Chapter I: Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.}3.] SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE.

We take this opportunity of announcing a design, closely associated with our Household Words, which we have now matured, and which we hope will be acceptable to our readers.

We purpose publishing, at the end of each month as a supplementary number to the monthly part of Household Words, a comprehensive Abstract or History of all the occurrences of that month, native and foreign, under the title of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE OF CURRENT EVENTS.

The size and price of each of these numbers will be the same as the size and price of the present number of Household Words. Twelve numbers will necessarily be published in the course of the year—one for each month—and on the completion of the Annual Volume, a copious Index will appear, and a title-page for the volume; which will then be called THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE of such a year. It will form a complete Chronicle of all that year’s events, carefully compiled, thoroughly digested, and systematically arranged for easy reference; presenting a vast mass of information that must be interesting to all, at a price that will render it accessible to the humblest purchasers of books, and at which only our existing machinery in connexion with this Work would enable us to produce it.

The first number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE will appear as a supplement to the first monthly part of Household Words, published at the end of the present month of APRIL. As the Volume for 1850 would be incomplete (in consequence of our not having commenced this publication at the beginning of a year) without a backward reference to the three months of JANUARY, FEBRUARY, and MARCH, a similar number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE for each of those months will be published before the year is out.

It is scarcely necessary to explain that it is not proposed to render the purchase of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE compulsory on the purchasers of Household Words; and that the supplementary number, though always published at the same time as our monthly part, will therefore be detached from it, and published separately.

Nor is it necessary for us, we believe, to expatiate on our leading reasons for adding this new undertaking to our present enterprise. The intimate connexion between the facts and realities of the time, and the means by which we aim, in Household Words, to soften what is hard in them, to exalt what is held in little consideration, and to show the latent hope there is in what may seem unpromising, needs not to be pointed out. All that we sought to express in our Preliminary Word, in reference to this work, applies, we think, to its proposed companion. As another humble means of enabling those who accept us for their friend, to bear the world’s rough-cast events to the anvil of courageous duty, and there beat them into shape, we enter on the project, and confide in its success.

THE TROUBLED WATER QUESTION.

My excellent and eloquent friend, Lyttleton, of Pump Court, Temple, barrister-at-law, disturbed me on a damp morning at the end of last month, to bespeak my company to a meeting at which he intended to hold forth. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘the Great Water Supply Congress, which assembles to-morrow.’

‘Do you know anything of the subject?’

‘A vast deal both practically and theoretically. Practically, I pay for my little box in the Regent’s Park, twice the price for water our friend Fielding is charged, and both supplies are derived from the same Company. Yet his is a mansion, mine is a cottage; his rent more than doubles mine in amount, and his family trebles mine in number. So much for the consistency and exactions of an irresponsible monopoly. Practically, again, there are occasions when my cisterns are without water. So much for deficient supply.’

‘Is your water bad?’

‘Not absolutely unwholesome; but I have drunk better.’

‘Now then, Theoretically.’

‘Theoretically, I learn from piles of blue books—a regular blue mountain of parliamentary inquiry instituted in the years 1810, 1821, 1827, 1828, 1834, 1840, and 1845—from a cloud of prospectuses issued by embryo Water Companies, from a host of pamphlets _pro_ and _con_, and from the reports of the Board of Health, that of the 300,000 houses of which London is said to consist, 70,000 are without the great element of suction and cleanliness; I find also that the supply, such as it is, is derived from nine water companies all linked together to form a giant monopoly; and that, in consequence, the charge for water is in some instances excessive; that six of these companies draw their water from the filthy Thames;—and the same number, including those which use the Lea and New River water, have no system of filtration—hence it is unwholesome: that in short, the public of the metropolis are the victims of dear, insufficient and dirty water. Like Tantalus of old they are denied much of the great element of life, although it flows within reach of their parched and thirsty lips. And by whom? By that many-headed Cerberus—that nine gentlemen in one—the great monopolist Water Company combination of London! Unless, therefore, we bestir ourselves in the great cause for which this numerous, enlightened, and respectable meeting have assembled here this day—’

‘You forget; you have only two listeners at present—myself and my spaniel. I can suggest a more profitable morning’s amusement than a rehearsal of your speech.’

‘What?’

‘Your theoretical knowledge is, I doubt not, very comprehensive and varied. But second-hand information is not to be trusted too implicitly. Every statement of fact, like every story, gains something in exaggeration, or loses something in accuracy by repetition from book to book, or from book to mouth.’

‘Granted; but what do you suggest?’

‘Ocular demonstration. Let us at once visit and minutely inspect the works of one of the Companies. I am sure they will let us in at the Grand Junction, for I have already been over their premises.’

‘A capital notion! Agreed.’

The preliminaries—consisting of the hasty bundling up of Mr. Lyttleton’s notes for the morrow’s oration, and the hire of a Hansom cab—were adjusted in a few minutes.

The order to drive to Kew Bridge, was obeyed in capital style; for in three-quarters of an hour we were deposited on the towing path on the Surrey side of the Thames, opposite the King of Hanover’s house, and a quarter of a mile west of Kew Bridge.

‘Here,’ I explained, ‘is the spot whence the Grand Junction Company derive their water. In the bed of the river is an enormous culvert pipe laid parallel to this path. Its mouth—open towards Richmond—is barred across with a grating, to intercept stray fish, murdered kittens, or vegetable impurities, and—except now and then the intrusion edgeways of a small flounder, or the occasional slip of an erratic eel—it admits nothing into the pipe but what is more or less fluid. The culvert then takes a bend round the edge of the islet opposite to us; burrows beneath the Brentford road, and delivers its contents into a well under that tall chimney and taller iron “stand-pipe” which you see on the other side of the river.’

