A painting of Lower Manor House (Rotherhithe) 1826, by George Yates

I haven't been able to find out anything much about this building, but it is a beauty by George Yates (now in the Southwark Library collection).  I must go back and label all the posts where I have used George Yates paintings.  He painted extensively in the Rotherhithe area, and I have been unable to find out anything about him either, so there are two minor enigmas in this post:  both the painter and his subject matter. 

According to the Portcities website, the Lower Manor House stood very near the corner of Rotherhithe New Road with Lower Road, also near today's Rotherhithe Old Road.  This is now the notorious one-way system, and one of the most congested parts of Rotherhithe, but it was very rural when Yates painted the house in 1826, and very isolated.  Its nearest neighbour was a windmill.  Later, it would have been located near to the St Helena's Gardens and Tavern.  The 1843 B.R. Davies Map shows a possible candidate for Lower Manor House, and at that time the entire area was still very rural with market gardens and orchards.  The house was still standing by the mid to late 1860s, but there is no sign of what happened to it at that point.  Looking at the 1868 Ordnance Survey map of the area, which doesn't record a building of this shape in this sort of garden space, I suspect that it was demolished for low cost housing, which was swarming through the area at that time and eventually consumed the well known St Helena's Gardens (which was still open in 1868, but was right on the edge of the new housing developments, and was completely built over by 1914).   

If anyone has any information about this building, and who owned it, please let me know.  It would be great to know more about George Yates too.  If anyone has any information, my email address is in the header at the top of the blog.

A history of the Rotherhithe Workhouse on Lower Road - 1728-1884

The Rotherhithe Workhouse in 1820. By George Yates.

Workhouses were, crudely, buildings owned and administered by the state, in which impoverished people lived and for whom work was provided in return for their keep.  They are an 18th and early 19th Century phenomenon but they had been a long time coming.  The 1601 Act for the Relief of the Poor put the care of the poor firmly into the hands of parishes, who funded their poor relief by imposing a poor-rate tax on property owners.  In its earliest phases the sort of assistance that the poor could expect was usually in the form of hand-outs of essentials like food, clothing and fuel with which to cook and heat their homes.  However, the concept of the workhouse gradually began to evolve as a means of improving efficiencies both in terms of cost and the administration of relief.  Intentions were good, and these early forms of workhouse were successful.

Darton's 1817 map shows the location of the
workhouse (highlighted here in red).
Copyright Mapco.net

These institutions were formalized with a 1723 act that gave parishes the freedom to deny the poor any form of relief unless they moved into the workhouse, where they were given shelter, clothing and food in return for labour.   Not all workhouses were purpose built, but there was a growing trend in that direction throughout the 18th Century.  Poor law unions were an outcome of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, and these were responsible for joining together parish management of the poor and creating big, purpose built workhouses to create economies and scale and centralize operations, the Poor Law Unions.  As well as dormitory accommodation and work rooms, they also included infirmary facilities.  These big 19th Century workhouses received bad publicity from a variety of sources, notably Charles Dickens, but although not all of them were the horror stories that the word conjours up, many clearly were.  They were run on a minimal budget. Conditions were basic, food  unappetising, beds arranged in large hospital style-large dormitories with men segregated from women, and all inmates had to wear uniforms. Workhouses were intended to deter potential residents. They were very much a last-ditch option for the poor and were often the dumping ground for orphans, the elderly, unmarried mothers and the mentally impaired. However, although they were organized along the lines of the prisons of the day, residents were free to leave at any time.

Rotherhithe workhouse was established in the 1720s and came under the St Mary Rotherhithe Parish, and its Vestry.  There are almost no images of the workhouse so I have supplemented this post with photographs and paintings from other London workhouses, as examples.

The workhouse is first mentioned in the Vestry Minutes on April 29th of 1722 when the proposal to establish a workhouse was put forward. Nothing was actioned at that time and it was only in 1728 when the proposal resulted in a workhouse on Deptford Lower Road (since 1888 simply Lower Road, opposite today's Neptune Street). 

