Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays

But now the sun is rising calm and bright,
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods,
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters,
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

But was I a gloomy and distempered man, if, upon such a morn as that, I stood on the little bridge across a certain brook, and watched the water run, with something of a sigh?  Or if, when the schoolboy beside me lamented that the floods would surely be out, and his day’s fishing spoiled, I said to him—“Ah, my boy, that is a little matter.  Look at what you are seeing now, and understand what barbarism and waste mean.  Look at all that beautiful water which God has sent us hither off the Atlantic, without trouble or expense to us.  Thousands, and tens of thousands, of gallons will run under this bridge to-day; and what shall we do with it?  Nothing.  And yet: think only of the mills which that water would have turned.  Think how it might have kept up health and cleanliness in poor creatures packed away in the back streets of the nearest town, or even in London itself.  Think even how country folks, in many parts of England, in three months’ time, may be crying out for rain, and afraid of short crops, and fever, and scarlatina, and cattle-plague, for want of the very water which we are now letting run back, wasted, into the sea from whence it came.  And yet we call ourselves a civilised people.”

It is not wise, I know, to preach to boys.  And yet, sometimes, a man must speak his heart; even, like Midas’s slave, to the reeds by the river side.  And I had so often, fishing up and down full many a stream, whispered my story to those same river-reeds; and told them that my Lord the Sovereign Demos had, like old Midas, asses’ ears in spite of all his gold, that I thought I might for once tell it the boy likewise, in hope that he might help his generation to mend that which my own generation does not seem like to mend.

I might have said more to him: but did not.  For it is not well to destroy too early the child’s illusion, that people must be wise because they are grown up, and have votes, and rule—or think they rule—the world.  The child will find out how true that is soon enough for himself.  If the truth be forced on him by the hot words of those with whom he lives, it is apt to breed in him that contempt, stormful and therefore barren, which makes revolutions; and not that pity, calm and therefore helpful, which makes reforms.

So I might have said to him, but did not—

And then men pray for rain:

My boy, did you ever hear the old Eastern legend about the Gipsies?  How they were such good musicians, that some great Indian Sultan sent for the whole tribe, and planted them near his palace, and gave them land, and ploughs to break it up, and seed to sow it, that they might dwell there, and play and sing to him.

But when the winter arrived, the Gipsies all came to the Sultan, and cried that they were starving.  “But what have you done with the seed-corn which I gave you?”  “O Light of the Age, we ate it in the summer.”  “And what have you done with the ploughs which I gave you?”  “O Glory of the Universe, we burnt them to bake the corn withal.”

Then said that great Sultan—“Like the butterflies you have lived; and like the butterflies you shall wander.”  So he drove them out.  And that is how the Gipsies came hither from the East.

Now suppose that the Sultan of all Sultans, who sends the rain, should make a like answer to us foolish human beings, when we prayed for rain: “But what have you done with the rain which I gave you six months since?”  “We have let it run into the sea.”  “Then, ere you ask for more rain, make places wherein you can keep it when you have it.”  “But that would be, in most cases, too expensive.  We can employ our capital more profitably in other directions.”

It is not for me to say what answer might be made to such an excuse.  I think a child’s still unsophisticated sense of right and wrong would soon supply one; and probably one—considering the complexity, and difficulty, and novelty, of the whole question—somewhat too harsh; as children’s judgments are wont to be.

But would it not be well if our children, without being taught to blame anyone for what is past, were taught something about what ought to be done now, what must be done soon, with the rainfall of these islands; and about other and kindred health-questions, on the solution of which depends, and will depend more and more, the life of millions?  One would have thought that those public schools and colleges which desire to monopolise the education of the owners of the soil; of the great employers of labour; of the clergy; and of all, indeed, who ought to be acquainted with the duties of property, the conditions of public health, and, in a word, with the general laws of what is now called Social Science—one would have thought, I say, that these public schools and colleges would have taught their scholars somewhat at least about such matters, that they might go forth into life with at least some rough notions of the causes which make people healthy or unhealthy, rich or poor, comfortable or wretched, useful or dangerous to the State.  But as long as our great educational institutions, safe, or fancying themselves safe, in some enchanted castle, shut out by ancient magic from the living world, put a premium on Latin and Greek verses: a wise father will, during the holidays, talk now and then, I hope, somewhat after this fashion:

“You must understand, my boy, that all the water in the country comes out of the sky, and from nowhere else; and that, therefore, to save and store the water when it falls is a question of life and death to crops, and man, and beast; for with or without water is life or death.  If I took, for instance, the water from the moors above and turned it over yonder field, I could double, and more than double, the crops in that field, henceforth.”

