[1] The definition of a Costermonger strictly includes only such individuals as confine themselves to the sale of the produce of the Green and Fruit Markets: the term is here restricted to that signification.

[2] This number includes Men, Women, and Children.

[3] The Watercress trade is carried on in the streets, principally by old people and children. The chief mart to which the street-sellers of cresses resort is Farringdon-market, a place which but few or none of the regular Costermongers attend.

[4] The Chickweed and Groundsell Sellers and the Turf-Cutters’ traffic has but little expense connected with it, and their trade is therefore nearly all profit.

[5] “v. t.” signifies “various times,” of theft and of “restoration.”

[6] The Metropolitan Police District comprises a circle, the radius of which is 15 miles from Charing Cross; the extreme boundary on the N. includes the parish of Cheshunt and South Mimms; on the S., Epsom; on the E., Dagenham and Crayford; and on the W., Uxbridge and Staines.

[7] The inner district includes the parish of St. John, Hampstead, on the N.; Tooting and Streatham on the S.; Ealing and Brentford on the W.; and Greenwich on the E.

The Registrar General’s District is equal, or nearly so, to the inner Metropolitan Police District.

[8] The City of London is bounded on the S. by the River, on the E. by Whitechapel, on the W. by Chancery Lane, and N. by Finsbury.

[9] The area here stated is that of the city without the walls, and includes White Friars precinct and Holy Trinity, Minories, both belonging to other districts.

[10] This area is that of the city within the walls, and does not include White Friars, which belongs to the district.

[11] The area of the districts of St. Saviour and St. Olave is included in that returned for St. George, Southwark.

[12] The population and number of inhabited houses in these districts has decreased annually to this extent since 1841.

[13] This relates merely to the repairs to the wooden pavement, but if a renewal of the blocks be necessary, then the cost approaches that of a new road; and a renewal is considered necessary about once in three years.

[14] “Haunsed” is explained by Strype to signify “made too high,” and the “Redosses” to be “Reredoughs.” A mason informed me that he believed these Redosses were what were known in some old country-houses as “Back-Flues,” or flues connecting any fire-grate in the out-offices with the main chimney. The term “lene” is the Teutonic Lehn, and signifies “let, lease,” or literally loan.

[15] The reader will remember that in the historical sketch given of the progress of public scavengery, the word “Rakers” occurred in connection with the sworn master scavengers, &c., &c.; the word is now unknown to the trade, except that it appears on city documents.

[16] The parishes marked thus [16] have their dustmen and dust-carts, as well as the rubbish carting and the individuals in the dust-yard, reckoned in the numbers employed by the contractors.

[17] I have computed all the weekly wages at 16s., though some of the men are paid only 14s. My object in this is to give the contractors the benefit of the difference.

[18] The Saxon Sceorfa, which is the original of the English Scurf, means a scab, and scab is the term given to the “cheap men” in the shoemaking trade. Scab is the root of our word Shabby; hence Scurf and Scab, deprived of their offensive associations, both mean shabby fellows.

[19] These items wages must include to prevent pauperism, even with providence. But this is only on the supposition that the labourer is unmarried; if married, however, and having a family, then his wages should include, moreover, the keep of at least three extra persons, as well as the education of the children. If not, one of two results is self-evident—either the wife must toil, to the neglect of her young ones, and they be allowed to run about and pick their morals and education, as I have before said, out of the gutter, or else the whole family must be transferred to the care of the parish.

[20] I have estimated the whole at 15s. a week the year through, gangers, “honourable men,” regular hands and all, so as to allow for the diminished receipts of the casual hands.

[21] The usual argument in favour of machinery, viz., that “by reducing prices it extends the market, and so, causing a greater demand for the commodities, induces a greater quantity of employment,” would also be an argument in favour of over population, since this, by cheapening labour, must have the same effect as machinery on prices, and, consequently (according to the above logic), induce a greater quantity of employment! But granting that machinery really does benefit the labourer in cases where the market, and therefore the quantity of work, is largely extensible, surely it cannot but be an injury in those callings where the quantity of work is fixed. Such is the fact with the sawing of wood, the reaping of corn, the threshing of corn, the sweeping of the streets, &c., and hence the evil of mechanical labour applied to such trades.

