Schemes for the interception, conveyance, and utilisation of the sewage & drainage of Glasgow / by James Brown.

  • Brown, James.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Schemes for the interception, conveyance, and utilisation of the sewage & drainage of Glasgow / by James Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    UTILISATION OF SEWAGE & DRAINAGE. The following communication on the disposal of our City Sewage and Drainage was, for the most part, drafted immediately after the issue of Messrs. Bateman & Bazalgette's Report, and addressed in the form of a letter to the Honourable the Lord Provost. The reason for so doing was, that on perusing these gentlemen's report, it appeared to the author of this communication, that the proposal embraced in that report was, in principle, substantially the same as that of a scheme he had devised in 1854, viz.: the discharge of sewage upon open porous land for filtration, leaving the solids, &c, to become mixed up with soil for agricultural enrichment; the desideratum being the existence or possible improvising of such land of sufficient area and contiguity. This scheme he was in the habit of describing to friends when passing up and down the river in that and subsequent years j and among these to the late Mr. James Smith, architect, who, approving of it, took certain levels and measurements in relation thereto. These he afterwards submitted to the editor of the Bulletin newspaper, who, in a leader in his impression of 22nd July, 1858, put the scheme to a certain extent before the public, to which the writer replied on the same date, offering some criticisms, and supplying additional details, which appeared in that paper on the 28th of the same month.* As an additional premise, it is proper to observe that, were any one of the numerous schemes of late promulgated in itself sufficiently compre- hensive and practical for such a city as Glasgow, the writer would have shrunk from obtruding his own upon public or official notice. At the same time, it is his duty to frankly declare, that, in his humble judgment, many of those schemes, and much in them all, exhibit intelligent grasp of the subject, much reflective talent, and practical application. While submitting his own, he begs to be understood as pretending to neither engineering skill nor ability, but gives it on its own merits, and for what it Ls worth, leaving levels and measurements, and details necessarily left out in a mere general outline, to those whose business it is professionally to deal with them. The schemes to which reference has just been made, and the discussions which have followed upon them, haA^e suggested the propriety of putting the scheme embraced in this communication in a twofold or alternative form; but before propounding it, it is necessary to its enunciation to notice some of the features and defects of the schemes referred to. The first of these, and generally characteristic of them all, is the want of provision for intercepting and carrying off the sewage and drainage of populous places eastwards of the city, and for disposing of the refuse waters from public works on the upper reaches of the river. Concerning * The author begs here to supply an omission in his first issue. In the autumn of 186S, 4MB mMmr having lost his copies of the Bulletin referred to, he applied to a member of Mr. Smith's family, in the hope that they might be among his family papers, and left with him the draft letter, with whom and his friends it lay for some weeks. He was disappointed in his hope, and has to express his obligation to Quentin Dick, Esq., writer, for the handsome maimer in which, in reply to advertise- ment in February, 1869, he obliged him with examination of the office file of the Bulletin in his possession, and permission to copy his letters.