“Then why do I not do it?”

“Only because the field lies higher than the house; and if—now here is one thing which you and every civilised man should know—if you have water-meadows, or any ‘irrigated’ land, as it is called, above a house, or, even on a level with it, it is certain to breed not merely cold and damp, but fever or ague.  Our forefathers did not understand this; and they built their houses, as this is built, in the lowest places they could find: sometimes because they wanted to be near ponds, from whence they could get fish in Lent; but more often, I think, because they wanted to be sheltered from the wind.  They had no glass, as we have, in their windows, or, at least, only latticed casements, which let in the wind and cold; and they shrank from high and exposed, and therefore really healthy, spots.  But now that we have good glass, and sash windows, and doors that will shut tight, we can build warm houses where we like.  And if you ever have to do with the building of cottages, remember that it is your duty to the people who will live in them, and therefore to the State, to see that they stand high and dry, where no water can drain down into their foundations, and where fog, and the poisonous gases which are given out by rotting vegetables, cannot drain down either.  You will learn more about all that when you learn, as every civilised lad should in these days, something about chemistry, and the laws of fluids and gases.  But you know already that flowers are cut off by frost in the low grounds sooner than in the high; and that the fog at night always lies along the brooks; and that the sour moor-smell which warns us to shut our windows at sunset, comes down from the hill, and not up from the valley.  Now all these things are caused by one and the same law; that cold air is heavier than warm; and, therefore, like so much water, must run down-hill.”

“But what about the rainfall?”

“Well, I have wandered a little from the rainfall: though not as far as you fancy; for fever and ague and rheumatism usually mean—rain in the wrong place.  But if you knew how much illness, and torturing pain, and death, and sorrow arise, even to this very day, from ignorance of these simple laws, then you would bear them carefully in mind, and wish to know more about them.  But now for water being life to the beasts.  Do you remember—though you are hardly old enough—the cattle-plague?  How the beasts died, or had to be killed and buried, by tens of thousands; and how misery and ruin fell on hundreds of honest men and women over many of the richest counties of England: but how we in this vale had no cattle-plague; and how there was none—as far as I recollect—in the uplands of Devon and Cornwall, nor of Wales, nor of the Scotch Highlands?  Now, do you know why that was?  Simply because we here, like those other up-landers, are in such a country as Palestine was before the foolish Jews cut down all their timber, and so destroyed their own rainfall—a ‘land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.’  There is hardly a field here that has not, thank God, its running brook, or its sweet spring, from which our cattle were drinking their health and life, while in the clay-lands of Cheshire, and in the Cambridgeshire fens—which were drained utterly dry—the poor things drank no water, too often, save that of the very same putrid ponds in which they had been standing all day long, to cool themselves, and to keep off the flies.  I do not say, of course, that bad water caused the cattle-plague.  It came by infection from the East of Europe.  But I say that bad water made the cattle ready to take it, and made it spread over the country; and when you are old enough I will give you plenty of proof—some from the herds of your own kinsmen—that what I say is true.”

“And as for pure water being life to human beings: why have we never fever here, and scarcely ever diseases like fever—zymotics, as the doctors call them?  Or, if a case comes into our parish from outside, why does the fever never spread?  For the very same reason that we had no cattle-plague.  Because we have more pure water close to every cottage than we need.  And this I tell you: that the only two outbreaks of deadly disease which we have had here for thirty years, were both of them, as far as I could see, to be traced to filthy water having got into the poor folks’ wells.  Water, you must remember, just as it is life when pure, is death when foul.  For it can carry, unseen to the eve, and even when it looks clear and sparkling, and tastes soft and sweet, poisons which have perhaps killed more human beings than ever were killed in battle.  You have read, perhaps, how the Athenians, when they were dying of the plague, accused the Lacedæmonians outside the walls of poisoning their wells; or how, in some of the pestilences of the Middle Ages, the common people used to accuse the poor harmless Jews of poisoning the wells, and set upon them and murdered them horribly.  They were right, I do not doubt, in their notion that the well-water was giving them the pestilence: but they had not sense to see that they were poisoning the wells themselves by their dirt and carelessness; or, in the case of poor besieged Athens, probably by mere overcrowding, which has cost many a life ere now, and will cost more.  And I am sorry to tell you, my little man, that even now too many people have no more sense than they had, and die in consequence.  If you could see a battle-field, and men shot down, writhing and dying in hundreds by shell and bullet, would not that seem to you a horrid sight?  Then—I do not wish to make you sad too early, but this is a fact that everyone should know—that more people, and not strong men only, but women and little children too, are killed and wounded in Great Britain every year by bad water and want of water together, than were killed and wounded in any battle which has been fought since you were born.  Medical men know this well.  And when you are older, you may see it for yourself in the Registrar-General’s reports, blue-books, pamphlets, and so on, without end.”