[22] Mr. Sidney Herbert informed me, that when he was connected with the Ordnance Department the severest punishment they could discover for idleness was the piling and unpiling of cannon shot; but surely this was the consummation of official folly! for idleness being simply an aversion to work, it is almost self-evident that it is impossible to remove this aversion by making labour inordinately irksome and repulsive. Until we understand the means by which work is made pleasant, and can discover other modes of employing our paupers and criminals, all our workhouse and prison discipline is idle tyranny.

[23] This is done at the Model Prison, Pentonville.

[24] The number of men here given as employed by the parishes in the scavaging of the streets will be found to differ from that of the table at page 213; but the present table includes all the parish-men employed throughout London, whereas the other referred to only a portion of the localities there mentioned.

[25] To the honourable conduct of the above-named contractors to their men, I am glad to be able to bear witness. All the men speak in the highest terms of them.

[26] This is Mr. Mills’s second fundamental proposition respecting capital (see “Principles of Pol. Econ.” p. 82, vol. i.). “What I intend to assert is,” says that gentleman, “that the portion (of capital) which is destined to the maintenance of the labourers may—supposing no increase in anything else—be indefinitely increased, without creating an impossibility of finding them employment—in other words, if there are human beings capable of work, and food to feed them, they may always be employed in producing something.”

[27] Mr. Cochrane is said, in the Reports of the National Philanthropic Association, to have expended no less than 6000l. of his fortune in the institution of the Street-Orderly system of scavaging.

[28] A street-orderly in St. Martin’s-lane recovered a piece of broad-cloth from a man who had just stolen it from a warehouse; others in Drury-lane detected several thefts from provision-shops. Two orderlies in Holborn saved the lives of the guard and driver of one of Her Majesty’s mail-carts, the horse having become unmanageable in consequence of the shafts being broken. In St. Mary’s Church, Lambeth, a gentleman having fallen down in apoplexy, the orderlies who were attending Divine service, carried him out into the air, and promptly procured him medical aid, but unhappily life was extinct. Many instances have occurred, however, in which they have rendered essential service to the public and to individuals.

[29] The wages paid are not stated.

[30] At p. 183 the sum of 18,225l. is said to be expended in repairs annually; it should have been weekly.

[31] At p. 185 the traffic of London Bridge is stated to be 13,000 conveyances per hour, instead of per 12 hours.

[32] The core in this term may be a corruption of the Saxon Carr, a rock, rather than that which would at first suggest itself as its origin, viz., the Latin cor, the heart. Hard-core would therefore mean hard rock-like rubbish, instead of lumps of rubbish having a hard nucleus or heart.

[33] The term rubbish is a polite corruption of the original word rubbage, which is still used by uneducated people; ish is an adjectival termination, as whitish, slavish, brutish, &c., and is used only in connection with such substantives as are derived from adjectives, as English, Scottish, &c. Whereas the affix age is strictly substantival, as sewage, garbage, wharfage, &c., and is found applied only to adjectives derived from substantives, as savage. A like polite corruption is found in the word pudding, which should be strictly pudden; the addition of the g is as gross a mistake as saying garding for garden. There is no such verb as to pud whence could come the substantival participle pudding; and the French word from which we derive our term is poudin without the g, like jardin, the root of our garden.

[34] This is the Saxon sceard, which means a sheard, remnant, or fragment, and is from the verb sceran, signifying both to shear and to share or divide. The low Dutch schaard is a piece of pot, a fragment.

[35] Lord Bacon’s Hist. of King Henry VII., Works, vol. v. p. 61.

[36] 25th Henry VIII. cap. 13.

[37] 5 & 6 Edw. VI., cap. 5.

[38] Eden’s Hist. of the Poor, vol. i. p. 118.

[39] Latimer’s Sermons, p. 100.

[40] Pictorial History of England, vol. ii. p. 900.

[41] Reports of the “Commissioner” of the Times Newspaper, in June, 1845.

[42] I have here included those engaged in Trade and Commerce, and employers as well as the employed among the producers.

[43] The amount of the population from 1570 to 1750, as here given, is copied from Rickman’s tables, as published by the Registrar-General.

