Sewer manure. Statement of the course of investigation & results of experiments as to the means of removing the refuse of towns in water, and applying it as manure : with suggestions of further trial works (for voluntary adoption) of the practicability of applying sewer water as manures by subterranean channels; prepared for the consideration of the Committee of Works / by Edwin Chadwick, Esq., C.B., with appendices.

  • Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sewer manure. Statement of the course of investigation & results of experiments as to the means of removing the refuse of towns in water, and applying it as manure : with suggestions of further trial works (for voluntary adoption) of the practicability of applying sewer water as manures by subterranean channels; prepared for the consideration of the Committee of Works / by Edwin Chadwick, Esq., C.B., with appendices. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    about eighty feet above the rest of the farm. He found that under that eighty feet pressure, by means of the hose, with the labour of two men, one to remove the hose and another to direct the nozzle, they could distribute about 2,000 gallons of liquid manure in an hour. That is what he deemed to be a sufficient dressing of concen¬ trated liquid manure for grass land. The distribution was effected by means of a hose two inches and a half diameter and 800 yards long. Of course the rate of delivery from the jet varied with the inclination of the land. The important result obtained was this, that it was accomplished by the labour of two men; and suppose we give twopence halfpenny or threepence an hour, that delivery of the 2,000 gallons was accomplished for six¬ pence. They tried the water-cart (this was on land immediately adjacent to the farm): the water-cart, and expense of delivery of the same quantity by that, was, I think, about 5s.; the expense of leading and spreading stable dung was about 11s. That was about the relative mechanical cost, 6d. for the delivery by the hose, 5s. by the water-cart, 11s. or 12s. in the distribution of stable manure.—(Vide Appendix, in the account of this experiment as given by Mr Thomson.) I also directed the attention of Mr Philip Holland, the Surgeon, of Manchester, who has so efficiently promoted the cause of sanitary improvement in that district, to the use of the hose and jet in the distribution of sewer manure. He was well aware of the value of improvements in the mechanical processes of removing and applying rapidly town manures, as means for preventing disease. He pursued the experi¬ ments with great labour and very successful results. He invented machinery for applying the manure, by steam pumps, from a barge or river. He dilutes night soil, or other town manure, in a tender, and by means of a hose and jet, worked by a steam-engine of nine-horse power, distributes as much as three hundred loads per diem. He found it practicable to use the hose on flat land, in lengths of one thou¬ sand yards. Worse land — heavy undrained clay, surcharged with water, in a moist climate, with upwards of forty inches annual fall of rain — could scarcely be chosen for the application of manure in the liquid form, yet its fertilising power was everywhere superior to the ordinary top-dressings with manure in the solid form. One most important sanitary result obtained from these experiments, and cor¬ roborated by subsequent experience in other places, was, that after about three loads of nigdit soil and urine in solution with about seventeen loads of water had been applied to an acre of land, in little more than half an hour no offensive smell was per¬ ceptible— indeed no smell whatsover to suggest what had been done. Most persons may be aware of what would be the nuisance created for days by the spreading of the ordinary quantity of that manure undiluted upon the surface as a top-dressing. The following questions, which I put to Mr James Dean, an agricultural engi- (2)