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THE STORY OF SEWERAGE IN LEEDS
by
David Sellers (Leeds, England)
[Scanned image of published version available as a PDF file]
I. KING CHOLERA
In the early years of the Nineteenth Century most of the area
presently occupied by Leeds City was still characterised by rural tranquility.
Miles of rolling pastures and woodland separated Sheepscar from Seacroft
Village. Viewed from the fields to the west of Wellington Bridge however, the
Leeds of the 1830's presented an industrial panorama dominated by textile
mills. The skyline bristled with tall chimneys belching their smoke and
attendant lung diseases onto a largely helpless population.
The factory owners and middle classes lived to the west and on the
hillsides of Woodhouse or Headingley - protected from the swirling smog by the
prevailing westerly winds.
Crowded into the terraces and tenements in the heart of the
township were the working classes. In consequence of the furious expansion of
industry, the population of Leeds had increased from 53,000 in 1801 to 123,000
in 1831. To cater for this influx of people unscrupulous landowners had crammed
dwellings into every imaginable nook and cranny. Very few of the streets and
yards were paved or drained. The result was that only in dry weather could the
inhabitants venture forth without sinking ankle deep in mud. Domestic and human
waste would be deposited in the street: sometimes in designated middenheaps,
which would be cleared by scavengers - sometimes not. Stagnant pools in the
streets were a common feature and at times the stench was unbearable. The
insanitary conditions in the street inevitably spilled into the dwellings.
"The surface of these streets", wrote a local
doctor, Robert Baker, "is considerably elevated by accumulated ashes
and filth, untouched by any scavenger; they form the nuclei of disease exhaled
from a thousand sources. Here and there stagnant water, and channels so
offensive that they have been declared to be unbearable, lie under the doorways
of the uncomplaining poor; and privies so laden with ashes and excrementitious
matter, as to be unuseable, prevail, till the streets themselves become
offensive from deposits of this description: in short there is generally
pervading these localities a want of the common conveniences of life."
It was from these quarters that the Cholera sprang during the
national epidemic of 1832. The first victim in Leeds - in May of that year -
was the child of a weaver living in a 51/2 yard square cottage in Blue Bell
Fold (near Marsh Lane). With good reason the disease was called 'King Cholera'
- having more the aspect of an almighty curse than a plain disease. It had
spread rapidly since the first case was recorded in Sunderland. The victims
would be afflicted by a violent pain in the stomach, followed by diarrhoea,
sickness and death. Seven hundred people in Leeds died of Cholera over a six
month period.
Soon after the 1832 Cholera outbreak, Robert Baker wrote a
detailed report on the marked geographical pattern to the disease in Leeds.
Worst hit were the poor areas to the East of the town centre. There was shown
to be a clear link between the disease and poor drainage. The report was sent
to the Home Secretary in London, but appears to have been promptly shelved.
Cholera struck again within two years. Although centred in the
working class areas, the middle and upper classes were smitten too. It is easy
to understand their panic: Cholera was like a mad dog no one could be sure
where it would pounce. Disease was not yet understood; the germ theory had not
yet been propounded (it was commonly thought that disease was transmitted by
smells); Koch's discovery of the microbe had yet to be made. Most of the cures
and preventitive measures current at the time were 'quack' remedies.
Following a suggestion in Parliament, a National Fast Day was held
on 21st March 1832, as a day of atonement for the sins which had presumably
invited the scourge of Cholera.
To working class radicals this was the height of hypocrisy. In
response the National Union of the Working Classes mounted a demonstration of
120,000 in London to protest against the Government's handling of the crisis.
The radical viewpoint was expressed by Henry Hetherington in the "Poor
Man's Guardian" (18/2/1832):
"The Cholera has arrived amongst us, and this, among other
blessings, we have to lay at the door of our 'glorious constitution', for it is
a disease begotten of that poverty and wretchedness which are occassioned by
the wealth and luxury of the few to whom only the constitution belongs."
The Government was frightened into establishing a Commission of
Enquiry into the circumstances leading to such epidemics.
The resulting report of Edwin Chadwick on "The Sanitary
Condition of the Labouring Classes" (1842) was a best seller. It's
central thesis was the same as Baker's earlier report. Indeed, Chadwick
included Baker's statistical map of Leeds and wrote:
"By the inspection of the map of Leeds which Mr.Baker has
prepared at my request to show the localities of epidemic diseases, it will be
perceived that they ... fall on the uncleansed and close streets and wards
occupied by the labouring classes and that the track of the Cholera is nearly
identical with the track of the fever. It will also be observed that in the
badly cleansed and badly drained wards to the right of the map, the
proportional mortality is nearly double that which prevails in the better
conditioned districts to the left."