[44] The population at the decennial term, as here given, is the amended calculation of the Registrar-General, as given in the new census tables.

[45] From returns furnished by the clergy.

[46] The returns here cited are copied from those given by the Registrar-General in the new census.

[47] Returns obtained through an inquiry instituted by the Irish House of Lords.

[48] The population from 1754-1788 is estimated from the “hearth money” returns.

[49] Newenham’s Inquiry into the Population of Ireland.

[50] Estimate from incomplete census.

[51] First complete census.

[52] The official value was established long ago; it represents a price put upon merchandise or commodities; it is in reality a fixed value, and serves to indicate the relative extent of imports and exports in different years. The declared value is simply the market price.

[53] The official returns as to the number of paupers are most incomplete and unsatisfactory. In the 10th annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, p. 480 (1844), a table is printed which is said to give the returns from the earliest period for which authentic Parliamentary documents have been received, and this sets forth the number of paupers in England and Wales, for the entire twelve months in the years 1803, 1813, 1814, and 1815; then comes a long interval of “no returns,” and after 1839 we have the numbers for only three months in each year, from 1840 up to 1843; in the first annual Report (1848) these returns for one quarter in each year are continued up to 1848; and then we get the returns for only two days in each year, the 1st of July and the 1st of January, so that to come to any conclusion amid so much inconsistency is utterly impossible. The numbers above given would have been continued to the present period, could any comparison have been instituted. The numbers for the periods (not above given) are—

[54] It might at first appear that, when the work is shifted to the Continent, there would be a proportionate decrease of the aggregate quantity at home, but a little reflection will teach us that the foreigners must take something from us in exchange for their work, and so increase the quantity of our work in certain respects as much as they depress it in others.

[55] The Great Exhibition, I am informed, produced a very small effect on the consumption of porter; and, according to the official returns, 160,000 gallons less spirits were consumed in the first nine months of the present year, than in the corresponding months of the last: thus showing that any occupation of mind or body is incompatible with intemperate habits, for drunkenness is essentially the vice of idleness, or want of something better to do.

[56] The term sanc in “sanc-work” is the Norman word for blood (Latin, sanguis; French, sang), so that “sanc-work” means, literally, bloody work, this called either from the sanguinary trade of the soldier, or from the blood-red colour of the cloth.

[57] “Reredos, dossel (retable, Fr.; postergule, Ital.),” according to Parker’s Glossary of Architecture, was “the wall or screen at the back of an altar, seat, &c.; it was usually ornamented with panelling, &c., especially behind an altar, and sometimes was enriched with a profusion of niches, buttresses, pinnacles, statues, and other decorations, which were often painted with brilliant colours.

“The open fire-hearth, frequently used in ancient domestic halls, was likewise called a reredos.

“In the description of Britain prefixed to Holinshed’s ‘Chronicles,’ we are told that formerly, before chimneys were common in mean houses, ‘each man made his fire against a reredosse in the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat.’”

The original word would appear to be dosel or rere-dosel; for Kelham, in his “Norman Dictionary,” explains the word doser or dosel to signify a hanging or canopy of silk, silver, or gold work, under which kings or great personages sit; also the back of a chair of state (the word being probably a derivative of the Latin dorsum, the back. Dos, in slang, means a bed, a “dossing crib” being a sleeping-place, and has clearly the same origin). A rere-dos or rere-dosel would thus appear to have been a screen placed behind anything. I am told, that in the old houses in the north of England, erections at the back of the fire may, to this day, occasionally be seen, with an aperture behind for the insertion of plates, and such other things as may require warming.

A correspondent says there is “a ‘reredos,’ or open fire-hearth, now to be seen in the extensive and beautiful ruins of the Abbey of St. Agatha, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. The ivy now hangs over and partially conceals this reredos; but its form is tolerably perfect, and the stones are still coloured by the action of the fire, which was extinguished, I need hardly say, by the cold water thrown on such places by Henry VIII.”

