DOI issue:
February 22, 1868
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16881#0095
February 22, 1868.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
87
A Change has come over Jenkins’s Nightmare. A Horse cannot keep on bolting in Hanway Street for ever, even
in a Dream. We think that the Crisis of said Nightmare is approaching fast. It must end in one avay or another ;
WE HOPE IT WILL DO SO ERE JeNKINSS REASON, WHICH IS ALREADY TOTTERING, BE COMPLETELY DETHRONED.
A VILLAGE IN ARCADIA.
Mr. Punch lately excited a great, deal of black bile by comparing
ihe Black Country and New Zealand—by no means to the advantage
of the former, as respects the practical savagery of its masses. Without
bating a word he then wrote, he has since admitted that many of the
neglects, abominations and miseries he had deplored in the region of
•coal and iron might be found in other manufacturing districts. Oh,
those dreadful manufacturing districts ! Let us fly from them to the
pure air and primitive simplicity of the country ! “ 0 Rus quando te
>aspiciam! ” Come, Gentle Reader, and accompany your Punch in a
ramble through one of these regions of rural felicity.
The scene is Terling, an outlying village, some distance beyond rail-
ways, four miles to the west of Witharn, in the famous calf-county,
Essex. The country is flat and moist: water stagnates everywhere in
pools and ditches. The village lies scattered about the sloping banks
of the Ter, a rivulet flowing into the Blackwater. The houses are
most of them tumble-down lath-and-plast.er sheds, on a slight brick
basement; others all of wood, rotten and worm-eaten; a few, more
recent, of brick. The population, about 900, is made up of labourers
on 10s. or 12s. a week, and their families. Fresh meat they rarely
taste; a piece of bacon, or a herring, even, are occasional luxuries,
i Vegetables and bread-and-cheese are the staple diet.
I)r. Thorne, a Medical Inspector of the Privy Council Office,
reports of these Arcadians :—
“ From the description which I received of the villagers it appears also that they
have a tendency to isolate themselves, many hardly ever leaving their own parish,
even to visit a neighbouring village, and hence they intermarry to such an extent,
that ‘ half the people are related to each other.’ They are intellectually and
physically of a low type, there are among them eight or nine idiots and imbecile
children, all seem dull of comprehension, and ‘hardly a well-built man is to be
seen.’ An extraordinarily large number of them are the victims of phthisis and
scrofula ; this may be partly accounted for by the numerous inter-marriages,
partly by the moisture of the soil and the atmosphere, and the entire absence of all
| drainage. Ague was very prevalent throughout the neighbourhood until about the
year 1S40, hut it is now only seen on rare occasions. There is much intemperance in
the place, illegitimate children abound, sometimes many in one family, and so dis-
tinguishing a merit is it deemed for a girl to marry without being pregnant, that to
each such bride, a principal benefactress of the village is in the habit of giving
■a special wedding gift.”
So much for the Arcadians, and now for their Arcadia.
“ At Terling all the nuisances which are generally associated with outbreaks of
typhoid fever exist in great and unusual abundance, and all that is necessary to
produce contamination of air, soil, and water is to be found throughout the village.
The cottages are literally surrounded by every species of nuisance that it is possible
to conceive ; slops and ashes are thrown down on the unpaved yards and gardens ;
manure heaps, cesspools, and masses of decaying vegetable matter lie round about.
The privies, none of which have a properly constructed tank for the reception of
fecal matter, are in mauy instances in a most dilapidated state, and owing to their
being frequently constructed of wood, the back is in part broken away, and the
contents either lie in masses on the ground, or else are collected in large holes
which have been dug out for that purpose; and Lord Rayleigh having granted
allotments of ground to his tenants, they cherish and store up these foul accumula-
tions, nominally fortbc purposes of manure until they assume a magnitude which
none but those who have seen them can believe in. Surrounding one cottage, and
within a circumference of 20 feet of it, I found one pigstye, three manure heaps,
two cesspools, and a privy, the contents of which extended about 12 feet down an
adjoining field.”
Note that this passage in the report has the comical side-note—
“ Administration of sanitary law in the place.”
Now for the water with which these Arcadians wash down their
vegetarian diet:—
“ In the central part of the village, each cottage, or each group of two or three, ,
has its own well, and if the ground is at all undulating, it is invariably placed at
the lowest point. These wells, which are all sunk in the gravel, are as a rule un-
covered, and are merely lined with bricks placed loosely one above another, without
any cement or plaster ; their depth, which varies from about 5 feet to 40 feet, agrees
with the increase in the rise of ground. On a higher level than these wells, and
everywhere surrounding them, lie the various nuisances just enumerated; and
when we remember the loose and porous nature of the soil, and the ease with which
it admits of the percolation of fluids, the closeness of such sources of contamination
to the cottagers’ drinking water is seen to be fraught with the greatest danger.
Some of the cottages lying in the outskirts of the village have no wells, and those
who reside in them are therefore compelled to fetch their drinking water from ponds
in the adjoining fields. All the drainage from the field ditches, and at times from
the roadsides runs into them, the cattle frequent them, and in summer they are, to
use the expression of a resident, ‘ nothing better than stinking pools.’ In only one
instance did I find that the river water was used for drinking purposes, but in this
case at a point where the stream was little better than a sewer.”
