into fluids and solids. The solids are the fruitful source of poisonous gases, yet it is demonstrable that if the solids be kept from moisture they evolve no gas whatever. A large trade is carried on by drying them and packing them, most probably in the identical hogsheads which bring back sugar from the West India Islands, which receive this dried matter as manure. “Well,” said Lord Palmerston, “dirt is only matter in a wrong place.” That which is dirt in London, becomes sugar in the tropics. Of the value of these matters for purposes of manure, there has probably been much exaggeration; but of the importance of expending considerable sums on destroying or getting rid of them there can be no doubt, and against the cost of any newer or better methods there is always to be set the cost of the present system of sewers. If we can utilise them in value while destroying their noxious properties, so much the better; but the great consideration is how to destroy the nuisance.
On the pampas of southern temperate America, the prairies of northern temperate America, and in sundry table lands to boot, fuel of wood or coal is a very scarce commodity, and the chief resource of travellers is called “bosta” in the south, and “buffalo chips” in the north: it is, in short, dry animal manure. When in sufficient masses a pleasanter or better fire never warmed an Irish cabin on the edge of a peat moss. Here is an indication of one means of disposing of noxious matter, not polluting thousands of gallons of water in a vain attempt to move matter from one “wrong place” to another, but applying the universal cleanser, fire. Placed in close retorts as we use coal to distil gas, this matter also would distil gas almost identically the same, leaving as a cinder not gas coke but a more valuable article—animal charcoal. The whole question in this case is a different mechanical arrangement in our dwellings, not difficult to imagine or construct, separating fluids from solids—in short, a retort for a receptacle to which the application of gas or fuel in another form might be made at pleasure. The water-closet would become a fire-closet with chemical arrangements to fix the noxious gases. The chemical world is largely at work upon the process of deodorisation, and it will be accomplished. The chief error lies in trying to deodorise with a thousand-fold dilution. Let the chemists apply the deodorisers in small bulk, and the process becomes easy. It must be done house by house by a process simple and easy, within the servants’ control, and, in order to ensure success, yielding a perquisite to the servant in a similar mode to the grease-procuring process of the cook, and in such case it would never be neglected. If the value be anything like that assumed by the Chadwick school of water transit, it will be very largely increased by keeping it in the concrete state. Of the effects of water dilution we have examples in our river docks, which act as cesspools for twelve months together, and, in the summer, when the heat renders them unbearable, vomit forth their contents into the river.
We have another example in the town of Croydon, which, after a long experiment in Chadwickian pipe-drainage and enormous dilution, is washed tolerably clean, but can find no exit for its polluted waters, the authorities trying place after place, and being encountered by Chancery suits; at one time polluting the Wandle stream, but driven back thence, are now in despair of finding any outlet for their liquid manure, and the parish likely to be ruined in law. Why do they not deodorise? Probably because the huge bulk renders it impracticable.
Thus Croydon gives us on a small scale a foretaste of what is likely to be the result of the huge brick tubes leading to Erith.
Preventing the access of air and moisture is the true method. This may be done in many ways. There is one obvious method adapted to the sick room or the hospital which may probably be in use, but I am not aware of it. It is well known that flesh meat dried, and covered with peat or butter, may be preserved fresh for any length of time. If coal oil, or paraffin oil, Rangoon, or any of the hydro-carbons, natural or artificial, be floated on the surface of decomposing matter, it will arrest decomposition as surely as the Egyptian process of embalming dead bodies. And this oil, wholesale, scarcely exceeds in value one shilling per gallon. It would therefore be practicable to use it in dwellings in small quantities instead of the enormous water dilution.
The water idolaters will scoff at all this, and ask how all the dwelling arrangements in London are to be changed to meet these conditions? Our answer would be, has not a large alteration from cesspools and distributing pits to water dilution already taken place? and how? Simply by making a commencement—setting a pattern. Getting rid of the dilution is a much more easy thing than creating the dilution, for it gets rid of the underground complication. There is amongst house-agents a standing jest about a lady, who “wanted a house without a drain.” There was more common sense in her words than probably she herself dreamed of. She really wanted to get rid of underground “black ditches” as well as those on the surface.
It is not every town that is blessed with a Thames. Birmingham, for instance. Birmingham is a town of cesspools, but Birmingham has always been free from cholera. After their fashion they mix coal dust and cinders with excreta, so that a clumsy partial deodorisation takes place, and the matter is put in a right place, i. e., on the land. Moses in the olden time enacted that every man should have a spade on the end of his spear to dig and cover up nuisances in the camp.
But how to destroy or render harmless the excreta of all London is the question before us. Not in a single day can it be dealt with, nor in many days; but a beginning might be made. An individual might try a single house; a building company might try a number of houses, induced thereto by the consideration of getting rid of sewers rates for all time. If the legislature would consent to this compromise, and the fact were once demonstrated, the process would spread without much trouble.
There are localities where the experiments could be fittingly made: for example, the camp at