wharfs, is stopped up." The stream was
frequently cleansed; and in the year 1502, the
whole course of the Fleet Dyke, as it was then
called, was scoured down to the Thames.

The municipal organisation for sanitary
purposes which we now have in the Metropolitan
Board of Works, and the sewer committees of
the different London vestries, is the steady
growth of five centuries. Every step in its
progress may be clearly traced; from the signature
of the great charter by King John, to the
recent act of 1855 for the better local management
of the metropolis.

The aim of the earliest legislation was to
preserve the uninterrupted flow of the natural
watercourses, to remove existing obstructions, and to
prevent their future growth; these objects are
specifically provided for in the great charter—the
first bill of sewers. This law was generally put
in force by a petition to the crown, setting forth
the grievance complained of. If the petition
were entertained, some well-informed persons
were entrusted with a commission to inspect
the complaint and enforce the law against the
offenders. The first commission of this kind,
granted within the present metropolitan area, is
one for Surrey and Kent, in the year 1295,
some eighty years after the signature of the
great charter.

These commissions, having no better rule than
the local customs of each separate area of
jurisdiction, soon felt the want of a more defined
principle of action. Accordingly, Henry the
Third, on occasion of a complaint from the
occupiers of Romney Marsh, sent down an eminent
judge, Henry de Bathe, who, after due examination
of the most intelligent and able witnesses,
drew up from their evidence a code, known as
the Laws and Customs of Romney Marsh, in
the County of Kent. They were revised and
increased by successive judges, extended to all
other marshes, especially those on the Thames,
by Edward the First, and are cited as the rule of
law in most subsequent commissions. These
ordinances provide for a general survey and
admeasurement of the whole marsh, and the banks*
to be repaired; for the election of twenty-four
jurats by the commonalty, who should apportion
the duties and costs to each tenant, as well as
of a bailiff who should give him notice of his
liabilities, execute the work in his default, and
levy double the cost thereof upon his property.

* Although no records of the construction of the
Thames embankments are accessible, those works are
unquestionably of very ancient date; and, viewed
as productions of engineering energy, are of a
magnitude and extent which entitle them to be
considered as the most remarkable, as they are certainly
the most ancient, of any similar works in the kingdom.
There is every reason to believe that they were
constructed at a period contemporaneous with the
Roman occupation of Britain.—Report on Metropolitan
Drainage. 1857.

The advantages of a steady administration
over the fitful action of bodies assembled for
a temporary purpose, could not fail to be soon
perceived; accordingly, parliament, in the 6th
of Henry the Sixth, A.D. 1427, ordained that
the chancellor shall issue commissions of sewers.
This law, though rather briefer, does not differ
in any essential material from similar laws
passed down to the present day, and
especially directs the members to make necessary
ordinances according to the Laws and Customs
of Romney Marsh, thus giving the crown-
appointed commissions a parliamentary sanction.
Two years later, another act of parliament
enabled the commissioners not only to make
ordinances, but to execute them. In 1472, the
nuisance of weirs and impediments continuing,
a short act recapitulated and confirmed former
acts for their removal, and enforced penalties
on offenders.

The next step in sewer legislation was taken
during the reign of Henry the Eighth, in the
year 1531, in an act commonly known as the
Bill of Sewers. This act has served as the basis
of later legislation, and was the only general
statute till the passing of the Metropolitan
Sewers Act of September 4, 1848, but several
other sewer acts were passed in the interim
down to the reign of Queen Anne.

From Anne's time no general law increasing the
powers of the commissioners appears to have been
passed, although several local acts were obtained
to amend and enlarge those conferred by the
statute of Henry the Eighth. In Westminster and
the Tower Hamlets the commissioners were not
considered to have power to build new sewers;
while in the City of London, Holborn and Finsbury,
Surrey and Kent, they were considered to
have full power for that purpose. All the acts
were very defective for minor drainage. The
earlier statutes did not in any way contemplate
house drainage; and most of the local acts
prohibited its discharge into the sewers, and
enforced the construction of cesspools. In 1810
there must have been two hundred thousand
cesspools in London; but in that year their
increase was checked, in consequence of many
mechanical improvements in connexion with an
enlarged water supply. It was not, however,
until 1830 that their abolition was very marked.
As some mitigation of the evil arising from those
acts, overflow-drains from the cesspools were
permitted, but in the greater number of cases,
and in all the poorer parts of the metropolis,
cesspools without overflows were the rule, and
covered drains the exception.

The attention of Drs. Arnott, Kay, and Southwood
Smith was forcibly drawn to the evils
resulting from this state of things, when they were
the medical officers employed by the Poor-law
Commissioners in 1838. The House of Lords
took the first step in the matter in 1839, by
petitioning the crown for an inquiry and report
to be made upon the physical causes of sickness
and mortality, to which the poor are peculiarly
exposed. The Poor-law Commissioners made a
report; a commission to inquire into the state
of large towns and populous districts was issued
in 1843, and the Public Health Act was the
result. The case of the metropolis had so many
features peculiarly its own, that it was considered