“But why do not people stop such a horrible loss of life?”

“Well, my dear boy, the true causes of it have only been known for the last thirty or forty years; and we English are, as good King Alfred found us to his sorrow a thousand years ago, very slow to move, even when we see a thing ought to be done.  Let us hope that in this matter—we have been so in most matters as yet—we shall be like the tortoise in the fable, and not the hare; and by moving slowly, but surely, win the race at last.”

“But now think for yourself: and see what you would do to save these people from being poisoned by bad water.  Remember that the plain question is this: The rain-water comes down from heaven as water, and nothing but water.  Rain-water is the only pure water, after all.  How would you save that for the poor people who have none?  There; run away and hunt rabbits on the moor: but look, meanwhile, how you would save some of this beautiful and precious water which is roaring away into the sea.”

* * * * *

“Well?  What would you do?  Make ponds, you say, like the old monks’ ponds, now all broken down.  Dam all the glens across their mouths, and turn them into reservoirs.”

“‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings’—Well, that will have to be done.  That is being done more and more, more or less well.  The good people of Glasgow did it first, I think; and now the good people of Manchester, and of other northern towns, have done it, and have saved many a human life thereby already.  But it must be done, some day, all over England and Wales, and great part of Scotland.  For the mountain tops and moors, my boy, by a beautiful law of nature, compensate for their own poverty by yielding a wealth which the rich lowlands cannot yield.  You do not understand?  Then see.  Yon moor above can grow neither corn nor grass.  But one thing it can grow, and does grow, without which we should have no corn nor grass, and that is—water.  Not only does far more rain fall up there than falls here down below, but even in drought the high moors condense the moisture into dew, and so yield some water, even when the lowlands are burnt up with drought.  The reason of that you must learn hereafter.  That it is so, you should know yourself.  For on the high chalk downs, you know, where farmers make a sheep-pond, they never, if they are wise, make it in a valley or on a hillside, but on the bleakest top of the very highest down; and there, if they can once get it filled with snow and rain in winter, the blessed dews of night will keep some water in it all the summer through, while the ponds below are utterly dried up.  And even so it is, as I know, with this very moor.  Corn and grass it will not grow, because there is too little ‘staple,’ that is, soluble minerals, in the sandy soil.  But how much water it might grow, you may judge roughly for yourself, by remembering how many brooks like this are running off it now to carry mere dirt into the river, and then into the sea.”

“But why should we not make dams at once; and save the water?”

“Because we cannot afford it.  No one would buy the water when we had stored it.  The rich in town and country will always take care—and quite right they are—to have water enough for themselves, and for their servants too, whatever it may cost them.  But the poorer people are—and therefore usually, alas! the more ignorant—the less water they get; and the less they care to have water; and the less they are inclined to pay for it; and the more, I am sorry to say, they waste what little they do get; and I am still more sorry to say, spoil, and even steal and sell—in London at least—the stop-cocks and lead-pipes which bring the water into their houses.  So that keeping a water-shop is a very troublesome and uncertain business; and one which is not likely to pay us or anyone round here.”

“But why not let some company manage it, as they manage railways, and gas, and other things?”