An example of a work room in a London workhouse.
From Pyne and Combe's book (1810) "The Workhouse"

It is described in a remarkable book that describes numerous workhouses in the early 18th Century.  Assembled by the Society for Promoting Christian knowledge, a London group that supported and promoted workhouses, it described the Rotherhithe workhouse as follows:  "A Workhouse is lately set up here, near the Footway to Deptford, and though it is not yet finished, there are 8 Poor Men and Women, and 32 Boys and Girls put into it, under the Care of a Mistress; their chief Employment at present is the picking Ockam." Ockam, or more usually oakum, will be discussed below.

The Rotherhithe workhouse continued to remain under the care of the St Mary Rotherhithe Parish, and its Vestry until 1836. From 1836-1869 the workhouse was placed into the care of the St Mary Rotherhithe Board of Guardians.  Boards of Guardians were bodies who were responsible, by law (the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834) for the management and administration of workhouses and related buildings. Those serving on a Board of Guardians were elected by the owners of the properties that were liable for the poor rate, a tax gathered by residents in order to provide provision for the disadvantaged. The board was elected annually.

This illustration from the Police Illustrated News gives
an idea of the light in which the workhouses were regarded

The Workhouses website (http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Lancet/Rotherhithe.shtml) reproduces an account from the 1865 edition of The Lancet, which describes the workhouse as follows at this time:  "The workhouse consists of three distinct blocks of building. The main block, which fronts the east, is 300 years old, and is now used for the "able-bodied" and for offices. The block which lies on the west was built in 1837, and is now occupied by the "old and infirm," and by the midwifery and nursery wards." The report mentions that the infirmary was often the victim of the high water table, but that drainage was generally good.  It also says that the handling of the infirm within the workhouse was less than ideal:  "The position and pay of the medical officer is a deplorable subject. He visits the house daily, and has about forty sick, besides the aged and infirm, under treatment; and attends about twelve midwifery cases yearly. For the whole of this duty, and for supplying and dispensing all the drugs, Mr. Firth receives £35 per annum! Any comment on these facts would be quite superfluous.  The mortality of the year 1864 was eighty-eight, and presents nothing remarkable; and there is no evidence of the outbreak of epidemic disease as far back as the records extend. This last circumstance is one for which the guardians are certainly not to be thanked." Sanitation was clearly appalling and the report takes the management severely to task on this as well. See the above page for the full report.

Weller's 1868 map of Rotherhithe,
showing the workhouse (in red)
sandwiched between Lower Road and
Southwark Park. Rotherhithe was
becoming increasingly busy.

Another bad report followed, this time from one of the workhouse's own employees. In the mid 1860s a nurse from the workhouse infirmary, one Matilda Beeton, wrote with such effect to the Poor Law Board that the master and matron of the workhouse were both dismissed following an investigation. Matilda Beeton worked as Head Nurse at the workhouse infirmary from 9 July 1864 and left 16 April 1865.  Here's the text of her letter (with thanks to the rgreeen.org.uk website for reproducing it):

"On the 9th of July 1864 I took office, as head nurse, in Rotherhithe Infirmary, where I had 50 patients sick and infirm; with this number I found I was really able to personally superintend the actual nursing, which is as much as one paid nurse can do with any satisfaction to herself or those by whom she is employed. For this number of patients I had four pauper nurses, all of whom were old and inexperienced; two could read but neither could write.

Of the four nurses allowed me three were all I could expect them to be; drunk only when they had the means or the chance of getting anything to drink; the fourth was a confirmed drunkard, so much so, that I was in constant fear of her doing bodily harm to the sick patients. She would beat them till they were black with bruises, more especially those who were unable to help themselves and friendless; and I found, by the patients, that they lived in fear of her, and only by giving her their beer, or other nourishment, could they feel themselves safe to ask for the most trifling thing to be done for them.