[58] It has been notorious for many years, that flowers will not bloom in any natural luxuriance, and that fruit will not properly ripen, in the heart of the city. Whilst this is an unquestionable fact, it is also a fact, that greatly as suburban dwellings have increased, and truly as London may be said to have “gone into the country,” the greater quantity of the large, excellent, unfailing, and cheap supply of the fruits and vegetables in the London “green” markets are grown within a circle of from ten to twelve miles from St. Paul’s. In the course of my inquiries (in the series of letters on Labour and the Poor in the Morning Chronicle) into the supply, &c., to the “green markets” of the metropolis, I was told by an experienced market-gardener, who had friends and connections in several of the suburbs, that he fancied, and others in the trade were of the same opinion, that no gardening could be anything but a failure if attempted within “where the fogs went.” My informant explained to me that the fogs, so peculiar to London, did not usually extend beyond three or four miles from the heart of the city. He was satisfied, he said, that within half a mile or so of this reach of fog the gardener’s labours might be crowned with success. He knew nothing of any scientific reason for his opinion, but as far as a purely London fog extended (without regard to any mist pervading the whole country as well as the neighbourhood of the capital), he thought it was the boundary within which there could be no proper growth of fruit or flowers. That the London fog has its limits as regards the manifestation of its greatest density, there can be no doubt. My informant was frequently asked, when on his way home, by omnibus drivers and others whom he knew, and met on their way to town a few miles from it: “How’s the fog, sir? How far?”

The extent of the London fog, then, if the information I have cited be correct, may be considered as indicating that portion of the metropolis where the population, and consequently the smoke, is the thickest, and within which agricultural and horticultural labours cannot meet with success. “The nuisance of a November fog in London,” Mr. Booth stated to the Smoke Committee, “is most assuredly increased by the smoke of the town, arising from furnaces and private fires. It is vapour saturated with particles of carbon which causes all that uneasiness and pain in the lungs, and the uneasy sensations which we experience in our heads. I have no doubt of the density of these fogs arising from this carbonaceous matter.”

The loss from the impossibility of promoting vegetation in the district most subjected to the fog is nothing, as the whole ground is already occupied for the thousand purposes of a great commercial city. The matter is, however, highly curious, as a result of the London smoke.

Concerning the frequency of fogs in the district of the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis, it is stated in Weale’s “London,” that fogs “appear to be owing, 1st, to the presence of the river; and, 2ndly, to the fact that the superior temperature of the town produces results precisely similar to those we find to occur upon rivers and lakes. The cold damp currents of the atmosphere, which cannot act upon the air of the country districts, owing to the equality of their specific gravity, when they encounter the warmer and lighter strata over the town, displace the latter, intermixing with it and condensing the moisture. Fogs thus are often to be observed in London, whilst the surrounding country is entirely free from them. The peculiar colour of the London fogs appears to be owing to the fact that, during their prevalence, the ascent of the coal smoke is impeded, and that it is thus mixed with the condensed moisture of the atmosphere. As is well known, they are often so dense as to require the gas to be lighted in midday, and they cover the town with a most dingy and depressing pall. They also frequently exhibit the peculiarity of increasing density after their first formation, which appears to be owing to the descent of fresh currents of cold air towards the lighter regions of the atmosphere.

“They do not occur when the wind is in a dry quarter, as for instance when it is in the east; notwithstanding that there may be very considerable difference in the temperature of the air and of the water or the ground. The peculiar odour which attends the London fogs has not yet been satisfactorily explained; although the uniformity of its recurrence, and its very marked character, would appear to challenge elaborate examination.”

[59] The quantity of soot deposited depends greatly on the length, draught, and irregular surface of the chimney. The kitchen flue yields by far the most soot for an equal quantity of coals burnt, because it is of greater length. The quantity above cited is the average yield from the several chimneys of a house. It will be seen hereafter that the quantity collected is only 800,000 bushels; a great proportion of the chimneys of the poor being seldom swept, and some cleansed by themselves.

[60] Soot of coal is said, by Dr. Ure, in his admirable Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures, to contain “sulphate and carbonate of ammonia along with bituminous matter.”

[61] Querying means literally inquiring or asking for work at the different houses. The “queriers” among the sweeps are a kind of pedlar operatives.

