The Sun.
London, England, 1857-10-30 00:00:00

LONDON STREETS AN.D SUB WAYS.

1 " Highways and bycways" used to be a phrase
comprehending all the ways of a country, but a
third kind of way is now likely to come into use,
and not before its time. We are to have "sub-
ways," and no person living in this city will deny
the want of them. Half the business of London
appears to lie five feet underground, and there
is at present no way of gettin4 at it except through
the pavement. Not only are new schemes o
sewerage perpetually afloat, but sewers now repre-
sent only a p,rtion of our subterranean machinery.
Every tenement demands its own water supply ; a
dozen companies employ themselves in furnishing
the necessary element, and every company has its
own system of pipes. It is the same with gas, which
is carried through infinite ramifications of tuber
under every roadway by a score of rival establish-
ments. To house drains, and water mains, and gas
pipes we must now add telegraph wires, which con-
duct for us an underground correspondence almost
as active as that of the post. As a matter of course,
with what changings, choppings, mendings, and
movings, some part or o:her of this multiplied ma-
chine'y is always needing attention, and in order
to attend to it we pull up the roadway, and so de-
str _ty the street or the pavement altogether for the
time being.
We will undertake to say that on any given
morning a good proportion of our London tho-
roughfares will be found impassable. Sometimes
half-a-dozen streets in succession are blocked up
until a man comes to his wit's end in trying to get
from one quarter of the metropolis to another.
The Constitu ionnet told us the other day that we
English could afford to sneer at the passport system
because we did not know what :t was to have
barricades in our capital. Not know barricades,
indeed ! Why, we are never without them. The
whole art and system of these obstructions has been
refined to the higbe.4 pi'ch of excellence among us,
and is practised incessantly. We wish our con-
temporary would take a cab at Charing-cross, and
try his hand at getting to any of our metropolitan
railway s'ations. Before he had gone 500 yards
he would find out the shape which street revolu-
tions take in England. Our red flag is a wisp
of straw—a haudbarrow turned upside down—a
heap of stones in the middle of the road, like
some dismal cairn on a Scotch mountain—some-
times only a mere paviour's rammer ; but the
symbol in each instance is omnipotent, and sub-
mission a matter of absolute necessity. Gessler's hat
upon its pole was not more expressive of pub is
bondage than these simple emblems. They mean
that some company or other requires the street for
the day or the week, as the case may be, and that
the thoroughfares is therefore closed to all other
creatures.

Imagine a man pulling up the floor of his dining
room every time he wanted to fetch a bottle of
port from the cellar. That is about the character of
our Loudon practice in this matter. We cannot
say exactly in what reign it was discovered that a
ermaneu t flight of steps to the basement story was
a very convenient arrangement, but we know that
as regards our roadways the analogous idea was
only struck out last week. " Subways," or ways
for getting at the works under the pavement
otherwise than through the pavement itself,
are creations of yesterday, and are still, in-
deed, in the first and most rudimentary stage
of being. The Metropolitan Board of Works
has the merit of initiating the movement— a highly
natural merit certainly, for, except through some
such consummation as that projected, we do not
see how the Board is to keep access to its own
domain. The functions of thin tribunal are per-
formed under our feet ; in fact, it is bewildering
ti think what an amount of administration and
taxation is involved in transactions two yards
beneath the pavement. It is reported of cer-
tain ancient cities that the architecture above
ground *as surpassed by the architecture below,
and such will soon bo the case, we should
think, in London, judging by the rate of cost.
Most people, we suspect, pay more for sewers
rates than they do for house-tax, acid the demand
gets larger and larger. Naturally, therefore, the
Board of Works wants to get at its kingdom—
its dominion where it expends so much money
and contemplates so much improvement. So
s'nrie premiums were offered for the best plans of
subways—ways which would allow the business of
people below to be conducted without prejudice to
that of people above. We think the principle of this
arrangement very reasonable. It would have been
hard if Mr. Brunel had claimed a right of stopping
the Thames during the time he was building his
tunnel.

We cannot profess the leant surprise at hearing
that them was a " considerable similarity" be-
tween two plans proposed for terminating our
present difficulties. If a premium had been
offered for the best methol of procuring a roast
pig without burning a house down. the similarity
of the propositions would probably have been
considerable on that occasion also. Oue compe-
titor after another showed with great simplicity
that a subway, or road large enough for a man
to walk in, could be constructed underneath the
pavement of the street ; that gas pipes, water
pipes, and telegraphic wires could be arranged on
either side of it, so as to admit of the Easiest
possible access, extension, or repair ; and that from
this subway approaches could be opened to the
sewers also, as oecasion required. The great dis-
tinction was in the estimate of cost, but, according
to the highest reckoning it would not take above
50,0001. or 60,0001. to make a subway the whole
length of the Strand ; according to the lowest
biddings scarcely a third of the sum.

Oa the point-of expense, however, we say but
little, and for this simple reason—that subways will
soon beoome so necessaryas to heinevitable, whether
they coat much or little. Let no innocent house-
holder imagine that because he has had a fortnight of
open trenches before his door he will therefore be se-
cure from all such annoyance for some time. The
water company may want his street the very minute
after the gas company has done with it, and after
both of them have been used up forthe moment a day
of such rain as we had last we-k may set the Sewers
Commissioners on him f r a month to come. Certainly
we cannot think without a shudder on the rate which
may b 3 struck for the construe ion of a crypt as
big as London, but what are we paying as it is?
What do tradesmen lose by having their customers
driven away for days together ? What do all of us
lose by breathing the effluvium of open sewers and
leaky gas pipes all day long—by finding that a main
thoroughfare is reduced to half its width for a
week or two, and that one out of five streets is
utterly impassable for the same length of time ?
Perhaps oven all this damage might be endured
if it were manifestly terminable, but the worst
of it is that the cert iinty is exactly the other
way. What with the extension of telegraphic
communication, what mth the inprovements iu the
the approaching eosin'd
water and gas supplied, and what, above all, with
.rainage scheme, all doubt thateth
they haves ever will be more inthe regions just beneath our feet
it is beyond
) requestn
ti effoorr forth nTehzet
strbsytheiarosfthoititir
reets likely to be as. much frequented as their
surface, and if we cawnhuotittmanage that the former
shall be accessible itb
the destruction of the
latter, there will be nothing to
c7,7e setting
fact. All 111,25 e prc,coedia,,sr
rcomplain of in the
improve-
ment ; we only want the means
them conveniet,tly. Even'ualy, in
fact,
tttieg about
Loma to this—that we must either havelst wouldi
as well as other su'iterranean machinery, eruf:raego
all these accommodations together.—Times...