Specification of Edward Jones : draining and collecting sewage, &c.

  • Jones, Edward
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of Edward Jones : draining and collecting sewage, &c. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Jones Apparatus for Draining and Collecting Sewage, Qc. Fig. 1, Sheet No.l, is a plan of streets with air-shafts marked theron a, a, seen in the center of the great thoroughfares of London, from which, as well as from the hundreds of thousands of inlets, noxious vapours continually arise, from the sewers, and more particularly so in the decline of the year, when a 5 heavy and dense atmosphire prevails, which weighs and presses out the deadly miasms from their hiding places. And as it is invereably the case that the number of deaths greatly increase simultaneously with the altered con¬ dition of the atmosphire relatively considered with the state of the sewer gases, the inquiery may well be made as to the real cause of this increase of 10 mortality. Dr. Letheby, the medical officer of health for the City, in treating of the putrefactive decomposition of sewage observes, “ In seeking to know what part of the sewage it is which undergoes the process of decomposition, I have assertained that it is not the liquid part which continues to ferment, but the 15 solid, and this keeps up the putrefactive action for months, evolving large quantities of ammonia, sulfurated hydrogen, marsh gas, and carbonic acid. It is the sedimentary matter, therefore, which is the chief cause of the offensive effluvium. The Dr. again observes, This part of the enquiery is of great importance, for very little can be done in the way of providing a remedy for 20 the sewage miasms untill something is definitely known of their nature and composition; hitherto this subject has been treated emperically, and the suggestions which have been made from time to time for ventilating the sewers and destroying the foul gases, have had no foundation in a right knowledge of the things to be delt with. The history, therefere, of these 25 schemes is a history of unprofetable failures, and of no practical value beyond that of informing us what cannot be accomplished. We now proceed to describe the remedy which it is believed will be found practically valuable, simple, and effectual. Fig. 2, 2, are two man¬ holes, one at each end of the street giving a longitudinal view of a branch 20 drain, and a section of main drain, a, a, are the man-hole doors; apian is seen under Fig. 6, with a strong ring to lift the same from its place, when the tanks are to be lifted out. The tanks are made smaller at bottom for the more easy discharge of their contents, and in order to facilitate the same a lose false botton may be set therin. The grating c, c, c, consists 35 of a double row of bars, with a space between to receive a chamber made of wire, into which granulated burnt brick off charcoal will be placed, as a filtering and deodorising medium, by which means the solid sewage is seperated and caused to lodge in the tank ; d, d, are flood-gates made to werk up and down by rack and pinion, to which is attached a ratchet wheel
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