[62] In East and West London there are rather more than 32 houses to the acre, which gives an average of 151 square yards to each dwelling, so that, allowing the streets here to occupy one-third of the area, we have 100 square yards for the space covered by each house. In Lewisham, Hampstead, and Wandsworth, there is not one house to the acre. The average number of houses per acre throughout London is 4.

[63] Gully here is a corruption of the word Gullet, or throat; the Norman is guelle (Lat. gula), and the French, goulet; from this the word gully appears to be directly derived. A gully-drain is literally a gullet-drain, that is, a drain serving the purposes of a gullet or channel for liquids, and a gully-hole the mouth, orifice, or opening to the gullet or gully-drain.

[64] Of the derivation of the word Sewer there have been many conjectures, but no approximation to the truth. One of the earliest instances I have met with of any detailed mention of sewers, is in an address delivered by a “Coroner,” whose name does not appear, to “a jury of sewers.” This address was delivered somewhere between the years 1660 and 1670. The coroner having first spoken of the importance of “Navigation and Drayning” (draining), then came to the question of sewers.

“Sewars,” he said, “are to be accounted your grand Issuers of Water, from whence I conceive they carry their name (Sewars quasi Issuers). I shall take his opinion who delivers them to be Currents of Water, kept in on both sides with banks, and, in some sense, they may be called a certain kind of a little or small river. But as for the derivation of the word Sewar, from two of our English words, Sea and Were, or, as others will have it, Sea and Ward, give me leave, now I have mentioned it, to—leave it to your judgments.

“However, this word Sewar is very famous amongst us, both for giving the title of the Commission of Sewars itself, and for being the ordinary name of most of your common water-courses, for Drayning, and therefore, I presume, there are none of you of these juries but both know—

“1. What Sewars signify, and also, in particular,

“2. What they are; and of a thing so generally known, and of such general use.”

The Rev. Dr. Lemon, who gave the world a work on “English Etymology,” from the Greek and Latin, and from the Saxon and Norman, was regarded as a high authority during the latter part of the last century, when his quarto first appeared. The following is his account, under the head “Sewers”—

“Skinn. rejects Minsh’s. deriv. of ‘olim scriptum fuisse seward À sea-ward, quod versus mare factÆ sunt: longÈ verisimilius À Fr. Gall. eauier; sentina; incile, supple. aquarum:’—then why did not the Dr. trace this Fr. Gall. eauier? if he had, he would have found it distorted ab ?d??, aqua; sewers being a species of aqueduct:—Lye, in his Add., gives another deriv., viz. ‘ab Iceland. sua, colare; ut existimo; ad quod referre vellem sewer; cloaca; per sordes urbis ejiciuntur:’—the very word sordes gives me a hint that sewer may be derived À ‘Sa???, vel Sa???, verro: nempe quia sordes, quÆ everruntur È domo, in unum locum accumulantur; R. S????, cumulus: Voss.’—a collection of sweepings, slop, dirt, &c.”

But these are the follies of learning. Had our lexicographers known that the vulgar were, as Dr. Latham says, “the conservators of the Saxon language” with us, they would have sought information from the word “shore,” which the uneducated, and, consequently, unperverted, invariably use in the place of the more polite “sewer”—the common sewer is always termed by them “the common shore.” Now the word shore, in Saxon, is written score and scor (for c = h), and means not only a bank, the land immediately next to the sea, but a score, a tally—for they are both substantives, made from the verb sceran (p. scear, scÆr, pp. scoren, gescoren), to shear, cut off, share, divide; and hence they meant, in the one case, the division of the land from the sea; and in the other, a division cut in a piece of wood, with a view to counting. The substantive scar has the same origin; as well as the verb to score, to cut, to gash. The Scandinavian cognates for the Saxon scor may be cited as proofs of what is here asserted. They are, Icel., skor, a notch; Swed., skÂra, a notch; and Dan., skaar and skure, a notch, an incision. It would seem, therefore, that the word shore, in the sense of sewer (Dan., skure; Anglice, shure, for k = h), originally meant merely a score or incision made in the ground, a ditch sunk with the view of carrying off the refuse-water, a watercourse, and consequently a drain. A sewer is now a covered ditch, or channel for refuse water.

[65] This outlet is known to the flushermen, &c., as “below the backs of houses,” from its devious course under the houses without pursuing any direct line parallel with the open part of the streets.