I complained to the matron and assistant master, and was told she had always done very well till I came there; they supposing she did not like a paid nurse over her. I must therefore do the best I could with her, as there was no one in the house she could put in her place.

Dinner at Marylebone workhouse

I then complained of the dirty state the patients were in, when the matron said I must get used to all that, as workhouses were not like hospitals.

When I had been there about four months, I had a pauper sent to the sick ward from some ward up at the workhouse. I understood this poor creature had been in the house for some time, she was an imbecile. This poor patient I believed sensitive to all her sufferings and yet she was the victim to the most cruel treatment from this inhuman pauper nurse.

This state of things went on till one morning I sent for the master to come to the infirmary. Immediately on his coming, I told him he must that moment remove the sick ward nurse, or I would go and bring in the guardians to see what could be done in the shape of finding me another nurse; the master, fearing I should do so, very reluctantly ordered what he thought a model nurse to the body of the house.

I do not think I am wrong in saying many a poor creature went to their home long before the time, by the hands of this inhuman nurse. It was my firm impression that when patients had got bad and troublesome she gave opium, put them on the left side, and so they passed out of this world as natural deaths.

Respecting things for the use of the patients, there was an insufficiency of everything throughout the whole infirmary.

As regards the sick diet, I considered on the whole it was insufficient; the mutton broth and beef tea were only mockery, the meat was more often than not one lump of fat, and nearly cold, so that a patient very ill could not eat it. Milk in the sick ward was never heard of till I asked the doctor to allow it with arrow-root; then the master made a great fuss about it. I had forgotten to say nightdresses were not allowed for the sick patients, with the exception of three or four of the union blue, made out of the skirts of worn out dresses. Patients were allowed to wear their own if they could pay for the washing; and I found they often had to sell their nourishment to do it.

On the whole, it did not seem to me that a pauper's life was regarded in any other light than the sooner they were dead the better.

I left Rotherhithe workhouse 16th April 1865."

Matilda Beeton
23 April 1866"

"The elderly at the workhouse" by Hubert von Herkomer

In 1869 the workhouse became part of St Olave's Union, under the administration of the St Olave Board of Guardians, named for the Church of St Olaf at London Bridge.  The Vestry of St Mary Rotherhithe continued to work with the poor, offering help, building churches, improving education and generally helping to support those in need.  The workhouse played a different role, consolidating those who had no other recourse but to turn to the workhouse for shelter.

Although it had included an infirmary of its own, the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 required that infirmary accommodation be separate from workhouse buildings and a separate infirmary was built next door in 1873.This will be covered in another post.

Residents of the Rotherhithe workhouse were employed in a number of tasks, many of which were directly related to the local shipping industry.  In the early Nineteenth Century a rope manufacturing operation supplied new rope to ship builders and owners.  Stephen Humphrey says that in 1836 it turned a profit of £592 2s and 2d (with thanks to the National Archives Currency Convertor, £582 2s 2d would have the same spending worth of around £25,670.98 - very impressive). Another of their tasks was the creation of oakum.  Old ropes and cables ("junk") were chopped into manageable lengths and these were in turn picked apart to reduce them to their component fibres.   These were then tarred and used as packing ("caulking") to fill gaps in wooden planking of ship hulls and decking.  It was a laborious job, and was commonly assigned to workhouse inmates.

Failure to comply with workhouse rules resulted in severe punishment.  Stephen Humphrey gives the example of four girls who were housed in the women's block in 1835 who were threatened with deportation to Tasmania.  

The workhouse closed in 1884, but the separate infirmary continued to operate until the 1970s, and will be described on another post. In 1889 the workhouse was still standing because the Minutes of the Board of Guardians state that it was "dilapidated and unused."  

Today, the land where the workhouse used to be located is covered by the residential estate on Ann Moss Way.  Although there are remains of the infirmary that survived the demise of the workhouse, there are no extant remains of the workhouse itself.

