──────────────────────────────────────┬──────────┬──────────┬────────── │ 1905[2] │ 1915[3] │ 1920[4] ──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────── Population discharging raw sewage into│ │ │ the sea or tidal estuaries │ 6,500,000│ 8,500,000│ Population discharging raw sewage into│ │ │ inland streams or lakes │20,400,000│26,400,000│ Population connected to systems where │ │ │ sewage is treated in some way │ 1,100,000│ 6,900,000│ Population connected with sewerage │ │ │ systems │28,000,000│41,800,000│46,300,000 ──────────────────────────────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────
The development of the London sewers was commenced early in the Nineteenth Century. The sewerage system of Hamburg, Germany, was laid out in 1842 by Lindley, an English engineer who with other English engineers performed similar work in other German cities because of their earlier experience in English communities. Berlin’s present system dates from 1860. The construction of storm-water drains in Paris dates from 1663.[5] They were intended only as street drains but are now included in the comprehensive system of the city. The first comprehensive sewerage system in the United States was designed by E. S. Chesbrough for the City of Chicago in 1855. Previous to this time sewers had been installed in an indifferent manner and without definite plan. The installation of a comprehensive sewerage system in Baltimore in 1915 marks the completion of installation of sewerage systems in all large American cities.
In the early days of sewerage design it was considered unsafe to discharge domestic wastes into the sewers as the concentration of so much sewage was expected to create great nuisances and dangers to health. That the fear that the concentration of large quantities of sewage would create a nuisance was not ill founded is proven by the conditions on the Thames at London in 1858–59. Dr. Budd states:[6]
For the first time in the history of man, the sewage of nearly three millions of people had been brought to seethe and ferment under a burning sun in one vast open _cloaca_ lying in their midst.
The result we all know. Stench so foul we may well believe had never before ascended to pollute this lower air. Never before at least had a stink risen to the height of an historic event.... For months together the topic almost monopolized the public prints.... ‘India is in revolt and the Thames stinks’ were the two great facts coupled together by a distinguished foreign writer, to mark the climax of a national humiliation.[7]