Even where drainage was available, it left a great deal to be
desired. It was common in the early Victorian towns for the sewers to be
chiefly flat bottomed passages and conduits, laid in a piecemeal fashion, with
inadequate gradients. These sewers were totally unsuitable for the mixture of
rainwater, waste water and excrement which they received. The flat bottoms and
shallow slopes ensured that they soon became choked up with noxious accumulations.
The putrefying organic material deposited in this manner, gave rise to
poisonous gases such as methane, which would often find its way into the houses
through untrapped drains. Even the wealthy houses were affected, according to
evidence given to a House of Commons Committee in 1834, but it was the servants
sleeping in the 'lower rooms' who took the brunt of the resulting ill health!
Regular removal of the large quantities of sewer deposits was a
real head-ache. Mr. John Roe, Civil Engineer to the Holborn and Finsbury
Commission of Sewers, explained the usual method in a statement given to
Chadwick's Enquiry:
"... the streets were opened at a great expense and
obstruction ....; men descend, scoop up the deposit into pails, which are
raised by a windlass to the surface, and laid there until the carts come; it is
laid there until it is carted away, sometimes for several hours, to the public
annoyance and prejudice. The contract price for removal from the old sewers
without manholes was 11s. per cubic yard of slop removed; where they have
manholes it was 6s.10d. per cubic yard."
No wonder, with removal being such a chore, the deposits were
allowed to remain for 5 to 10 years in the sewers.
In Roe's own area great strides had been taken in organising the
sewerage system on an entirely superior basis: the outlets had been made low
enough to enable all the outlying areas to be drained with sufficiently steep
sewers and the sewers had curved bottoms to reduce the rate of deposition.
Moreover, Roe's plan of flushing the sewers and carrying off all the refuse by
water had been adopted. The cost of sewer cleaning in Holborn and Finsbury was
consequently reduced from £12,000 per year to £600.
Amongst public health agitators, there was a growing conviction
that this 'water-borne' sanitation represented the way forward. An essential
requirement for this to be implemented effectively however, was that every
house had a reliable supply of water, which could be used for flushing away
soil matter. There was no way in which Leeds of the 1830's could boast such a
supply: The Leeds water supply was an entirely class-based affair.
Leeds was one of the first towns in Britain to have a piped water supply
to houses. It came into operation in 1694 and was designed by the engineers
George Sorocold and Henry Gilbert. A water wheel built near Leeds Bridge, Lower
Briggate, pumped water from the River Aire through 11/2 miles of 3-inch
diameter lead pipes to a storage reservoir - or 'cistern' - in Wade Lane,
whence it served the wealthier inhabitants in a town of 7,000. The only
materials available for pipes at that time were either lead or the bored trunks
of elm trees. Sixty years later, when the total population had risen to
approximately 17,000, new works were built at Pitt Fall Mills, near The Calls.
In the 1790's three storage reservoirs were built near Albion Street.
In the early years of the nineteenth century the waterworks
company was supplying about 2,000 houses. Most of the inhabitants of Leeds
relied instead on wells, boreholes, water-carriers and the River Aire.
Water-carriers it should be noted charged 2 shillings per week for many, a sum
almost as much as their total weekly rent for accomodation. The River Aire by
1830 however, was completely unsafe for drinking. According to Charles Fowler
in the 'Leeds Intelligencer' (21/8/1841), it was:
"..charged with the contents of about 200 water closets
and similar places, a great number of common drains, the drainings from
dunghills, the Infirmary (dead leeches, poultices for patients, etc), slaughter
houses, chemical soap, gas, dung, dyehouses and manufacturies, spent blue and
black dye, pig manure, old urine wash, with all sorts of decomposed animal and
vegetable substances from an extent of drainage between Armley Mills to the
Kings Mill amounting to about 30,000,000 gallons per annum of the mass of filth
with which the river is loaded."
Small wonder that the death rate in Leeds rose from 20.7 per thousand
in 1831 to 27.2 per thousand in 1841. The average life expectancy in
Leeds,according to figures given by Chadwick, was as follows:
|
Gentry |
44 years |
|
Tradesmen |
27 years |
|
Workmen |
19 years |
The
Leeds Waterworks Company discontinued its use of the Aire for drinking water in
1841 and used instead, as a temporary supply, the water leaking into the
partially complete tunnel linking Leeds with the proposed Eccup reservoir. For
most people however, a wholesome water supply was still beyond reach: in 1842
the number of Leeds houses with a piped water supply was still only 3000. By
1852, when the Waterworks Company was bought by Leeds Corporation (for £1/4m),
the number of connected properties had risen to 22,732.