[66] The following is the analysis of a gallon of sewage, also dried to evaporation, by Professor Miller:—

[67] The following note appears in Mr. Fortescue’s statement:—“In some trial works near the metropolis sewer water was applied to land, on the condition that the value of half the extra crop should be taken as payment. The dressings were only single dressings. The officer making the valuation reported, that there was at the least one sack of wheat and one load of straw per acre extra from its application on one breadth of land; in another, full one quarter of wheat more, and one load of straw extra per acre. The reports of the effects of sewer-water in increasing the yield of oats as well as of wheat were equally good. It is stated by Captain Vetch that in South America irrigation is used with great advantage for wheat.”

[68] The following statement may, according to the work above alluded to, be presented as an approximate.

[69] Rental of the districts now rated.

[70] Rental of the districts within the active jurisdiction in which expenses have been incurred, and which are about to be rated.

[71] These officers are paid only during the period of service, and are chiefly engaged on special works.

The corresponding officers for London are under the City Commissioners.

[72] In one of their Reports the Board of Health has spoken of the yearly cleansing of the cesspools; but a cesspool, I am assured, is rarely emptied by manual labour, unless it be full, for as the process is generally regarded as a nuisance, it is resorted to as seldom as possible. It may, perhaps, be different with the cesspool-emptying by the hydraulic process, which is not a nuisance.

[73] It was ascertained that 3 gallons (half a cubic foot) of water would carry off 1 lb. of the more solid excrementitious matter through a 6-inch pipe, with an inclination of 1 in 10.

[74] Mr. Rammell supplies the following note on the use of “Poudrette.”

“In connexion with this subject,” he says, “a few observations upon the application of poudrette in agricultural process may not be without interest.

“With regard to the fertilizing properties of this preparation, M. Maxime Paulet, in his work entitled ‘ThÉorie et Pratique des Engrais,’ gives a table of the fertilizing qualities of various descriptions of manure, the value of each being determined by the quantity of nitrogen it contains. Taking for a standard good farm-yard dung, which contains on an average 4 per 1000 of nitrogen, and assuming that 10,000 kilogrammes (about 22,000 lbs. English) of this manure (containing 40 kilogrammes of nitrogen) are necessary to manure one hectare (2½ acres nearly) of land, the quantities of poudrette and of some other animal manures required to produce a similar effect would be as follows:—

“M. Paulet estimates the loss of the ammoniacal products contained in the fÆcal matters when they are withdrawn from the cesspools, by the time they have been ultimately reduced into poudrette, at from 80 to 90 per cent.

“I have not been able to meet with an analysis of the matters found in the fixed and movable cesspools of Paris, but in the ‘Cours d’Agriculture,’ of M. le Comte de Gasparin, I find an analysis by MM. Payen and Boussingault of some matter taken from the cesspools of Lille, and in the state in which it is ordinarily used in the suburbs of that city as manure. This matter was found to contain on the average 0·205 per cent of nitrogen, and thus by the rule observed in drawing up the above table, 19,512 kilogrammes of it would be necessary to produce the same effect upon one hectare of land as the other manures there mentioned. The wide difference between this quantity and that (1333 kilogrammes) stated for the mixed human excrements in their undiluted state, would lead to the conclusion that a very large proportion of water was present in the matter sent from Lille, unless we are to attribute a portion of the difference to the accidental circumstance of the bad quality of this matter. It appears that this is very variable, according to the style of living of the persons producing it. ‘Upon this subject,’ M. Paulet says, ‘the case of an agriculturist in the neighbourhood of Paris is cited, who bought the contents of the cesspools of one of the fashionable restaurants of the Palais Royal. Making a profitable speculation of it, he purchased the matter of the cesspools of several barracks. This bargain, however, resulted in a loss, for the produce from this last matter came very short of that given by the first.’

“Poudrette weighs 70 kilogrammes the hectolitre (154 lbs. per 22 gallons), and the quantity usually spread upon one hectare of land (2½ acres nearly) is 1750 kilogrammes, being at the rate of about 1540 lbs. per acre English measure. It is cast upon the land by the hand, in the manner that corn is sown.

