houses were paying out of their own pockets
for branch pipe sewers, in order that they
might anticipate their turn for having houses
joined to the new system of pipe drainage
works. Two or three facts, however, are
worth telling about Croydon. The general
lines of drainage were laid down by an
inspector from the Board of Health. The
execution of the works was entrusted by a
local jobbing appointment to the son of a rich
tradesman of the place. He drained not
wisely nor too well. A pretty obvious fact
had been carefully dinned into the ears of
those concerned about the works—namely,
that the inlets to the whole system should be
smaller than all other parts of it, so that any
substance once entering the drains might
have a perfectly free passage through them.
The first inlets to the house drains were to be
at most two and a half inches or three inches
in diameter. The house drains were to enlarge
gradually to three inches and a half before
entering a four-inch branch sewer pipe; such
branches of four inches in diameter having
been shown by experiment to be of the size
proper to transmit the drainage of about half
a dozen houses. The manager appointed by
the Croydonites, in spite of all instructions,
acted with incredible stupidity. He began
with four-inch inlets, which were much too
large, but did not allow proportionate
enuient to the branch pipes into which they
led. These were retained at the four-inch
diameter; and furthermore, instead of draining
by such a branch pipe six houses, he joined
on to it as many as twenty! This is
precisely what he would have done if he had
deliberately intended to occasion stoppage.
Yet even in spite of this gross blundering,
which was not discovered until late in the
course of the subsequent inquiry, the drains
worked tolerably well, and most of the
stoppages were found to have had origin in
malice. Down one of the big inlets there
had been sent a bullock's heart, and there
were also found in the drains such plugs as
dead cats, or brickbats wrapped in shavings.
This faulty work being discovered, it was not
amended by reduction in the size of the
large inlets, but the four-inch branch pipes
were pulled up. and eight-inch pipes laid in
their stead. In no other part of the system
had stoppage occurred. The defect was one
begotten of stupidity in a sixteenth part of
the whole length of works. Yet upon ground
furnished by such a case is the whole system
of pipe drainage commonly condemned. We
never hear of Rugby, Tottenham, Ottery
St. Mary, Barnard Castle, Sandgate—yes,
indeed, we have heard lately of Sandgate:
cholera having broken out there, the public
is at once industriously and carefully
informed that Sandgate is pipe-drained!

This is not fair play, and it will be easy,
though not short work, to show the
extraordinary amount of misrepresentation by
which the public judgment has been
confused with respect to all questions of drainage
and some other topics that concern the health
of the community. Of this we probably shall
have occasion to say much hereafter.

For the present we cannot be employed
more usefully than in supplying to those
readers who require it, a reminder of the
history of that body of Sewers Commissioners
upon which the greater part of London has to
place a large dependence for its drainage.
Until November, eighteen hundred and forty-seven,
London was parcelled out among many
district sewers commissions, in whose operations
there was no uniformity of design whatever.
There was a commission for the City
of London, and another for the City of
Westminster, another for Finsbnry and Holborn,
another for Regent Street, another for the
Tower Hamlets, another for St. Katherine's,
and there were more than these. With a
view to the promotion of the public health
these commissions were, at the time just
specified, consolidated. One, that for the
City of London, being left intact—as it still
remains—the others were superseded by a
single Metropolitan Commission. That
commission was composed of men who were
thought likely to take comprehensive and
enlightened views of the trust committed to
them. The Earls of Carlisle and Shaftesbury,
Lord Ebriugton, Professor Owen, Dr. Buckland,
Sir Henry de la Beche, Mr. Chadwick,
Dr. Arnott, Dr. Southwood Smith, and
others. Next year, the military engineers,
Sir John Burgoyne, Captain Dawson, Captain
Veitch, and more, were added to the list.
The new commissioners began their work in
a straightforward way. They ascertained
the state of the existing sewerage, perceived
its defects, made up their minds as to the
very simple conditions which the sewerage of
a great town ought to fulfil, and then set
themselves to solve the problem so suggested.
After much careful investigation, these
results were arrived at: that brick sewers
large enough for men to travel through, are
more costly and less efficient than necessity
requires; that the absorbent surface of brick,
and the rough surface of coarse brick and
mortar work are not so well suited as smooth
glazed pipes for the steady and complete
transmission of whatever flows (or ought to
flow) through the drains; that the drainage
of a town by means of such pipes, their right
proportions having been first carefully
ascertained and adopted, if there were connected
with it a good system of water supply—
equally necessary to all kinds of drainage—
would be perfect, and about three times
cheaper than the inefficient mode of drainage
formerly in use.

Trial works were set on foot, not only for
the putting of these principles to a full proof,
but also for the purpose of attaining
information as to the rate of flow through drains
of given sizes, and as to the proportions that
would have to be observed in any application