‘And is _this_ the stuff I have to pay four pounds ten a year for?’ exclaimed Mr. Lyttleton, contemplating the opaque fluid; part of which was then making its way into the cisterns of Her Majesty’s lieges.

‘Certainly; but it is purified first. We will now cross the bridge to the Works.’

Those of my readers who make prandial expeditions to Richmond, must have noticed at the beginning of Old Brentford, a little beyond where they turn over Kew Bridge, an immensely tall thin column that shoots up into the air like an iron mast unable to support itself, and seems to require four smaller, thinner, and not much shorter props to keep it upright. This, with the engine and engine-houses, is all they can see of the Grand Junction Waterworks from the road. It is only when one gets inside, that the whole extent of the aquatic apparatus is revealed.

Determined to follow the water from the Thames till it began its travels to London, we entered the edifice, went straight to the well, and called for a glass of water. Our hosts—who had received our visit without hesitation—supplied us. ‘That,’ remarked one of them, as he held the half-filled tumbler up to the light, ‘is precisely the state of the water as emptied from the Thames into the well.’

It looked like a dose of weak magnesia, or that peculiar London liquid known as ‘skim-sky-blue,’ but deceitfully sold under the name of milk.

‘The analysis of Professor Brande,’ said Lyttleton, ‘gives to every gallon of Thames water taken from Kew Bridge, 19·2 parts of solid matter; but the water, I apprehend, in which he experimented must have been taken from the river on a serener occasion than this. To-day’s rain appears to have drained away the chalk—so as to give in this specimen a much larger proportion of solids to fluids than his estimate.’

‘In this impure state,’ one of the engineers told us, ‘the water is pumped by steam power into the reservoirs to which you will please to follow me.’

Passing out of the building and climbing a sloping bank, we now saw before us an expanse of water covering 3½ acres; but divided into two sections. Into the larger, the pump first delivers the water, that so much of the impurity as will form sediment may be precipitated. It then slowly glides through a small opening into the lesser section, which is a huge filter.

‘The impurities of water,’ said the barrister, assuming an oratorical attitude, to give us a taste of his ‘reading up,’ ‘are of two kinds; first, such as are mechanically suspended—say earth, chalk, sand, clay, dead vegetation or decomposed cats; and secondly, such as are dissolved or chemically combined—like salt, sugar, or alkali. Separation in the one case is easy, in the other it involves a chemical process. If you throw a pinch of sand into a tumbler of water, and stir it about, you produce a turbid mixture; but to render the fluid clear again you have only to adopt the simple process of letting it alone; for on setting the tumbler down for awhile, the particles—which, from their extreme minuteness, were easily disturbed and distributed amidst the fluid—being heavier than water, are precipitated, or in other words, fall to the bottom, leaving the liquid translucent. This is what is happening in the larger section of the reservoir to the chalky water of which we drank. I think I am correct?’ asked the speaker, angling for a single ‘cheer’ from the Engineer.

‘Quite so,’ replied that gentleman.

‘Provided the water could remain at rest long enough—which the insatiable maw of the modern Babylon does not allow,’—continued the honourable orator, rehearsing a bit more of his speech, ‘this mode of cleansing would be perfectly effectual. In proof of which I may only allude to Nature’s mode of depuration, as shown in lakes—that of Geneva for instance. The waters of the Rhone enter that expansive reservoir from the Valais in a very muddy condition; yet, after reposing in the lake, they issue at Geneva as clear as crystal. But so incessant is the London demand, that scarcely any time can be afforded for the impurities of the Thames, the Lea, or the New River to separate themselves from the water by mere deposition.’

‘True,’ interjected one of the superintendants. ‘It is for that reason that our water is passed afterwards into the filtering bed, which is four feet thick.’

‘How do you make up this enormous bed?’

‘The water rests upon, and permeates through, 1st, a surface of fine sand; 2d, a stratum of shells; 3d, a layer of garden gravel; and 4th, a base of coarse gravel. It thence falls through a number of ducts into cisterns, whence it is pumped up so as to commence its travels to town through the conduit-pipe.’

We were returning to the engine-house, when Lyttleton asked the Engineer, ‘Does your experience generally, enable you to say that water as supplied by the nine companies, is tolerably pure?’

‘Upon the whole, yes,’ was the answer.

‘Indeed!’ ejaculated the orator, sharply. ‘If that be true,’ he whispered to me, in a rueful tone, ‘I shall be cut out of one of the best points in my speech.’

‘Of course,’ continued the Engineer, ‘purity entirely depends upon the source, and the means of cleansing.’

‘Then, as to the source—how many companies take their supplies from the Thames, near to, and after it has received the contents of, the common sewers?’

‘No water is taken from the Thames below Chelsea, except that of the Lambeth Company, which is supplied from between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges; an objectionable source, which they have obtained an act to change to Thames Ditton. The Chelsea Waterworks have a most efficient system of filtration; as also have the Southwark and Vauxhall Company; both draw their water from between the Red House, Battersea, and Chelsea Hospital. The other companies do not filter. The West Middlesex sucks up some of Father Thames as he passes Barnes Terrace. Except the lowest of these sources, Thames water is nearly as pure as that of other rivers.’

