No. 9 Note to Page 128, on Sir Christopher Wren’s Plan for Extra Mural Interments, and for Excluding Graveyards on the Rebuilding of the City of London
Whosoever examines the various modern plans for the improvement of the metropolis, and compares them with the plan of the architect of St. Paul’s, will see in them only small approximations to his conceptions, and that they only provide for a few large openings, without reference to any general sanitary considerations, and without providing for the mass of the population, whereas he was for “excluding all narrow dark alleys without thoroughfares, and courts,” such as are commonly left untouched in the new lines of streets; and he had provided that not only “all church yards,” but “all trades that use great fires, or yield noisome smells, be placed out of town.” If, as is confidently maintained on such evidence as that before referred to, ante p. 22 and 25, the proportions of death might even now be reduced by one-third in the city of London by better drainage and other sanitary measures (independently of the removal of those courts and alleys, &c.), on the evidence of the proportions of mortality actually prevalent in districts such as he would have constructed, facilitating, and almost necessitating by regular lines an early and more systematic drainage below the streets, as well as a free and copious flow of fresh air from above, it may be as confidently maintained that the mortality and numbers of burials would have been reduced in like proportions from the period of the rebuilding of the city. The whole of the deformed area stands as a monument of the disasters incurred to the living generation, by a weak and careless yielding, not of the present to the future, but of the present itself, to blind and ignorant impulses, which have entailed immense demoralization, waste of health, and life and money, and a large proportion of the evil which now depresses the sanitary condition of the population of that particular district which his improvements would have covered. “The practicability of this whole scheme,” says the Parentalia, “without loss to any man or infringement of any property, was at that time fully demonstrated, and all material objections fully weighed and answered; the only, and as it happened, insurmountable difficulty, was the obstinate averseness of a great part of the citizens to alter their old properties, and to recede from building their houses again on the old ground and foundations, as also the distrust in many, and unwillingness to give up their properties, though for a time only, into the hands of public trustees or commissioners, till they might be dispensed to them again, with more advantages to themselves than otherwise was possible to be effected; for such a method was proposed, that by an equal distribution of ground into buildings, leaving out churchyards, gardens, &c. (which are to be removed out of the town), there would have been sufficient room both for the augmentation of the streets, disposition of the churches, halls, and all public buildings, and to have given every proprietor full satisfaction; and although few proprietors should happen to have been seated again directly upon the very same ground they had possessed before the fire, yet no man would have been thrust any considerable distance from it, but been placed, at least, as conveniently, and sometimes more so, to their own trades than before.” “By these means the opportunity, in a great degree, was lost of making the new city the most magnificent, as well as commodious, for health and trade of any upon earth, and the surveyor being thus confined and cramped in his designs, it required no small labour and skill to model the city in the manner it has since appeared.” The plan was approved by the King and the Parliament, but opposed by the corporation, who, it is stated in a history of the city institutions, by one of its officers, conceived that they would have lost population and trade by the plan; i. e., they would have been spread beyond its jurisdiction. But on both points this policy was dreadfully mistaken. Only a burthensome population is obtained by overcrowding, that is to say, a larger than the natural proportions of the young and dependent, of widowhood, and early and destitute orphanage, and of sickly and dependent, and prematurely aged adults. As an example of the coincidence of pecuniary economy with enlarged sanitary measures, it may be mentioned, that it is shown in a report on a survey made for sanitary purposes by Mr. Butler Williams of the College of Civil Engineers, Putney, that a loss of not less than 80,000l. per annum is now incurred in carriage traffic alone on two main lines of street, namely, Holborn Hill to the Bank, and Ludgate Hill to the same point, being made crooked and with steep acclivities instead of straight and level, as Sir Christopher Wren designed them. It is to be regretted that the discussions on the rebuilding of Hamburg have presented an instance of a similar conflict of local interests, which, in a few instances, has been so far successful as to preserve several dense masses of crowded and unwholesome habitations for the poorer classes, in the face of the recent experience of the sort of population which, to the surprise of the better classes of inhabitants, issued out of them and made the city at the time of its destruction a scene of plunder and anarchy more terrible than the fire itself.