Ann Moss Way

With thanks to Stephen Humphrey's book "The Story of Rotherhithe" for untangling much of the history.  For more about workhouses and their history see Peter Higginbottom's fascinating and comprehensive Workhouses website.

The Grand Surrey Canal 1801-1940

Rotherhithe before the Grand Surrey Canal in 1799
The church of St Mary's Rotherhithe is marked in red.

Although there are various posts that mention the Grand Surrey Canal, and I have posted a walk that takes you from the Thames lock where ships entered to the point at which the canal leaves Rotherhithe, I have not assembled all the information about its history in one place.  This post, therefore, pulls all the threads together and provides a history of the Grand Surrey Canal and its builders.  Inevitably there's some overlap with earlier posts.

The above is the Richard Horwood map of 1799 and shows the natural water courses before the establishment of the Grand Surrey Canal.  St Mary's Rotherhithe church is marked in the red box to help readers get their bearings (it still stands today).  

Grand Surrey Canal in 1811
from Stuart Rankin's
A Short History of the Surrey Commercial Docks)

In the late 1700s a number of new canals were proposed in the south London area, and in 1801 the Grand Surrey Canal Act was passed, which would permit the construction of a canal, an accompanying dock basin and an entrance lock.  The vision was to build a canal system that would reach Greenwich, Croydon, Epsom and even Portsmouth, mainly for carrying timber. To this end the Grand Surrey Canal Company was formed to raise money by issuing shares and to run the project.  It was envisaged that the canal would provide an efficient link between the docks and the south London towns, and would stimulate commercial growth and expansion along its route.  The 1799 map at the top of the page shows how the existing waterways were of use, and how they would influence the path of the Grand Surrey Canal.

As excellent schematic
of the canal and its
two branches,
fromWikipedia

Inland Rotherhithe in 1801 was rural, a series of marshes, streams and fields.  However, the Thames banks were lined with shipyards where ships, barges and lighters were built and repaired.  Rotherhithe's most prominent ship builders were producing vast wooden vessels for the Royal Navy and the East India Company.  The only incursion inland was Greenland Dock which had been established on the east side of Rotherhithe in 1699. 

The Grand Surrey Canal Company appointed Ralph Dodd as its engineer.  and the canal's design and implementation was his inspiration.  Ralph Dodd, was something of an unpredictable character, involved in numerous engineering projects some of which either failed or which he abandoned. In his 1999 booklet Stuart Rankin describes him as "a plausible visionary, with a tenuous grasp on reality." In 1795 Dodd published an Account of the principal Canals in the known World, with reflections on the great utility of Canals. In 1794 he invented a canal cutting machine which was trialled on the Grand Junction Canal at Dawley but was not adopted long-term. In 1801 he was appointed engineer to the Rotherhithe South Dock but fell out of favour with the Eastern Dock Company who owned it, and he was paid off and dismissed. Dodd was also involved in the first attempt to build the world’s first under river tunnel from Rotherhithe. This attempt failed and it was Marc Brunel who eventually succeeded, working a short distance away from the remains of the failed first attempt.  However, in spite of this succession of dubious projects he oversaw the successful implementation of the canal, which opened in 1807 and reached to the Old Kent Road before being extended later to Camberwell and Peckham. 

The entrance lock in 1826. By George Yates.

The works for the canal started in 1802.  The canal, the first lock and the original entrance basin were supposed to have been built simultaneously but the company ran into financial difficulties so it was not until 1804 that the two-pronged basin was added.  The locks, basins and canal are shown on both the 1811 and 1843 maps (see images above and below) with the basins surrounding an artificial island, one intended to act as a a dock and the other to mainly handle through-traffic. Collectively they were named the Grand Surrey Basin, and in the 1850s were renamed Stave Dock (the upper basin) and Island Dock (the lower one).