‘Perhaps it is,’ was the answer; ‘but the unwholesomeness arises from contaminations received during its course; we don’t object to the “Thames,” but to its “tributaries,” such as the black contents of common sewers, and the refuse of gut, glue, soap, and other nauseous manufactures; to say nothing of animal and vegetable offal, of which the river is the sole receptacle. Brande shows that, while the solid matter contained in the river at Teddington is 17·4, that which the water has contracted when it flows past Westminster is 24·4, and the City of London, 28·0.’

‘But,’ said the Engineer, ‘these adulterations are only mechanically suspended in the fluid, and are, as you shall see presently, totally separated from it by our mode of filtration.’

‘Which brings us to your second point, as to efficient cleansing; you admit that without filtration this is impossible, and also that only three companies filter; the deduction, therefore, is that two-thirds of the water supplied to Londoners is insufficiently cleansed. This indeed, is not a mere inference; we know it for a fact, we see it in our ewers, we taste it out of our caraffes.’

‘But this does not wholly arise from the inefficient filtration of the six companies,’ returned an officer of this Company, ‘the public is much to blame—though, when agitating against an abuse, it never thinks of blaming itself. Half the dirt, dust, and animalculæ found at table are introduced after the water has been delivered to the houses. Impurity of all sorts finds its way into out-door cisterns, even when covered, and few of them, open or closed, are often enough cleansed. In some neighbourhoods water-butts are always uncovered, and hardly ever cleaned out. The water is foul, and the companies are blamed.’

‘The blame belongs to the system,’ said the barrister. ‘Domestic reservoirs are not only an evil but an unnecessary expense. Besides filth, they cause waste and deficient supply: they should be abolished; for continuous supply is the real remedy. Let the pipes be always full, and the water would be always ready, always fresh, and could never acquire new impurities. Still, despite all you say, I am bound to conclude that although one-third of the water may arrive in the domestic cisterns of the metropolis in a pellucid state, the other two-thirds does not.’ Mr. L. then inscribed this calculation in his note book, whispering to me that his pet ‘dirty water point’ would come out even stronger than he had expected.

We had now returned to one of the engine-rooms.

‘You have tasted the water before, I now present you with some of it after, filtration,’ said the chief engineer, handing us a tumbler. ‘This is exactly the condition in which we deliver it to our customers.’

It was clear to the eye, and to the taste innocuous; but Lyttleton (who I should mention, occasionally turns on powerful streams of oratory at Temperance meetings, and is a judge of the article,) complained that the liquid wanted ‘flavour.’

‘In other words, then it wants _impurity_’ replied one of our cicerones with alacrity, ‘for perfectly pure water is quite tasteless. Indeed, water may be too pure. Distilled water which contains no salt, is insipid, and tends to indigestion. It is a wise provision of Nature, that waters should contain a greater or less quantity of foreign ingredients; for without these water is dangerous to drink. It never fails to take up from the atmosphere a certain proportion of carbonic acid gas, and when passing through lead pipes it imbibes enough carbonate of lead to constitute poison. Dr. Christison mentions several severe cases of lead (or painter’s) cholic, which arose chiefly in country houses to which water was supplied from springs through lead pipes. The most remarkable case was that at Claremont, where the ex-king of the French and several members of his family were nearly poisoned by pure spring water conveyed to the mansion through lead pipes.

‘Mercy!’ I exclaimed, with all the energy of despair that a mere water-drinker is capable of, ‘if river water be unwholesome, and pure water poison, what _is_ to become of every temperance pledgee?’

The Engineer relieved me: ‘All the Chemists,’ he stated, ‘have agreed that a water containing from eight to ten grains of sulphate of magnesia or soda, to the imperial gallon, is best suited for alimentary, lavatory, and other domestic purposes.’

We were now introduced to the great engine. What a monster! Imagine an enormous see-saw, with a steam engine at one end, and a pump at the other. Fancy this ‘beam,’ some ten yards long, and twenty-eight tons in weight, moving on a pivot in the middle, the ends of which show a circumference greater than the crown of the biggest hat ever worn. See, with what earnest deliberation the ‘see,’ or engine, pulls up the ‘saw,’ or balance-box of the pump, which then comes down upon the water-trap with the ferocious _àplomb_ of 49 tons, sending 400 gallons of water in one tremendous squirt nearly the twentieth part of a mile high;—that is to the top of the stand-pipe.

‘We have a smaller engine which “does” 150 gallons per stroke,’ remarked our informant: ‘each performs 11 strokes, and forces up 4400 gallons of water per minute, and thus our average delivery per diem throughout the year is from 4,000,000, to 5,000,000 gallons.’

‘What proportion of London do you supply?’ asked Mr. Lyttleton.

‘The quadrangle included between Oxford Street, Wardour Street, Pall-Mall, and Hyde Park; besides the whole of Notting-hill, Bayswater, and Paddington. We serve 14,058 houses, to each of which we supply 225 gallons per day, or, taking the average number of persons per house at nine, 25 gallons a head; besides public services, such as baths, watering streets, or manufactories; making our total daily delivery at the rate of 252 gallons per house. This delivery is performed through 80 miles of service pipes, whose diameter varies from 3 to 30 inches.

