Sewers and the Old Hospital
24th July 2008
Part Three
Sometimes these stories write themselves. Also, you may not want to read this post while eating. :)
The London Asylum for the Insane started operations in the autumn of 1870, and according to Dr. Bucke started with 457 patients. Right from the start handling of sewage was an issue, as the nearby creek they dumped everything into would dry up in the summer, and the sewage would of course in the summer heat, just sit there and cause problems. Quoting directly form Dr. Bucke:
“Complaints and threatened prosecution were met by the establishment of a charcoal and gravel filter at the lowest point of the asylum land.”
I suspect one has to be pretty angry to want to sue an asylum in the 1870s, so the problem was likely as bad as we can imagine it to be. Today litigation is much more common place than it was in the past, and it was an action of very serious nature to undertake in those days.
Now some more direct quotes from Dr. Bucke, with a few comments from my peanut gallery:
“The population of London Asylum is in round numbers 1000 patients and 200 sane people.”
I suspect many of you will want to comment at this point, saying something to the effect “Yeah, sounds just like my workplace too.” But be nice. :)
“The quantity of sewage made in a day averages about 75,000 gallons.”
This figure is quite interesting as it indirectly gives us insight into just how much water was used on a daily basis per person. First you must know that this water includes everything from washing dishes and floors to laundry to toilets and sinks. The figure works out ot roughly 62.5 imperial gallons per person per day, or roughly 284 litres per person per day.
Now some modern day statistics. If you go here:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/water/images/manage/effic/a6f7e.htm
Which is the Environment Canada fresh water website, this chart will show you the “average” breakdown in percentage for use of water in Canadian households. For those of you who don’t want to click on the link, the break down is:
35% - Showers & Baths
30% - Toilets
20% - Laundry
10% - Kitchen and drinking water
5% - Cleaning
Sarcasm Mode = ON:
I suspect if you have one of those “low flush” or low water use toilets like I do in my house, that 30% figure for toilet use is likely more akin to 40 or 50%. Anything other than liquid waste always seems to take multiple flushes to send away. Complaints to various quarters of society about this issue or are almost always met with either denial or apologetics of some form, as any critical assement, direct or inferred, to the new secular religion of environmentalism is never completely acceptable in Canadian society as a general rule. Even the principal of freedom of speech seems to hit a glass fence in this regard.
The only exceptions to this rule I personally encounter, that is to say people who agree with my dismal appraisal of the situation, are those who wish to sell me a new toilet.
Sarcasm Mode = OFF
If you are into statistics, the average household water use per person, per day, in London, Ontario in 1999, according to the National Atlas of Canada was 172 litres of water per day. So roughly 100 litres of water per day less than what is being used in the 1870s.
However this is an apples vs oranges comparison, as we are looking at home use vs institutional use. Also we have to factor in today’s world, we wash our cars at car washes away form home, we eat out more often, so water used in food preparation and washing dishes takes place away from home, and so forth. Our true personal water use can be hard to track down. Still we can gain some insight, or at least some “feeling” as compared to today into just how much water & sewage use was generated roughly some 130 years ago.
“It requires two and a half hours each day to throw this on to the field, and within from half an hour to six hours (according to the season of the year and the moisture or dryness of the earth), after it is thrown into the trenches, it has been absorbed by the soil. It is never seen again by us; doubtless it reappears at the surface somewhere as pure spring water.”
The first time I read this article I happened to go to the grocery store later that evening. Walking along the isles I came across rows of bottled “Pure Spring water” of various brands and sizes. Although attitudes, testing and health standards are well above what they were 130 years ago, (at least I hope so), still on some levels I find my mind wandering into many strange and dark places, but out of polite restraint I shall not post those thoughts here.
Now we come to the point of this article, the punch line, the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment” as I once heard on a television show. (If you are not sure what that term means, Google it, but be aware you may encounter some profanity).
Another quote from Dr. Bucke:
“But seven or eight years ago the temptation to experiment with the field as a garden took possession of us.”
Yes, you read correctly, they started a garden, a very large garden. More from Dr. Bucke:
“For six years now we have cultivated this field to its full capacity with the result that we grow upon it year by year crops of fruit and vegetables to the value of over $200 per acre. So that over and above the disposal of our sewage in a cheap and cleanly manner the sewage itself is so used as to bring us in several hundred dollars a year more than the field in its original condition could possibly (without the sewage) be made to produce.”