“Ah—you have been overhearing a good deal about companies of late, I see.  But this I will tell you; that when you grow up, and have a vote and influence, it will be your duty, if you intend to be a good citizen, not only not to put the water-supply of England into the hands of fresh companies, but to help to take out of their hands what water-supply they manage already, especially in London; and likewise the gas-supply; and the railroads; and everything else, in a word, which everybody uses, and must use.  For you must understand—at least as soon as you can—that though the men who make up companies are no worse than other men, and some of them, as you ought to know, very good men; yet what they have to look to is their profits; and the less water they supply, and the worse it is, the more profit they make.  For most water, I am sorry to say, is fouled before the water companies can get to it, as this water which runs past us will be, and as the Thames water above London is.  Therefore it has to be cleansed, or partly cleansed, at a very great expense.  So water companies have to be inspected—in plain English, watched—at a very heavy expense to the nation by Government officers; and compelled to do their best, and take their utmost care.  And so it has come to pass that the London water is not now nearly as bad as some of it was thirty years ago, when it was no more fit to drink than that in the cattle-yard tank.  But still we must have more water, and better, in London; for it is growing year by year.  There are more than three millions of people already in what we call London; and ere you are an old man there may be between four and five millions.  Now to supply all these people with water is a duty which we must not leave to any private companies.  It must be done by a public authority, as is fit and proper in a free self-governing country.  In this matter, as in all others, we will try to do what the Royal Commission told us four years ago we ought to do.  I hope that you will see, though I may not, the day when what we call London, but which is really nine-tenths of it, only a great nest of separate villages huddled together, will be divided into three great self-governing cities, London, Westminster, and Southwark; each with its own corporation, like that of the venerable and well-governed city of London; each managing its own water-supply, gas-supply, and sewage, and other matters besides; and managing them, like Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and other great northern towns, far more cheaply and far better than any companies can do it for them.”

“But where shall we get water enough for all these millions of people?  There are no mountains near London.  But we might give them the water off our moors.”

“No, no, my boy,

“He that will not when he may,
When he will, he shall have nay.

Some fifteen years ago the Londoners might have had water from us; and I was one of those who did my best to get it for them: but the water companies did not choose to take it; and now this part of England is growing so populous and so valuable that it wants all its little rainfall for itself.  So there is another leaf torn out of the Sibylline books for the poor old water companies.  You do not understand: you will some day.  But you may comfort yourself about London.  For it happens to be, I think, the luckiest city in the world; and if it had not been, we should have had pestilence on pestilence in it, as terrible as the great plague of Charles II.’s time.  The old Britons, without knowing in the least what they were doing, settled old London city in the very centre of the most wonderful natural reservoir in this island, or perhaps in all Europe; which reaches from Kent into Wiltshire, and round again into Suffolk; and that is, the dear old chalk downs.”

“Why, they are always dry.”

“Yes.  But the turf on them never burns up, and the streams which flow through them never run dry, and seldom or never flood either.  Do you not know, from Winchester, that that is true?  Then where is all the rain and snow gone, which falls on them year by year, but into the chalk itself, and into the green-sands, too, below the chalk?  There it is, soaked up as by a sponge, in quantity incalculable; enough, some think, to supply London, let it grow as huge as it may.  I wish I too were sure of that.  But the Commission has shown itself so wise and fair, and brave likewise—too brave, I am sorry to say, for some who might have supported them—that it is not for me to gainsay their opinion.”

“But if there was not water enough in the chalk, are not the Londoners rich enough to bring it from any distance?”

“My boy, in this also we will agree with the Commission—that we ought not to rob Peter to pay Paul, and take water to a distance which other people close at hand may want.  Look at the map of England and southern Scotland; and see for yourself what is just, according to geography and nature.  There are four mountain-ranges; four great water-fields.  First, the hills of the Border.  Their rainfall ought to be stored for the Lothians and the extreme north of England.  Then the Yorkshire and Derbyshire Hills—the central chine of England.  Their rainfall is being stored already, to the honour of the shrewd northern men, for the manufacturing counties east and west of the hills.  Then come the Lake mountains—the finest water-field of all, because more rain by far falls there than in any place in England.  But they will be wanted to supply Lancashire, and some day Liverpool itself; for Liverpool is now using rain which belongs more justly to other towns; and besides, there are plenty of counties and towns, down into Cheshire, which would be glad of what water Lancashire does not want.  At last come the Snowdon mountains, a noble water-field, which I know well; for an old dream of mine has been, that ere I died I should see all the rain of the Carnedds, and the Glyders, and Siabod, and Snowdon itself, carried across the Conway river to feed the mining districts of North Wales, where the streams are now all foul with oil and lead; and then on into the western coal and iron fields, to Wolverhampton and Birmingham itself: and if I were the engineer who got that done, I should be happier—prouder I dare not say—than if I had painted nobler pictures than Raffaelle, or written nobler plays than Shakespeare.  I say that, boy, in most deliberate earnest.  But meanwhile, do you not see that in districts where coal and iron may be found, and fresh manufactures may spring up any day in any place, each district has a right to claim the nearest rainfall for itself?  And now, when we have got the water into its proper place, let us see what we shall do with it.”