‘Now,’ said my companion, sharpening his pencil, ‘to go into the question of supply.’ He then unfolded his pocket soufflet, and brought out a calculation, of quantities derived, he said, from parliamentary returns and other authorities more or less reliable:—

Gals. daily. New River Company 20,000,000 Chelsea Company 3,250,000 West Middlesex Company 3,650,000 Grand Junction Company 3,500,000 East London Company 7,000,000 South Lambeth Company 2,500,000 South London Company and Southwark Company 3,000,000 Hampstead Company 400,000 Kent Company 1,200,000 —————————— 44,500,000 Artesian Wells 8,000,000 Land-spring Pumps 3,000,000 “Catch” rain water (say) 1,000,000 —————————— Making a total quantity supplied daily to London, from all sources, of 56,500,000

‘An abundant supply,’ said an engineer eagerly, ‘for as the present population of the metropolis is estimated at 2,336,000, the total affords about 24 gallons of water per day, for every man, woman, and child.’

‘Admitted,’ rejoined Lyttleton; ‘but we have to deal with large deductions; first, nearly half this quantity runs to waste, chiefly in consequence of the intermittent system. I live in a small house with proportionately small cisterns, which are filled no more than three times a week; now, as my neighbours have larger houses and larger reservoirs, the water when turned on runs for as long a time into my small, as it does into their capacious cisterns, and consequently, if my stop-taps be in the least out of order, a greater quantity descends the waste pipe than remains behind. This is universally the case in similar circumstances.’

‘_We_ supply water daily, Sundays excepted,’ remarked the Engineer.

‘Then you are wiser than your neighbours. But every inconvenience and nearly all the waste, would be saved by the adoption of the continuous system of supply. Secondly, a large quantity of water is consumed by cattle, breweries, baths, public institutions, for putting out fires, and for laying dust. The lieges of London have only, therefore, to divide between them some 10 gallons of water each per day; and, as it is generally admitted that a sixth part of their habitations are without water at all, the division must be most unequally made. That such is the fact is shown by your own figures—your customers get 25 gallons each per day, or more than double their share. For this excess, some in poorer districts get none at all.’

‘That is no fault of the existing companies. As sellers of an article, they are but too happy to get as many customers for it as possible; but poor tenants cannot, and their landlords will not, afford the expense. If the companies were to make the outlay necessary to connect the houses with their mains, they would have no legal power to recover the money so expended—nor indeed is it clear, that were they inclined to run the risk, the parties would avail themselves of it. In one instance, the Southwark and Vauxhall Company offered to construct a tank which would give continuous supply to a block of 100 small houses, at the rate of 50 gallons per diem to each—if the proprietor would pay an additional rate sufficient to yield 5 per cent. on the outlay, such additional rate not exceeding one half-penny per week for each house, but the offer was declined.’

‘That is an extreme case of cheapness on the one side, and of stupidity on the other,’ said the barrister. ‘Other landlords will not turn on water for their tenants, because of the expense; not only of the “plant,” in the first instance, but of the after water-rent. I find, by the account rendered to the House of Commons in 1834, that the South London Company (since incorporated with the Southwark, as the “Southwark and Vauxhall,”—the very Company you mention,) charged considerably less than any other. The return shows that while they obtained only 15_s._ per 1000 hogsheads; the West Middlesex (the highest) exacted 48_s._, 6_d._ for the same quantity; consequently, had the houses of the foolish landlord who refused one half-penny per week for water, stood in northwestern instead of southern London, he would have had to pay more than treble, or a fraction above three half-pence per week.’

‘Allowing for difference of level,’ I remarked, ‘and other interferences with the cheap delivery of water; the disparity in the charges of the different companies, and even by the same company to different customers, is unaccountable: they are guided by no principle. You have mentioned the extreme points of the scale of rates; the remaining companies charged at the time you mention, respectively per 1000 hogsheads, 17_s._, 17_s._, 2_d._, 21_s._, 28_s._, 29_s._, and 45_s._ The only companies whose charges are limited by act of parliament are the Grand Junction, the East London, the Southwark and Vauxhall, and the Lambeth. The others exact precisely what they please.’

‘And,’ interposed Lyttleton, ‘there is no redress: the only appeal we, the taxed, have, is to our taxers, and the monopoly is so tight that—as is my case—although your next door neighbour is supplied from a cheaper company, you are not allowed to change.’

‘The companies were obliged to combine, to save themselves from ruin and the public from extreme inconvenience,’ said our informant; ‘during the competition streets were torn up, traffic was stopped, and confusion was worse confounded in the districts where the opposition raged.’

‘But what happened when the war ceased, and the general peace was concluded?’ said Lyttleton, chuckling. ‘To show how ill some of the companies manage their affairs, I could cite some laughable cases. When the combination commenced, some of them forgot to stop off their mains, and supplied water to customers whom they had previously turned over to their quondam rivals; so that one company gave the water, and the other pocketed the rent. This, in some instances, went on for years.’

Here the subject branched off into other topics. It is worthy of notice that the conversation was carried on by the side of the enormous Cornish engine, that was driving 4400 gallons per minute 218 feet high.

‘It is marvellous,’ I remarked, ‘that so much power can be exercised with so little noise and vibration.’

‘That’s owing to the patent valves in the pump,’ said the stoker.