A bit of analysis here. “Seven hundred dollars” is how much? I don’t know, but less than a thousand, and perhaps more than five hundred? At $200 per acre then we have a field of around three acres, or assuming roughly one hectare (1 hectare = 2.47105381 acre). I cannot say, only speculate at this point.
Dr. Bucke goes on to describe the crops grown:
“The crops we have grown upon the sewage field in the last six years have been as follows: Water and musk melons, squash, pumpkins, celery, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, radishes, chillies, lettuce, beans, cabbage, beets, carrots, corn, onions, turnips, salsify, sea-kale, asparagus, parsnips, strawberries. “
It’s what you don’t read that makes me think For example, a recent news story about salmonella poisoning from either tomatoes or peppers made me wonder back 130 years ago, how well did they wash their produce before consuming it? Also who did the weeding in the field and when was it done, just before or after they spread the sewage? Did the people who picked the crops get to wear rubber boots at least?
“Every one of the crops grown on the sewage field has done well. One of our most successful crops is melons, both musk and water, which we grow there every year. The yield is immense and we have grown better melons on this field than I have ever eaten grown elsewhere.”
This last line is important as it is the only written indication of where the crops went. If Dr. Bucke himself is eating (or claiming to eat) these fruits, then the main use was internal consumption inside the asylum. In the movie “Beautiful Dreamers” (IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101413/ ) , which is supposed to be based on the real history when the poet Walt Whitman visited Dr. Bucke up here in London, there is one scene where Walt Whitman is eating asparagus and butter. I guess anything tastes good in butter. :)
“We have had immense crops also of cabbage and celery and the quality of the crops has been much above the average.”
Once upon a time in this city, and in some ways, not too long ago, people used to dump everything down the drain, and I mean anything you could think of. Finished cleaning your paint brushes in turpentine or varsol, dump it down the drain. Have some left over paint, maybe some old lead based paint - dump it down the drain. As a child I saw a man change the oil in his car and dump the old oil down the street sewer. Another time I saw another man do the same thing, but this time down the drain of his old laundry tube.
For historical accuracy, at this point in time, there was not a distinction between sanitary and storm sewers. Storm sewers collect rain water from street gutters and send the water out to the Thames River, whereas sanitary sewers collect water from toilets and sinks, and send that waste out ot places like the Greenway Treatment Centre before discharge back into the river. Before this happened, all sewers were just one large collector, out to the river.
My mother recalls growing up as in Meaford, Ontario where a woolen mill would dump it’s used dye in the river after use. For a short time, the entire river would be all green or all red or some other colour. I do not know when the distinction between the two started, but I do know that even in my neighbourhood in the core area that it was sometimes into the 1870 or early 1980's before new sewers replaced and split into two the old sewer system.
Also during this time period in the 1870s, 80 and even 90s, treatments for certain diseases were very crude by today’s standards. For example the treatment for some “social diseases” was to mix a small amount of mercury with a shot of whiskey. The mercury being a poison would kill off the bacteria in some cases, but the long term effects on the patient were likely not the best. Unused medicines, if any, would of been tossed down the drain too in this time period, but people were more frugal then and I suspect there would of been very few unused medicines. That is, until in some cases, something better came along and made the old cure obsolete, at which point the whole bottle of the “old stuff” would be tossed out.
The item that could of been tossed down the drain is the one that troubles me the most. I know for certain (and how I know is another very long story for another day) that right up into the early 1960s’, at least one hospital in the city was sending it’s liquid and soft surgical waste down the sewer system. “Hard” surgical waste such as an amputation would, from what little I can find out, be either buried or incinerated, but this was only in some and not all cases.
Did this type of disposal take place out at Dr. Bucke’s hospital? Not only do I think so, I personally believe the exact same thing happened at all hospitals all across Ontario if not Canada. Again how I know this is a subject for another day.
Many people even today remember both the old gardens and the old orchards out at the Psychiatric hospital. Anybody I have (so far ) talked to about this story and remembers the gardens had no idea of the sewage being used, and when you consider what possibly could of been sent down the drain in that time period, you see old historical facts in a whole new light.
At this point I will wander off into the area of pure speculation. I remember a phrase I often heard during childhood, as many of you might of as well:
“You eat your vegetables young man, every last one!”
If only I knew then what I know now....
:)
have a good one
joe
PS - there are many more stories to be told about the old hospital, and I hope to do so some day....
