The first volume (later reprinted as two volumes octavo with considerable differences) is here present in its folio format. In this format, with considerable extra material and illustration it would have been circulated only to a small number of officials actively concerned. The second volume with an index with separate titlepage published one year after the first volume has not been seen in octavo format. Both are very rare. Chadwick was not on the Commission and his name does not appear on it. It was, however, very largely his inspiration and doing. "Though not named in the Commission" he told Napier, "I was compelled to attend to it, write their questions, take the examinations and prepare their report, so that nearly two thirds of these volumes are in my hand-writing, for, which I am to get only posthumous credit, if at all." In planning and conducting the Enquiry, he was the habitual assistant of the Chairman and Secretary, he 'precognized' all the witnesses for examination, accompanied several of the Commissioners in their tours of inspection, and when the Commissioners reported, its First Report and the Recommendations of the Second were of his drafting. It was, then, no mere courtesy which prompted Lord Buccleuch, the Chairman, to give full acknowledgement to Chadwick's contribution. See S. E. Finer The Life and Times of Edwin Chadwick p. 234-5. In rapid succession Chadwick followed up his great but tentative report of 1842 (PMM 313) with two others. In 1843 came his Supplementary Report on Intramural Interment; and then, thanks to the public pressure stirred up by this and the 1842 Report, the First and Second Reports on the Health of Towns, in 1844 and 1845. These were to form the basis for all subsequent legislation during the 'forties and fifties. Among their aims was to determine the best practical ways of applying the principles of the 1842 Report. The Commissioners included Sir Henry De la Beche, Lyon Playfair, D.B. Reid, Professor Richard Owen, Robert Stephenson, and william Cubitt. Of the sixty-five witnesses fourteen were surveyors or Commissioners of Sewers, ten were registrars or Poor Law Officials, nine were engineers, six were architects, and one, Thomas Hawkesley, was a waterworks engineer. Chadwick's emphasis was on environmental improvement rather than curative medicine, hence the medical witnesses were greatly outnumbered by the engineers. Among those giving evidence were T. Southwood Smith; Neil Arnott; Thomas Hawksley, Robert Thom, Thomas Wicksteed, Engineer of the East London Water Works, William Chadwell Mylne, Engineer of the New River Company, John Roe, the Holborn sewer designer, Thomas Cubitt and Joseph Whitworth. The Commission also received reports from fifty of England's largest towns, containing between them a sixth of the entire population. Of these "there was hardly one in which the drainage was good, and only six where the water supply was good; in thirteen the water was indifferent, in the seven the drainage. In forty-two the drainage, and in thrifty-one the water supply was supremely bad. The proportion of privies to houses was appalling. There were parts of Manchester where thirty-three privies had to supply 7,095 persons - a proportion of one privy to every 215 persons." Such a state of affairs was cited not as an isolated instance, but as exemplifying a general deficiency. At Bristol, while Dr. Playfair was examining overflowing privies, Sir Henry De la Beche was obliged to stand at the end of the alley and vomit. In all important points the commission confirmed Chadwick's views and the principles contained in the 1842 Sanitary Report, which was hardly surprising in view of the fact that the Commissioners, while undoubtedly the leaders in their respective fields, were nonetheless largely Chadwick's nominees, just as the witnesses were to a great extent selected by him. The first Report was of an interim nature and was presented in July 1844. The second, in February 1845, embodied the conclusions. They illustrate firstly Chadwick's obsession with the sanitation of London and his desire to bring about a single integrated system of drainage, sewerage, and street cleansing, fed by a constant high pressure water supply. Secondly they mark the completion of Chadwick's thought on sanitation. The reports stressed that the water supply (needed to scour the drains and flush the sewers) was supplied by private companies on a costly intermittent system at exorbitant prices and in quite inadequate quantities. From this moment Chadwick became fired by the desire, above all other things, to consolidate under one Crown-appointed Commission the drainage, sewerage, street cleansing and water supply of the whole gigantic Metropolitan area; and himself to have the handling of it. Thirdly they provide valued propaganda, showing that sanitation need not be excessively expensive, and in consequence the Health of Towns Association was formed in December 1844, along with several similar societies. And finally, the onus was put fair and square on the Government which, as a result of various vested interests did little. Nonetheless so important were Chadwick's recommendations considered, that the 1869 Royal Commission reprinted them in full. This first report contains a mass of sensational and horrifying information in the form of direct evidence, reports, and statistical graphs and tables, Among the plates there is a gruesome double-folding litho birds-eye view of an alley of terrible cottages, complete with cesspool, at Preston, a couple of forbidding-looking mills belching smoke in the background. Plans of them form another. There are also plates and coloured plans of back-to-backs, and pictures of and plan of projected public baths at Ashtom-under-Lyne. For more about these very important reports see Book 5 in S. E. Finer The life and times of Sir Edwin Chadwick, 1952.

