The defective and inefficient sewerage of the metropolis precluded the possibility of any proper system of house drainage, for there being few sewers there were few drains, and consequently instead of drains from the houses to the sewers there were cesspools under almost every house. At the census of 1841 there were over 270,000 houses in the metropolis. It was known, then, that most houses had a cesspool under them, and that a large number had two, three, or four under them. Some of them were so huge that the only name considered adequate to describe them was "cess-lake." In many districts even the houses in which the better classes lived had neither drain nor sewer--nothing but cesspools; and many of the very best portions of the West End were "literally honeycombed" with them. And so jealous was the law as regarded the rights of private property that so late as 1845 owners were not to be interfered with as regarded even their cesspools, no matter how great the nuisance might be to their neighbours, no matter how dangerous to the community at large. Indeed, the Commissioners of Sewers had no power to compel landlords or house-owners to make drains into the sewers, and of their own motion the landlords would take no action. In the lower part of Westminster the Commissioners of Sewers had actually carried sewers along some of the streets, but they found "very little desire on the part of the landlords" to use them. "So long as the owners get their rent they do not care about drainage.... The landlords will not move; their property pays them very well; they will not put themselves to any expense; they are satisfied with it as it stands." Strange level of satisfaction! when one reads the following evidence given two years later before the Metropolitan Sewers Commission:-- "There are hundreds, I may say thousands, of houses in this metropolis which have _no drainage whatever_, and the greater part of them have stinking, overflowing cesspools. And there are also hundreds of streets, courts, and alleys, that have no sewers; and how the drainage and filth is cleared away, and how the poor miserable inhabitants live in such places it is hard to tell. "In pursuance of my duties, from time to time, I have visited very many places where filth was lying scattered about the rooms, vaults, cellars, areas, and yards, so thick, and so deep, that it was hardly possible to move for it. I have also seen in such places human beings living and sleeping in sunk rooms with filth from overflowing cesspools exuding through and running down the walls and over the floors.... The effects of the stench, effluvia, and poisonous gases constantly evolving from these foul accumulations were apparent in the haggard, wan, and swarthy countenances, and enfeebled limbs, of the poor creatures whom I found residing over and amongst these dens of pollution and wretchedness."[10] And this witness was unable to refrain from passing a verdict upon what he had seen:--