A brief narrative of the commencement and progress of the fetid irrigations and foul water pits around the city of Edinburgh : with proofs of their operation in creating nuisance, and in producing disease.

  • Ellis Daniel.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A brief narrative of the commencement and progress of the fetid irrigations and foul water pits around the city of Edinburgh : with proofs of their operation in creating nuisance, and in producing disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Fletcher of Saltoun ; and the remainder to the eastward of the palace—beyond which there is a continued series to the east of Jock’s Lodge. In collecting this soil, the foul water is let into the tanks by sluices, where it is suffered to remain till the soil, held in suspension by the water, is deposited in the shape of soft half-liquid mud. When this muddy or sludgy deposit has obtained consistence enough to admit of being lifted with shovels, the surface water is drawn off, and the mud is thrown out on the banks till it gives off a farther portion of water. In the course of a few weeks, it has acquired consistence enough to be carted off for the purpose of manure. The operations of thus collecting and preparing manure in these ponds, commences generally in September, or early in October, when the foul water is no longer required for the purpose of irrigation ; and they are continued till the April following, when the water is again wanted for irrigation. Thus, for five or six months, in the spring and summer season of the year, says Mr. Ramsay, you have the process of irrigation going on, with all its offensive exhalations, in the manner already described ; and for the remainder of the year you have the contents of the tanks fermenting around you, with all the accompanying nuisance of preparing and and carting off the soil which has been deposited in them.— (Papers, p. 65.) On the farm of Lochend, belonging to the Earl of Moray, there is a regular Manure manufactory, of which a gentle- man, intimately conversant with the operation in all its branches, and who has been an attentive observer of its rise and progress, gives the following information.—When the tanks were first formed they received principally the surface-water, and what it brought with it, as at that time the principal part of the soil of Edinburgh was carried away by carts ; but since the introduction of w'ater into almost all the houses, and of soil-pipes communicating with the com- mon sewers made in the Cowgate and the North Back of the Canongate, the whole of the soil has been thus conveyed ;