Two other historic facts find a place here. In March, 1782, the right of toll was discontinued, so that Londoners were separated from a direct personal interest in the welfare of their bridge, just as free education separates parents from their most sacred duties. Eight years earlier, in 1774, the waterworks of little windmills were destroyed by fire, after bickering for 192 years under the shadow of Old London Bridge. The end was drawing near. New London Bridge was begun on March 15th, 1824. George Rennie made the designs after studying the Bridge of Augustus at Rimini, and his brother, Sir John Rennie, directed the workmen on a site 200 feet west of the Old Bridge; just as Peter Colechurch crossed the Thames a little west of the earliest known timber bridge built by Londoners.[89] It took only seven years to carry out the designs of Rennie, whereas Colechurch and his successor, the Frenchman Isembert, were busy for thirty-three years. On August 1st, 1831, New London Bridge was opened by William IV, and by the second year of Victoria’s reign the old bridge was dead and gone. It had taken a long time to murder her, fragment by fragment, but yet she lived almost as long as the first Westminster Bridge, designed by M. Labelye, which lasted from 1750 to 1853. [Illustration: NEW LONDON BRIDGE, DESIGNED BY GEORGE RENNIE, AND CARRIED OUT BY HIS BROTHER, SIR JOHN RENNIE. OPENED TO THE PUBLIC IN 1831] One purpose of Old London Bridge has been forgotten: she was an arcaded dam, and she deepened the water for shipping on the eastern side. According to Arber’s reprint of “Euphues and his England,” there were twenty arches in all, “whereof each one is made of excellent freestone squared, every one of them being three-score foote in height, and full twenty in distance one from an other.” This latter statement is incorrect. The arches ranged in width from 18 feet to 32 feet 6 inches, and the piers varied in breadth from 25 to 34 feet; they were raised on strong elm piles, covered with thick planks bolted together, and they occupied not less than two-thirds of the waterway. Yet modern engineers played the fool with this ancient breakwater. Several arches were thrown into one large span, so the Thames poured through the bridge with an increased and uneven force; the ground current developed a scour that dug deep holes under the piers, and into these holes tons of stuff were poured ineffectually, for the scour continued to undercut the foundations. Even Labelye’s bridge at Westminster was affected very much by this new devilry in the ground current of the Thames.