Taking a last look at the monster, we went outside to view the stand-pipe. Being, we were told, 218 feet high, it tops the Monument in Fish Street-hill by 16 feet. Within it is performed the last stroke of hydraulic art which is needed; for nature does the rest. The water, sent up through the middle or thickest of the tubes, falls over into the open mouths of the smaller ones—(which most people mistake for supports)—descends through all four at once into the conduit-pipe, and travels of its own accord leisurely to London. In obedience to the law of levels, it rises without further trouble to the tops of the tallest houses on the highest spots in the Company’s district. In its way it fills a large reservoir on Camden-hill. The iron conduit-pipe ends at Poland street, Oxford street, and is 7½ miles long.

Our inspection was now terminated. We took a parting glass of water with our intelligent and communicative hosts, and returned to town.

I firmly believe that the success of Lyttleton’s speech at the great meeting next day, was very much owing to this visit. The room was crowded in every part. His tone was moderate. He avoided the extravagant exaggerations of the more fiery order of water spouters. Neither was he too tame; he was not—as Moore said of a tory orator—like an

‘awkward thing of wood
Which up and down its clumsy arm doth move;
And only spout, and spout, and spout away,
In one weak, washy, everlasting flood,’

but he came out capitally in the hard, argumentative style. His oration bristled with logic and statistics to a degree of which I cannot pretend to give the faintest notion.

Sipping inspiration out of a tumbler filled with the flowing subject of discussion, Mr. Lyttleton commenced by declaring his conviction that the water supplied to the metropolis was, generally speaking, bad in quality, extravagantly dear, and, from excessive waste, deficient in quantity. In order to remedy those defects an efficient control was essential. Continuous supply, filtration, and a uniform scale of rates must be enforced. Some of the companies were pocketing enormous dividends, and was it a fair argument to retort, that they are now being reimbursed for periods of no dividend at all? Are we of the present day to be mulcted to cover losses occasioned because the early career of some of these companies was marked by the ignorance, imprudence, and reckless extravagance, which he (Mr. Lyttleton) could prove it was? If our wine merchant, or coal merchant, or baker, began business badly and with loss, would he be tolerated, if, when he grew wiser and more prosperous, he tried to exact large prices to cover the consequences of his previous mismanagement? Mr. Lyttleton apprehended not. With this branch of the question—he proceeded to remark—the important subjects of distribution and supply were intimately connected. It had been ascertained that a vast proportion of the poor had no water in their houses. Why? Partly because it was too dear; but partly he (the learned speaker) was bound to say from the parsimony of landlords. He had pointed out a remedy for the first evil; for the second he would propose that every house owner should be bound to introduce pipes into every house. The law was stringent on him as to sewers and party-walls, and why should not a water supply be enforced on him also?—In dealing with the whole question of supply—the honourable gentleman went on to say, he could not agree with those who stated that the delivery of it was deficient. A moderate calculation estimated the quantity running through the underground net-work of London pipes at 56,000,000 of gallons per day. Waste (of which there is a prodigious amount), steam-engines, cattle, public baths and other supplies deducted, left more than 10 gallons per diem per head for the whole population,—that is supposing these gallons were equitably distributed; but they are not,—the rich get an excess, and the poor get none at all. He (the learned barrister) was not prepared to say that 10 or 20 gallons per head daily were sufficient for all the purposes of life in this or in any other city, great or small; but this he would say, that under proper management the existing supply might be made ample for present wants;—whether for the requirements of augmenting population and increased cleanliness we need not discuss now. What was wanted at this time was a better distribution rather than a greater supply; but what was wanted most of all was united action and one governing body. Without this, confusion, extravagance, and waste, would inevitably continue.

Mr. Lyttleton wound up with a peroration that elicited very general applause. ‘Although we must,’ he said, ‘establish an efficient control over the existing means of water supply, we must neither wholly despise nor neglect them, nor blindly rush into new and ruinous schemes. We must remove the onus of payment from the poorer tenants to their landlords, and into whatever central directing power the Waterworks of this great city shall pass,’ concluded the learned orator, with energetic unction, ‘our motto must be “continuous supply, uniform rates, and universal filtration!”’

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.

THE LUCIFER MATCH.

Some twenty years ago the process of obtaining fire, in every house in England, with few exceptions, was as rude, as laborious, and as uncertain, as the effort of the Indian to produce a flame by the friction of two dry sticks.

The nightlamp and the rushlight were for the comparatively luxurious. In the bedrooms of the cottager, the artisan, and the small tradesman, the infant at its mother’s side too often awoke, like Milton’s nightingale, ‘darkling,’—but that ‘nocturnal note’ was something different from ‘harmonious numbers.’ The mother was soon on her feet; the friendly tinder-box was duly sought. Click, click, click; not a spark tells upon the sullen blackness. More rapidly does the flint ply the sympathetic steel. The room is bright with the radiant shower. But the child, familiar enough with the operation, is impatient at its tediousness, and shouts till the mother is frantic. At length one lucky spark does its office—the tinder is alight. Now for the match. It will not burn. A gentle breath is wafted into the murky box; the face that leans over the tinder is in a glow. Another match, and another, and another. They are all damp. The toil-worn father ‘swears a prayer or two’; the baby is inexorable; and the misery is only ended when the goodman has gone to the street door, and after long shivering has obtained a light from the watchman.

In this, the beginning of our series of Illustrations of Cheapness, let us trace this antique machinery through the various stages of its production.