Can we wonder if King Typhus, looking out for a place for a revel,
should have pitched on Terling ? He had paid flying visits to it in his
frequent “progresses” through our happy island, but this time he
87
A Change has come over Jenkins’s Nightmare. A Horse cannot keep on bolting in Hanway Street for ever, even
in a Dream. We think that the Crisis of said Nightmare is approaching fast. It must end in one avay or another ;
WE HOPE IT WILL DO SO ERE JeNKINSS REASON, WHICH IS ALREADY TOTTERING, BE COMPLETELY DETHRONED.
A VILLAGE IN ARCADIA.
Mr. Punch lately excited a great, deal of black bile by comparing
ihe Black Country and New Zealand—by no means to the advantage
of the former, as respects the practical savagery of its masses. Without
bating a word he then wrote, he has since admitted that many of the
neglects, abominations and miseries he had deplored in the region of
•coal and iron might be found in other manufacturing districts. Oh,
those dreadful manufacturing districts ! Let us fly from them to the
pure air and primitive simplicity of the country ! “ 0 Rus quando te
>aspiciam! ” Come, Gentle Reader, and accompany your Punch in a
ramble through one of these regions of rural felicity.
The scene is Terling, an outlying village, some distance beyond rail-
ways, four miles to the west of Witharn, in the famous calf-county,
Essex. The country is flat and moist: water stagnates everywhere in
pools and ditches. The village lies scattered about the sloping banks
of the Ter, a rivulet flowing into the Blackwater. The houses are
most of them tumble-down lath-and-plast.er sheds, on a slight brick
basement; others all of wood, rotten and worm-eaten; a few, more
recent, of brick. The population, about 900, is made up of labourers
on 10s. or 12s. a week, and their families. Fresh meat they rarely
taste; a piece of bacon, or a herring, even, are occasional luxuries,
i Vegetables and bread-and-cheese are the staple diet.
I)r. Thorne, a Medical Inspector of the Privy Council Office,
reports of these Arcadians :—
“ From the description which I received of the villagers it appears also that they
have a tendency to isolate themselves, many hardly ever leaving their own parish,
even to visit a neighbouring village, and hence they intermarry to such an extent,
that ‘ half the people are related to each other.’ They are intellectually and
physically of a low type, there are among them eight or nine idiots and imbecile
children, all seem dull of comprehension, and ‘hardly a well-built man is to be
seen.’ An extraordinarily large number of them are the victims of phthisis and
scrofula ; this may be partly accounted for by the numerous inter-marriages,
partly by the moisture of the soil and the atmosphere, and the entire absence of all
| drainage. Ague was very prevalent throughout the neighbourhood until about the
year 1S40, hut it is now only seen on rare occasions. There is much intemperance in
the place, illegitimate children abound, sometimes many in one family, and so dis-
tinguishing a merit is it deemed for a girl to marry without being pregnant, that to
each such bride, a principal benefactress of the village is in the habit of giving
■a special wedding gift.”
So much for the Arcadians, and now for their Arcadia.
“ At Terling all the nuisances which are generally associated with outbreaks of
typhoid fever exist in great and unusual abundance, and all that is necessary to
produce contamination of air, soil, and water is to be found throughout the village.
The cottages are literally surrounded by every species of nuisance that it is possible
to conceive ; slops and ashes are thrown down on the unpaved yards and gardens ;
manure heaps, cesspools, and masses of decaying vegetable matter lie round about.
The privies, none of which have a properly constructed tank for the reception of
fecal matter, are in mauy instances in a most dilapidated state, and owing to their
being frequently constructed of wood, the back is in part broken away, and the
contents either lie in masses on the ground, or else are collected in large holes
which have been dug out for that purpose; and Lord Rayleigh having granted
allotments of ground to his tenants, they cherish and store up these foul accumula-
tions, nominally fortbc purposes of manure until they assume a magnitude which
none but those who have seen them can believe in. Surrounding one cottage, and
within a circumference of 20 feet of it, I found one pigstye, three manure heaps,
two cesspools, and a privy, the contents of which extended about 12 feet down an
adjoining field.”
Note that this passage in the report has the comical side-note—
“ Administration of sanitary law in the place.”
Now for the water with which these Arcadians wash down their
vegetarian diet:—
“ In the central part of the village, each cottage, or each group of two or three, ,
has its own well, and if the ground is at all undulating, it is invariably placed at
the lowest point. These wells, which are all sunk in the gravel, are as a rule un-
covered, and are merely lined with bricks placed loosely one above another, without
any cement or plaster ; their depth, which varies from about 5 feet to 40 feet, agrees
with the increase in the rise of ground. On a higher level than these wells, and
everywhere surrounding them, lie the various nuisances just enumerated; and
when we remember the loose and porous nature of the soil, and the ease with which
it admits of the percolation of fluids, the closeness of such sources of contamination
to the cottagers’ drinking water is seen to be fraught with the greatest danger.
Some of the cottages lying in the outskirts of the village have no wells, and those
who reside in them are therefore compelled to fetch their drinking water from ponds
in the adjoining fields. All the drainage from the field ditches, and at times from
the roadsides runs into them, the cattle frequent them, and in summer they are, to
use the expression of a resident, ‘ nothing better than stinking pools.’ In only one
instance did I find that the river water was used for drinking purposes, but in this
case at a point where the stream was little better than a sewer.”
Can we wonder if King Typhus, looking out for a place for a revel,
should have pitched on Terling ? He had paid flying visits to it in his
frequent “progresses” through our happy island, but this time he