The southern
sewage was to be conveyed across the river to
the north side at the Thames Tunnel; and the
main feature of this scheme was to provide a
river channel, up which the salt water should
flow unadulterated to London. Another
projector proposed to divide the Thames into tidal
Thames and stream Thames, and to stop the
sewage, by deodorising works, from flowing into
the river. Certain other projectors proposed to
take one-half of the Thames Tunnel as a sewer
for conveying the northern sewage to join the
southern sewage. When combined, they
suggested, like many others, that the whole mass
should be taken to some point of the south
coast and poured into the sea. One projector
suggested that all communication between the
sewers and the river should at once be cut off,
and the sewage preserved for manure; and a
lady—the one female projector amongst the
number—proposed to have sewers radiating
from all parts of London, from which the
sewage could be poured in fertilising streams
all over the country on each side of the Thames.
Her final reservoir was still the unoffending sea;
and she proposed to construct small reservoirs,
at convenient distances, along the sewers, which
were to be opened as shops, where the farmers
could call and purchase cheap liquid manure.