The tinder-box and the steel had nothing peculiar. The tinman made the one as he made the saucepan, with hammer and shears; the other was forged at the great metal factories of Sheffield and Birmingham; and happy was it for the purchaser if it were something better than a rude piece of iron, very uncomfortable to grasp. The nearest chalk quarry supplied the flint. The domestic manufacture of the tinder was a serious affair. At due seasons, and very often if the premises were damp, a stifling smell rose from the kitchen, which, to those who were not intimate with the process, suggested doubts whether the house were not on fire. The best linen rag was periodically burnt, and its ashes deposited in the tinman’s box, pressed down with a close fitting lid upon which the flint and steel reposed. The match was chiefly an article of itinerant traffic. The chandler’s shop was almost ashamed of it. The mendicant was the universal match-seller. The girl who led the blind beggar had invariably a basket of matches. In the day they were vendors of matches—in the evening manufacturers. On the floor of the hovel sit two or three squalid children, splitting deal with a common knife. The matron is watching a pipkin upon a slow fire. The fumes which it gives forth are blinding as the brimstone is liquifying. Little bundles of split deal are ready to be dipped, three or four at a time. When the pennyworth of brimstone is used up, when the capital is exhausted, the night’s labour is over. In the summer, the manufacture is suspended, or conducted upon fraudulent principles. Fire is then needless; so delusive matches must be produced—wet splints dipped in powdered sulphur. They will never burn, but they will do to sell to the unwary maid-of-all-work.

About twenty years ago Chemistry discovered that the tinder-box might be abolished. But Chemistry set about its function with especial reference to the wants and the means of the rich few. In the same way the first printed books were designed to have a great resemblance to manuscripts, and those of the wealthy class were alone looked to as the purchasers of the skilful imitations. The first chemical light-producer was a complex and ornamental casket, sold at a guinea. In a year or so, there were pretty portable cases of a phial and matches, which enthusiastic young housekeepers regarded as the cheapest of all treasures at five shillings. By-and-bye the light-box was sold as low as a shilling. The fire revolution was slowly approaching. The old dynasty of the tinder-box maintained its predominance for a short while in kitchen and garret, in farmhouse and cottage. At length some bold adventurer saw that the new chemical discovery might be employed for the production of a large article of trade—that matches, in themselves the vehicles of fire without aid of spark and tinder, might be manufactured upon the factory system—that the humblest in the land might have a new and indispensable comfort at the very lowest rate of cheapness. When Chemistry saw that phosphorus, having an affinity for oxygen at the lowest temperature, would ignite upon slight friction,—and so ignited would ignite sulphur, which required a much higher temperature to become inflammable, thus making the phosphorus do the work of the old tinder with far greater certainty; or when Chemistry found that chlorate of potash by slight friction might be exploded so as to produce combustion, and might be safely used in the same combination—a blessing was bestowed upon society that can scarcely be measured by those who have had no former knowledge of the miseries and privations of the tinder-box. The Penny Box of Lucifers, or Congreves, or by whatever name called, is a real triumph of Science, and an advance in Civilisation.

Let us now look somewhat closely and practically into the manufacture of a Lucifer match.

The combustible materials used in the manufacture render the process an unsafe one. It cannot be carried on in the heart of towns without being regarded as a common nuisance. We must therefore go somewhere in the suburbs of London to find such a trade. In the neighbourhood of Bethnal Green there is a large open space called Wisker’s Gardens. This is not a place of courts and alleys, but a considerable area, literally divided into small gardens, where just now the crocus and the snowdrop are telling hopefully of the springtime. Each garden has the smallest of cottages—for the most part wooden—which have been converted from summer-houses into dwellings. The whole place reminds one of numberless passages in the old dramatists, in which the citizens’ wives are described in their garden-houses of Finsbury, or Hogsden, sipping syllabub and talking fine on summer holidays. In one of these garden-houses, not far from the public road, is the little factory of ‘Henry Lester, Patentee of the Domestic Safety Match-box,’ as his label proclaims. He is very ready to show his processes, which in many respects are curious and interesting.

Adam Smith has instructed us that the business of making a pin is divided into about eighteen distinct operations; and further, that ten persons could make upwards of forty-eight thousand pins a day with the division of labour; while if they had all wrought independently and separately, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty. The Lucifer Match is a similar example of division of labour, and the skill of long practice. At a separate factory, where there is a steam engine, not the refuse of the carpenter’s shop, but the best Norway deals are cut into splints by machinery, and are supplied to the matchmaker. These little pieces, beautifully accurate in their minute squareness, and in their precise length of five inches, are made up into bundles, each of which contains eighteen hundred. They are daily brought on a truck to the dipping-house, as it is called—the average number of matches finished off daily requiring two hundred of these bundles. Up to this point we have had several hands employed in the preparation of the match, in connection with the machinery that cuts the wood. Let us follow one of these bundles through the subsequent processes. Without being separated, each end of the bundle is first dipped into sulphur. When dry, the splints, adhering to each other by means of the sulphur, must be parted by what is called dusting. A boy sitting on the floor, with a bundle before him, strikes the matches with a sort of a mallet on the dipped ends till they become thoroughly loosened. In the best matches the process of sulphur-dipping and dusting is repeated. They have now to be plunged into a preparation of phosphorus or chlorate of potash, according to the quality of the match. The phosphorus produces the pale, noiseless fire; the chlorate of potash the sharp cracking illumination. After this application of the more inflammable substance, the matches are separated, and dried in racks. Thoroughly dried, they are gathered up again into bundles of the same quantity; and are taken to the boys who cut them; for the reader will have observed that the bundles have been dipped at each end. There are few things more remarkable in manufactures than the extraordinary rapidity of this cutting process, and that which is connected with it. The boy stands before a bench, the bundle on his right hand, a pile of half opened empty boxes on his left, which have been manufactured at another division of this establishment. These boxes are formed of scale-board, that is, thin slices of wood, planed or scaled off a plank. The box itself is a marvel of neatness and cheapness. It consists of an inner box, without a top, in which the matches are placed, and of an outer case, open at each end, into which the first box slides. The matches, then, are to be cut, and the empty boxes filled, by one boy. A bundle is opened; he seizes a portion, knowing by long habit the required number with sufficient exactness; puts them rapidly into a sort of frame, knocks the ends evenly together, confines them with a strap which he tightens with his foot, and cuts them in two parts with a knife on a hinge, which he brings down with a strong leverage: the halves lie projecting over each end of the frame; he grasps the left portion and thrusts it into a half open box, which he instantly closes, and repeats the process with the matches on his right hand. This series of movements is performed with a rapidity almost unexampled; for in this way, two hundred thousand matches are cut, and two thousand boxes filled in a day, by one boy, at the wages of three half-pence per gross of boxes. Each dozen boxes is then papered up, and they are ready for the retailer. The number of boxes daily filled at this factory is from fifty to sixty gross.