Originally in the Library of the Metropolitan Board of Works, Engineers Department with the old neat oval stamp on many of the title pages.

Originally in the Library of the Metropolitan Board of Works, Engineers Department with the old neat oval stamp on many of the title pages. In 1846 William Haywood at the age of twenty-four, a man of considerable abilities, was appointed full time surveyor to the Commissioners of Sewers. He immediately drew up competent surveys, began to clean out cess pools by machine, and in 1848 embarked on a plan for flushing the sewers. Haywood was in fact responsible for introducing a good sewer system and sanitation to the City of London and he worked in close co-operation with Sir John Simon. The City, it seems, regarded Haywood's as the more important contribution; in 1853 Simon's salary was ú800 a year whilst Haywood's salary was increased to ú1,200 - a token of the City's growing regard for his sanitary work. Henry Letheby, of the London Hospital, regularly advised the Corporation on Gas and other questions. He stood against Simon in the election for the Medical Officer of Health for London in 1848, his candidature supported by the Lancet. In October 1849 he succeeded John Simon as Medical Officer of Health for the City of London. Unlike Simon he was uninspired, plodding and efficient and possessed just those qualities of meticulous, patient administrator which Simon lacked. The result was that the Second Officership of Health in the years 1855-74 produced several very solid achievements. Letheby, in 1857, secured a special Lodging House Inspector and, in 1866, four full time Sanitary Inspectors and was thus able to make the supervision system against the evils of bad housing much more effective. His achievement was to fulfil Simon's `visionary' programme of 1849 and the City long remained the model for Sanitation. See Royston Lambert, Sir John Simon p.214-6.

The volume starts with a manuscript letter from Sir George Grey, signed by Waddington to the Secretary of the West Middlesex Water Company conveying a memorandum on the proposed Water Bill. The second item in the volume is the printed memorandum. Then follows an answer of the directors of the West Middlesex Water Company to Sir George Grey's memorandum. The Government Water Bill was introduced by Sir George Grey on April 29th 1851. It effectively frustrated the plans proposed by Chadwick, Simon and the Board of Health. It declined to enforce constant supply on the grounds that it could not accept `the wholesale supersession of existing equipment'. The Government proposed that all existing companies should be amalgamated under Government control. The Bill was furiously attacked by The Times as a scheme for confirming the private companies in all their privileges of monopoly and extortion. See Finer Life and Times of Edwin Chadwick p.407-409.

Thomas Hawksley was amongst those who gave evidence.

In the first piece J. W. Bazalgette, Thomas Brassey, Thomas Hawkesley, William Heywood, Isambard Kingdon Brunnel, gave evidence. With the ownership inscription J. W. Bazalgette signed with his annotations.

John Leslie systematically opposed Edwin Chadwick, who was effectively the leader of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. See S. E. Finer, The Life and Times of Edwin Chadwick, p.356-370 and 372-380. Leslie's move to reject the report of Bidder, Hawksley and Bazalgette.

"During the years in which the intercepting sewers were being laid the British Public was bewitched by the fantasy of profits to be made from the use of sewage as fertilizer. With Chadwick this prospect had been and obsession; and with newspaper editors, Members of Parliament, and public men generally hopes of profitable utilization ran high". The most persistent applicants for the concession to utilize sewage were Messrs. Napier and Hope. Thomas Ellis was another competitor. Joseph Bazalgette found Napier and Hope's proposal as far as its engineering character and details are concerned, "thoroughly practical" and recommended it to the Metropolitan Board of Works. (See Bazalgette's report above.) The City Corporation and the Board of Works foresaw great profits and contended that London sewage ought not to go for less than ú2 million per year! In the event the concession was granted to Napier and Hope and was to last for fifty years. By the summer of 1870 it was clear that the company had no future and it proved a costly venture for promoters and investors alike. See David Owen The Government of Victorian London. 1855-1889. p.63-64.