| London's sanitation problems |
|  The first record of piped water and an underground drainage system was under the Palace of Westminster and dates from the reign of Henry III, but it was not until Henry VIII's Parliament passed a Bill of Sewers, that a serious attempt was made to cope with the disposal of human waste. The problem persisted, however, and in 1660 Samuel Pepys complained that his neighbour's "house of office" had overflowed into his cellar "which doth trouble me" he continued, with masterly understatement. From time to time, up to the 186Os, various acts were passed, and commissions established, in an attempt to deal with the matter, but none of the solutions was far-reaching enough to get to grips with the problems caused by the steady growth of London.With a low population, the waterways were able to absorb the pollution without any serious detriment to the health of the populace, who continued to use the streams and rivers not only as the means of disposing of waste of all kinds, but as a source of drinking water. As London grew in size, however, these waterways became increasingly unable to cope with the associated growth in the flow of sewage, but it was with the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of London-based industries and growth of the metropolitan population required to operate the machinery, that the sanitary problem became a serious danger to health. The unprecedented expansion of cheap housing associated with this growth and the primitive sanitary facilities and methods of disposal, together with the use of horse-drawn transport with its own particular smells, made the large metropolitan centre malodorous to a degree. By 1810, the one million population of London was served by 200,000 cess-pits.
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