The _wholesale_ price per dozen boxes of the best matches, is FOURPENCE, of the second quality, THREEPENCE.

There are about ten Lucifer Match manufactories in London. There are others in large provincial towns. The wholesale business is chiefly confined to the supply of the metropolis and immediate neighbourhood by the London makers; for the railroad carriers refuse to receive the article, which is considered dangerous in transit. But we must not therefore assume that the metropolitan population consume the metropolitan matches. Taking the population at upwards of two millions, and the inhabited houses at about three hundred thousand, let us endeavour to estimate the distribution of these little articles of domestic comfort.

At the manufactory at Wisker’s Gardens there are fifty gross, or seven thousand two hundred boxes, turned out daily, made from two hundred bundles, which will produce seven hundred and twenty thousand matches. Taking three hundred working days in the year, this will give for one factory, two hundred and sixteen millions of matches annually, or two millions one hundred and sixty thousand boxes, being a box of one hundred matches for every individual of the London population. But there are ten other Lucifer manufactories, which are estimated to produce about four or five times as many more. London certainly cannot absorb ten millions of Lucifer boxes annually, which would be at the rate of thirty three boxes to each inhabited house. London, perhaps, demands a third of the supply for its own consumption; and at this rate the annual retail cost for each house is eightpence, averaging those boxes sold at a half-penny, and those at a penny. The manufacturer sells this article, produced with such care as we have described, at one farthing and a fraction per box.

And thus, for the retail expenditure of three farthings per month, every house in London, from the highest to the lowest, may secure the inestimable blessing of constant fire at all seasons, and at all hours. London buys this for ten thousand pounds annually.

The excessive cheapness is produced by the extension of the demand, enforcing the factory division of labour, and the most exact saving of material. The scientific discovery was the foundation of the cheapness. But connected with this general principle of cheapness, there are one or two remarkable points, which deserve attention.

It is a law of this manufacture that the demand is greater in the summer than in the winter. The old match maker, as we have mentioned, was idle in the summer—without fire for heating the brimstone—or engaged in more profitable field-work. A worthy woman who once kept a chandler’s shop in a village, informs us, that in summer she could buy no matches for retail, but was obliged to make them for her customers. The increased summer demand for the Lucifer Matches shows that the great consumption is amongst the masses—the labouring population—those who make up the vast majority of the contributors to duties of customs and excise. In the houses of the wealthy there is always fire; in the houses of the poor, fire in summer is a needless hourly expense. Then comes the Lucifer Match to supply the want; to light the candle to look in the dark cupboard—to light the afternoon fire to boil the kettle. It is now unnecessary to run to the neighbour for a light, or, as a desperate resource, to work at the tinder-box. The Lucifer Matches sometimes fail, but they cost little, and so they are freely used, even by the poorest.

And this involves another great principle. The demand for the Lucifer Match is always continuous, for it is a perishable article. The demand never ceases. Every match burnt demands a new match to supply its place. This continuity of demand renders the supply always equal to the demand. The peculiar nature of the commodity prevents any accumulation of stock; its combustible character—requiring the simple agency of friction to ignite it—renders it dangerous for large quantities of the article to be kept in one place. Therefore no one makes for store, but all for immediate sale. The average price, therefore, must always yield a profit, or the production would altogether cease. But these essential qualities limit the profit. The manufacturers cannot be rich without secret processes or monopoly. The contest is to obtain the largest profit by economical management. The amount of skill required in the labourers, and the facility of habit, which makes fingers act with the precision of machines, limit the number of labourers, and prevent their impoverishment. Every condition of this cheapness is a natural and beneficial result of the laws that govern production.

THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.

Mr. Whelks being much in the habit of recreating himself at a class of theatres called ‘Saloons,’ we repaired to one of these, not long ago, on a Monday evening; Monday being a great holiday-night with MR. WHELKS and his friends.