“But why do you say ‘we’?  Can you and I do all this?”

“My boy, are not you and I free citizens; part of the people, the Commons—as the good old word runs—of this country?  And are we not—or ought we not to be in time—beside that, educated men?  By the people, remember, I mean, not only the hand-working man who has just got a vote; I mean the clergy of all denominations; and the gentlemen of the press; and last, but not least, the scientific men.  If those four classes together were to tell every government—‘Free water we will have, and as much as we reasonably choose;’ and tell every candidate for the House of Commons: ‘Unless you promise to get us as much free water as we reasonably choose, we will not return you to Parliament:’ then, I think, we four should put such a ‘pressure’ on Government as no water companies, or other vested interests, could long resist.  And if any of those four classes should hang back, and waste their time and influence over matters far less important and less pressing, the other three must laugh at them, and more than laugh at them; and ask them: ‘Why have you education, why have you influence, why have you votes, why are you freemen and not slaves, if not to preserve the comfort, the decency, the health, the lives of men, women, and children—most of those latter your own wives and your own children?’”

“But what shall we do with the water?”

“Well, after all, that is a more practical matter than speculations grounded on the supposition that all classes will do their duty.  But the first thing we will do will be to give to the very poorest houses a constant supply, at high pressure; so that everybody may take as much water as he likes, instead of having to keep the water in little cisterns, where it gets foul and putrid only too often.”

“But will they not waste it then?”

“So far from it, wherever the water has been laid on at high pressure, the waste, which is terrible now—some say that in London one-third of the water is wasted—begins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved.  If you will only think, you will see one reason why.  If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will flood her place and her neighbour’s too.  She will be like the magician’s servant, who called up the demon to draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would not stop, and if the magician had not come home, man and house would have been washed away.”

“But if it saves money, why do not the water companies do it?”

“Because—and really here there are many excuses for the poor old water companies, when so many of them swerve and gib at the very mention of constant water-supply, like a poor horse set to draw a load which he feels is too heavy for him—because, to keep everything in order among dirty, careless, and often drunken people, there must be officers with lawful authority—water-policemen we will call them—who can enter people’s houses when they will, and if they find anything wrong with the water, set it to rights with a high hand, and even summon the people who have set it wrong.  And that is a power which, in a free country, must never be given to the servants of any private company, but only to the officers of a corporation or of the Government.”

“And what shall we do with the rest of the water?”

“Well, we shall have, I believe, so much to spare that we may at least do this: In each district of each city, and the centre of each town, we may build public baths and lavatories, where poor men and women may get their warm baths when they will; for now they usually never bathe at all, because they will not—and ought not, if they be hard-worked folk—bathe in cold water during nine months of the year.  And there they shall wash their clothes, and dry them by steam; instead of washing them as now, at home, either under back sheds, where they catch cold and rheumatism, or too often, alas! in their own living rooms, in an atmosphere of foul vapour, which drives the father to the public-house and the children into the streets; and which not only prevents the clothes from being thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will know when you are older, a very hot-bed of disease.  And they shall have other comforts, and even luxuries, these public lavatories; and be made, in time, graceful and refining, as well as merely useful.  Nay, we will even, I think, have in front of each of them a real fountain; not like the drinking-fountains—though they are great and needful boons—which you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great deal of expensive stone: but real fountains, which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place with life, and light, and coolness; and sing in the people’s ears the sweetest of all earthly songs—save the song of a mother over her child—the song of ‘The Laughing Water.’”

“But will not that be a waste?”

“Yes, my boy.  And for that very reason, I think we, the people, will have our fountains; if it be but to make our governments, and corporations, and all public bodies and officers, remember that they all—save Her Majesty the Queen—are our servants, and not we theirs; and that we choose to have water, not only to wash with, but to play with, if we like.  And I believe—for the world, as you will find, is full not only of just but of generous souls—that if the water-supply were set really right, there would be found, in many a city, many a generous man who, over and above his compulsory water-rate, would give his poor fellow-townsmen such a real fountain as those which ennoble the great square at Carcasonne and the great square at Nismes; to be ‘a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.’”