“Poudrette packed in sacks very soon destroys them. This is always the case, whether it is whole or has been newly prepared.

“A serious accident occurred in 1818, on board a vessel named the Arthur, which sailed from Rouen with a cargo of poudrette for Guadaloupe. During the voyage a disease broke out on board which carried off half the crew, and left the remainder in a deplorable state of health when they reached their destination. It attacked also the men who landed the cargo; they all suffered in a greater or less degree. The poudrette was proved to have been shipped during a wet season, and to have been exposed before and during shipment, in a manner to allow it to absorb a considerable quantity of moisture. The accident appears to have been due to the subsequent fermentation of the mass in the hold—increased to an intense degree by the moisture it had acquired, and by the heat of a tropical climate.

“M. Parent du ChÂtelet, to whom the matter was referred, recommended that to guard against similar accidents in future, the poudrette intended for exportation, in order to deprive it entirely of humidity, should be mixed with an absorbent powder, such as quicklime, and that it should be packed in casks to protect it from moisture during the voyage.”

[75] “It is in the upper basins,” adds the Reports, “that the first separation of the liquids and solids takes place, the latter falling to the bottom, and the former gradually flowing off through a sluice into the lower basins. This first separation, however, is by no means complete, a considerable deposit taking place in the lower basins. The mass in the upper basins, after three or four years, then appears like a thick mud, half liquid, half solid; it is of depth varying from 12 to 15 feet. In order entirely to get rid of the liquids, deep channels are then cut across the mass, by which they are drained off, when the deposit soon becomes sufficiently stiff to permit of its being dug out and spread upon the drying-ground, where, to assist the desiccation, it is turned over two or three times a-day by means of a harrow drawn by a horse.

“The time necessary for the requisite desiccation varies a good deal, according to the season of the year, the temperature, and the dry or moist state of the atmosphere. Ere yet it is entirely deprived of humidity, the matter is collected into heaps, varying in size usually from 8 to 10 yards high, and from 60 to 80 yards long, by 25 or 30 yards wide. These heaps or mounds generally remain a twelvemonth untouched, sometimes even for two or three years; but as fast as the material is required, they are worked from one of the sides by means of pickaxes, shovels, and rakes; the pieces separated are then easily broken and reduced to powder, foreign substances being carefully excluded. This operation, which is the last the matter undergoes, is performed by women. The poudrette then appears like a mould of a grey-black colour, light, greasy to the touch, finely grained, and giving out a particular faint and nauseous odour.

“The finer particles of matter carried by the liquids into the lower basins, and there more gradually deposited in combination with a precipitate from the urine, yield a variety of poudrette, preferred, by the farmers, for its superior fertilizing properties. In this case the drying process is conducted more slowly and with more difficulty than in the other, but more completely.

“In general the poudrette is dried with great difficulty; it appears to have an extreme affinity for water; few substances give out moisture more slowly, or absorb it more greedily from the air.

“A good deal of heat is generated in the heaps of desiccated matter. This is always sensible to the touch, and sometimes results in spontaneous combustion.

“The intensity of this heat is not in proportion to the elevation of temperature of the atmosphere. It is promoted by moisture. The only means of extinguishing the fire when it is once developed is to turn over the mass from top to bottom, in order to expose it to the air. Water thrown upon it, unless in very large quantities, would only increase its activity.”

[76] 4¼ heaped bushels each, English measure.

[77] I did not hear any of the London nightmen or sewermen complain of inflammation in the eyes, and no such effect was visible; nor that they suffered from temporary blindness, or were, indeed, thrown out of work from any such cause; they merely remarked that they were first dazzled, or “dazed,” with the soil. But the labour of the Parisian is far more continuous and regular than the London nightman, owing in a great degree to the system of movable cesspools in Paris.

[78] It must be recollected, to account for the greater quantity of matter between the cesspools of Paris and London, that the French fixed cesspool, from the greater average of inmates to each house, must necessarily contain about three times and a half as much as that of a London cesspool. If the dwellers in a Parisian house, instead of averaging twenty-four, averaged between seven and eight, as in London, the cesspool contents in Paris would, at the above rate, be between four and five tons (as it is in London) for the average of each house.