The Saloon in question is the largest in London (that which is known as The Eagle, in the City Road, should be excepted from the generic term, as not presenting by any means the same class of entertainment), and is situate not far from Shoreditch Church. It announces ‘The People’s Theatre,’ as its second name. The prices of admission are, to the boxes, a shilling; to the pit, sixpence; to the lower gallery, fourpence; to the upper gallery and back seats, threepence. There is no half-price. The opening piece on this occasion was described in the bills as ‘the greatest hit of the season, the grand new legendary and traditionary drama, combining supernatural agencies with historical facts, and identifying extraordinary superhuman causes with material, terrific, and powerful effects.’ All the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men could not have drawn MR. WHELKS into the place like this description. Strengthened by lithographic representations of the principal superhuman causes, combined with the most popular of the material, terrific, and powerful effects, it became irresistible. Consequently, we had already failed, once, in finding six square inches of room within the walls, to stand upon; and when we now paid our money for a little stage box, like a dry shower-bath, we did so in the midst of a stream of people who persisted in paying their’s for other parts of the house in despite of the representations of the Money-taker that it was ‘very full, everywhere.’

The outer avenues and passages of the People’s Theatre bore abundant testimony to the fact of its being frequented by very dirty people. Within, the atmosphere was far from odoriferous. The place was crammed to excess, in all parts. Among the audience were a large number of boys and youths, and a great many very young girls grown into bold women before they had well ceased to be children. These last were the worst features of the whole crowd, and were more prominent there than in any other sort of public assembly that we know of, except at a public execution. There was no drink supplied, beyond the contents of the porter-can (magnified in its dimensions, perhaps), which may be usually seen traversing the galleries of the largest Theatres as well as the least, and which was here seen everywhere. Huge ham-sandwiches, piled on trays like deals in a timber-yard, were handed about for sale to the hungry; and there was no stint of oranges, cakes, brandy-balls, or other similar refreshments. The Theatre was capacious, with a very large capable stage, well lighted, well appointed, and managed in a business-like, orderly manner in all respects; the performances had begun so early as a quarter past six, and had been then in progress for three-quarters of an hour.

It was apparent here, as in the theatre we had previously visited, that one of the reasons of its great attraction was its being directly addressed to the common people, in the provision made for their seeing and hearing. Instead of being put away in a dark gap in the roof of an immense building, as in our once National Theatres, they were here in possession of eligible points of view, and thoroughly able to take in the whole performance. Instead of being at a great disadvantage in comparison with the mass of the audience, they were here _the_ audience, for whose accommodation the place was made. We believe this to be one great cause of the success of these speculations. In whatever way the common people are addressed, whether in churches, chapels, schools, lecture-rooms, or theatres, to be successfully addressed they must be directly appealed to. No matter how good the feast, they will not come to it on mere sufferance. If, on looking round us, we find that the only things plainly and personally addressed to them, from quack medicines upwards, be bad or very defective things,—so much the worse for them and for all of us, and so much the more unjust and absurd the system which has haughtily abandoned a strong ground to such occupation.

We will add that we believe these people have a right to be amused. A great deal that we consider to be unreasonable, is written and talked about not licensing these places of entertainment. We have already intimated that we believe a love of dramatic representations to be an inherent principle in human nature. In most conditions of human life of which we have any knowledge, from the Greeks to the Bosjesmen, some form of dramatic representation has always obtained.[1] We have a vast respect for county magistrates, and for the lord chamberlain; but we render greater deference to such extensive and immutable experience, and think it will outlive the whole existing court and commission. We would assuredly not bear harder on the fourpenny theatre, than on the four shilling theatre, or the four guinea theatre; but we would decidedly interpose to turn to some wholesome account the means of instruction which it has at command, and we would make that office of Dramatic Licenser, which, like many other offices, has become a mere piece of Court favour and dandy conventionality, a real, responsible, educational trust. We would have it exercise a sound supervision over the lower drama, instead of stopping the career of a real work of art, as it did in the case of Mr. Chorley’s play at the Surrey Theatre, but a few weeks since, for a sickly point of form.

Footnote 1:

In the remote interior of Africa, and among the North American
Indians, this truth is exemplified in an equally striking manner. Who
that saw the four grim, stunted, abject Bush-people at the Egyptian
Hall—with two natural actors among them out of that number, one a male
and the other a female—can forget how something human and imaginative
gradually broke out in the little ugly man, when he was roused from
crouching over the charcoal fire, into giving a dramatic
representation of the tracking of a beast, the shooting of it with
poisoned arrows, and the creature’s death?

To return to MR. WHELKS. The audience, being able to see and hear, were very attentive. They were so closely packed, that they took a little time in settling down after any pause; but otherwise the general disposition was to lose nothing, and to check (in no choice language) any disturber of the business of the scene.

On our arrival, MR. WHELKS had already followed Lady Hatton the Heroine (whom we faintly recognised as a mutilated theme of the late THOMAS INGOLDSBY) to the ‘Gloomy Dell and Suicide’s Tree,’ where Lady H. had encountered the ‘apparition of the dark man of doom,’ and heard the ‘fearful story of the Suicide.’ She had also ‘signed the compact in her own Blood;’ beheld ‘the Tombs rent asunder;’ seen ‘skeletons start from their graves, and gibber Mine, mine, for ever!’ and undergone all these little experiences, (each set forth in a separate line in the bill) in the compass of one act. It was not yet over, indeed, for we found a remote king of England of the name of ‘Enerry,’ refreshing himself with the spectacle of a dance in a Garden, which was interrupted by the ‘thrilling appearance of the Demon.’ This ‘superhuman cause’ (with black eyebrows slanting up into his temples, and red-foil cheekbones,) brought the Drop-Curtain down as we took possession of our Shower-Bath.