The Sun.
London, England, 1858-06-24 00:00:00

THE THAMES, 20 WIT.

It a respectable, well-conducted boys' school,
the dining-room, which was also that in which the
boys event most of their time, became subject to a
disagreeable smell. No account could Le given of
it. The young gentlemen were cleanly in their
!,''bits—rather particular than otherwise. The
room-was well built, the servants did their duty,
the situate.; was airy. It was a perfect mystery.
The master cams and
snuffed about ; his lady took
".
a whiff of it and walkedout ; the builder was sure
about the drains—they were sound and well trap-
inegd. ; ther
Whate ccoouul
1, Id
ibe t
bn
eo rats,?
A st' therer
ewasamneo
oonp, e n
in-
spite of open doors and windows, the smell got
worse ; the boys became pale and headachy, soon
tired over their lessons, and got off their feed. By
and by two or three were taken home, and the
thin" was talked about. So the master, finding all
was at stake, sent for the builder, and told him he
must find it out at any cost. As the smell could
not come from the walls or the ceiling, it must be
from the ground. The carpenter therefore ripped
off the skirting, and tore up a good piece of the
floor. Then the mystery was revealed, and was
as horrible to the eyes as to the nose. The fact
was, that through the combined efforts or neglects
of butcher, cook, and carver, the young gentlemen
Lad often a quantity of fat or underdone meat on
their plates. When they sent up their plates for
a second supply they found it apparently adjusted
to the uncousumed,remanets from the first, and
therefore short of the new demand. A hint r
two from the master explained the fact, and took
away hope of a remedy. So the young gentle-
men, with a legerdemain of their own, smuggled
fat and "red" under the table. After dinner they
smuggled all into one or two convenient boles
they had found in the skirting and the floor.
The practice had gone on for months and years,
and the result may be imagined. The boys had
been living, in fact, over putrefying remains
equivalent to several dead carcasses. Strange to
say, in their blessed ignorance of chenois'ry, they
never once connected the daily deposit with the
nuisance. The hole was all-devouring and bottom-
less. It might go to the heart of the earth for aught
they knew. The master was answerable for the
sweetness of the room. Of course the floor was re-
moved, the abyss emptied and purged ; and for the
future the schoolmaster bore in mind that, though
boys have strong stomachs, they have often delicate
palates, and like fat and " red" as little as Profes-
sor Liebig says they ought to do.
What is this London but just a respectable, well-
conducted school, and we all aparcel of school-boys,
getting rid of a nuisance without a thought of the
consequences ? We just make a hole in the floor,
and down with all, nobody knows where. Of course,
it all turns up iu time, and that wi h a vengeance.
There is nothing people are so blind about as con-
sequences every step of which is not before the eye.
In fact, that anything should ever come to light
again after being once under ground is a surprise.
Thera are in this country several rivers that flow
under ground for miles, and people seek a surprise
by dropping straws and bits of paper above, and
watching their reappeance ;below. In these cases
we look for the reappearance, and are disappointed
at its failure. When we wish to be rid of a thing,
we forget it altogether. Add to this univet sal neg-
lect of consequences an almost equal thoughtlessness
as to the effect of combination, of multiplied results.
Union is force, for ill as well as for good. Here is
a nuisance to be multipli dby three millions. It is
bad enough in Ireland, where the family, the pigs,
the horse, the cow, and the poultry live in one
room, and where the filth is only occasionally trans-
ferred from the ground inside to the ground outside
the door. It is bad enough in a Swiss chalet, where
the cattle and servants sometimes occupy the ground
floor, the family that above, and thence to the roof
is all barn. An Englishman cannot sleep for the
solid stench that pervades that Noah's ark, and
impregnates the very timbers. No wonder half
the family are goitred. But when, instead of
one such chalet, with its accumulations of many
years, its dozen brute occupants, and half-dozen
human, we have half a million habitations all
huddled round one huge cesspool, it may take
time to develops the nuisance, but time will cer-
tainly do it. On this point we may be sure as
Holy Writ that "our neglects will find us out."
If we are content with staving ofl the evil we shall
some day have "to eat our peck of dirt" all at
once. That means a good deal in the matter of
London. It once meant the Great Plague and the
Great Fire. What monstrous birth of time it will
next mean, what hideous pest or frightful scourge,
no man can now tell.
Wilai, is net ye,, duiy a-AT:slier:l.d is, net the
present snug, comfortable, selfish way of getting
rid of nuisances does not get rid of them. It only
postpones and accumulates. It is one of those
habitual delays which even Virgil says peopled
hell. It is a joint-stook canpany, with limited
liability, as we all fondly believe ; but when the
crash comes we shall all suffer. Everything indi-
cates a positive accumulation which must certainly
prove worse, because more active and more unbear-
able, than the dead weight of the National Debt on
England's shoulders. That which issues from the
sewers into the Thames is daily becoming more
deleterious. It is impregnated with the gas we
burn in our lamps, and other gases the p• oduct
of manufacture or natural putrefaction. No
settling, no filtering, no deodorizing can ma-
terially mend it, and they who talk of these
processes can hardly know what Thames water
is between the bridges. Every known ahomiaa-
tion, with many an unknown one, finds its
way jute the sewers, or directly in' o the Thames.
There, as we all know, it passes and repasses before
our eyes, and it is by no means certain that
the more solid part of what is committed to
the river ever finds its way to the sea.
A float dancing up and down with the
tide affords very little indication as to matter
which settles and forms mud, or impregnates it.
So there is absolutely no measuring how far the
accumulation may go on, with a continual increase
in the matter, in the area, and in the variety of
noxious ingredients. That increase must be in a
much greater ratio than the increase of the me-
tropolis. The suburbs of London, the fields, the
gardens, and the waste places, to which offensive
matter was taken only a few years ago, are daily
receding, and the handiest and cheapest course for
everything is to let it down the ever-ready sewer.
So the work grows upon us. No scale that was
likely to be adopted thirty years ago would be suf-
ficient now, and the probability is, that if we do
.something immediately—that is, in the course of
the next ten years, which is all the promptitude we
can expect—it will be barely sufficient by the end
of the century, unless, indeed, something comes
to stop the growth of London.
These considerations, which are of a most sub-
stantial and practical character, indicate that the
country should apply much more earnestness and
energy to the subject. They show, as we conceive,
that we ought to have a much more effective 'ad-
tainistrat:on for the subject. The metropolitan
wcili(o Boards,tileeais,liliioioi
oughttig i
ta to be construeted with the view of
doing something, not of doing nothing, which is
evidently the design of the present rival Thards
atuhtehyorairteiesn.ow e It
,isnsetaiti.uletn,
d,
tthivat
11 oe
on throwing
schemes at one another to all eternity.
It is plain, too, that we must be prepared for a
very large expenditure—that is, for as large an
expenditure each year for same years as we were
incurring each week during the Russian war. Be-
fore it is assumed that the nation must pay the
bill, 1 t us know hew much the metropolitan dis-
oticts will bear. There is much more reason in
applying a coal tax to such a purpose than to the
construction of new streets in this or that fa-
voured locality. A correspondent who writes a
very able letter suggests that it is au absurdity
to make the Commissioner of Works a poli-
tical functionary, going in and
i out. The rea-
son of the existing practice s the infusion
of new spirit and new ideas by the change,
but the change may be from ability and zeal