The main role of the entrance lock and the basin were to provide access for barges that wished to get into the Grand Surrey Canal from the Thames or to offload cargo onto barges and narrowboats.  The lock was located just to the east of where the modern Old Salt Quay public house  is located today (the west entrance lock, which survives as an entrance to Surrey Water was built later).  An inlet just downriver of that location is all that remains both of the lock entrance and the complex set of dry docks and wharves that clustered around this site.  The canal could handle vessels of up to 18ft width. 

1843, showing the expansion of the
canal along its flanks

The first ship to enter the canal was ship builder Sir John Hall's brig Argo.  Sir John Hall was one of the major contributors to the design of the basin arrangement, and one of the project's investors.  Although the Grand Surrey Canal was originally supposed to reach Croydon, Epsom and Portsmouth, providing the Thames with links to south London towns and a direct connection to south coast, it never did. It only ever reached Camberwell (Addington Square) in 1811 and Peckham (Canal Head) in 1826.

It soon became clear that the canal was not going to generate the profits that the company had hoped for.  The canal was used mainly by local market gardens and handled much less timber than had been originally predicted, failing to act as the busy artery that had been envisaged.  It was therefore much less profitable than expected.  Nor did it stimulate the major development of the area that its investors had hoped would happen, and the Grand Surrey Canal Company began to look for alternative ways to generate revenue from their canal system.  At the same time, the Commercial Dock Company was successfully carving out docks on the other side of Rotherhithe and the Grand Surrey Canal Company followed suit.  In 1811 they received parliamentary permission to expand the the channel of the canal that led from the island to create docking areas and wharfage.  The result was that the section of the canal that passed out of the entrance basins and passed over Rotherhithe towards Greenland Dock became the Grand Surrey Inner Dock, through which the canal and its traffic now passed. 

The route of the canal by 1868, showing
Surrey Basin and both old and new locks.

The map of 1811 shows it as a conventional canal passing from Surrey Basin across a nearly empty Rotherhithe, but the 1843 map above shows the extent to which the canal had been widened at this time, being renamed the Inner Dock, whilst the basin was the Outer Dock.

In 1855, to reflect its increasing investment in the creation of docks, the company's name was changed to the Grand Surrey Docks and Canal Company.  The company immediately set about making substantial changes in order to accommodate the larger and deeper vessels that were being built and purchased land from the Lord of the Rotherhithe Manor, Sir William Maynard Gomm with a view to seriously extending their operations.  An extended lock was built upriver and the old one was eventually filled in, certainly by 1888.  The new lock, the Surrey Lock, opened into a new basin, the Surrey Basin (now known as Surrey Water).  The basin was filled in when the docks were closed but re-excavated by the London Docklands Development Corporation to provide a focal point for new housing projects.

By 1860 the new basin was connected not only to the Thames via its new lock, and to the newly modernized docks that flanked the canal channel but also to a new dock to its south, named the  Main Dock, later renamed Albion Dock.  All these improvements were completed by 1860. 

By 1862 the Grand Surrey Canal Dock and Canal Company had added four timber ponds to their system named  Timber Ponds 1, 2, 3 and 4 (later renamed Albion Pond, Centre Pond, Quebec Pond and Canada Pond respectively)., all accessible from the Grand Surrey Canal.  The network of docks and ponds was parallel to, but completely separate from the Commercial Dock Company's Russia Dock.  This was soon to change.

New hydraulic lock gates. 1870s

The Grand Surrey Docks and Canal Company embarked on a pricing strategy designed to undermine the Commercial Dock Company, which promptly retaliating, creating a mutually harmuful price war.  Both companies suffered from this at a time when there was increasing competition from docks on the northern banks of the Thames and the decision was made to amalgamate the two.   In 1864 the two companies became the Surrey Commercial Dock Company, and links between the two systems were created and the docks and ponds renamed.  Lavender Pond was connected to Stave Dock (formerly the northern part of the old Outer Basin), and Russia Dock (formerly the Inner Basin) was connected to Centre Pond, thereby linking both systems to the canal and to each other. 

