From Tales of the underworld in the Guardian.
The Romans had a goddess of sewers, Cloacina; Titus Tacitus, who reigned with Romulus, erected a statue to her. The French, too, have long taken pride in their sanitation: tourist trips around the Paris sewers, still an attraction today, began as early as 1858, when sightseers were transported in hand-pushed carts. (Thames Water opens London's sewers for a week in May but prefers not to advertise the fact too widely, for fear the demand would be too great.) Victor Hugo made Paris's sewers central to the plot of Les Misérables. "Paris has another Paris under herself," he wrote, "a Paris of sewers, which has its streets, its crossings, its squares, its blind alleys, its arteries, and its traffic, which is slime." Sewers, he added, were "the conscience of the city" - they tell all: "no more false appearances, no plastering over ... filth removes its shirt ... there is nothing more except what really exists."
The Victorians were inventive in denying "what really exists", and in polite modern society that practice has continued, with euphemisms for the place where we go (loo, restroom, little boys' or girls' room) and for what we do there (pay a visit, spend a penny, wash our hands, powder our nose). But the Victorians did address the practicalities of sewage, in numerous parliamentary commissions and debates. A key figure was Edwin Chadwick, whose Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (1848) sold 20,000 copies and led to widespread reform throughout the country. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a stimulus, too - 827,000 people used the WCs specially installed for the occasion in Hyde Park. In the 1850s and 60s, new sewerage systems were constructed in towns from Brighton to Birmingham (a trip to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry will show you what was done there). In London, the task was entrusted to Joseph Bazalgette - one he began in 1859 and completed in 1875. [continue]
This article isn't for the gentlest of readers, but rather for the more hardy ones.
Posted on March 30, 2005 09:37 AM. Filed under: miscellaneous.