In the 1870s hydraulic lock gates were added to the Surrey Lock, one of a number of improvements that were being made throughout the system.

Hydraulic gear for the lock connecting the Grand
Surrey Canal, which ran through Russia Dock,
to the newly enlarged Greenland Dock.

The canal was impacted by the decision in the late 1800s to extend Greenland Dock.  This was accompanied by significant engineering work, which must have disrupted the operation of the canal for some time.  Eventually, however, instead of passing across the end of the dock it passed across the centre of it, which must have presented an interesting challenge both for ships navigating up and down the dock and for those crossing it.  It did have the advantage, for canal users, that large cargo ships that were too big for the Surrey Basin entrance could access the canal via the Greenland Dock lock entrance, which was bigger.  Locks were built both at the Russia Dock entrance to Greenland Dock and opposite, at the entrance to the Grand Surrey Canal.  The Russia Dock lock survives, minus its gates, as the underpass connecting Greenland Dock with the Russia Dock Woodland, passing under Redriff Road and some of the hydraulic machinery remains (albeit horrifically overgrown) in a recess at the side side of the road.  The lock that used to connect the dock to the canal on the other side has not survived but its location is marked by the beach next to the watersports centre and the hydraulic gearing that operated it has been preserved on the quayside. 

The Surrey Canal Office

Beyond the Surrey Canal lock were the Grand Surrey Canal Office, which was tragically knocked down in the mid 1980s to make way for the watersports centre, and a tiny building whose original function is unknown.  The Canal Office doubled as both offices and the lock-keeper's home.   Nearby, in 1902 a tiny little building was built and today survives, after a fashion, at what is now the corner of Plough Way and Sweden Gate.  It matches the design of the lock keeper's cottage and the tide gauge building next to Greenland Dock's lock, as well as the former Grand Surrey Canal Office.  Although the plaque affixed to the building states that its function was unknown it seems logical to assume that it was connected with the Grand Surrey Canal, which would have passed immediately in front of it, and was perhaps used for collecting tolls or similar administrative work.  Now an electricity sub-station (although it is unclear whether it is still in use) it is, at the time of writing, somewhat neglected and continues to remain in a state of disrepair in spite of complaints about its poor condition.

The canal was partly abandoned in 1940, drained in the 1960s and in-filled in 1971 two years after the Surrey Commercial Docks were closed to shipping.  The Surrey Basin had been closed in 1967, but was re-opened as an enclosed water feature by the London Docklands Development Corporation.  Russia Dock was filled in, but became Russia Dock Woodland, an attractive park that crosses Rotherhithe along the canal's route, and its eastern quayside has been preserved. 

1902 canal office

Traces of the canal have been identified by a number of writers on the web, including

On this blog: The remains of the canal's Rotherhithe leg 

On the London Canals website:

• Evelyn Street to Surrey Canal Road
• Surrey Canal Junctions
• Surrey Canal Wharves 
• Burgess Park - Canal Terminal
• The Peckham Branch

Apparently there were plans afoot some years ago to mark out the route officially, but this has never been done. 

Aeriel view from the 1930s showing the Surrey Basin
on the left and Island and Stave Docks.
From the PortCities website.

George Yates - a request for information

The only facts that I have been able to find out about water-colour artist George Yates are that he was born in 1790 and was active as a painter until around 1837 (the only information supplied by the Government Art Collection).  He painted some lovely views of the Thames and its immediate environs, including several at Rotherhithe.  It was a time when the world was changing so quickly, with sail being replaced by steam, new dockland buildings springing up and rural areas becoming industrial.  George Yates captured many of these changes in his lovely water-colours and although I have tracked down some of his work, I have been unable to find out anything about the artist himself.

Can anyone help out with some more information about George Yates?  He did some lovely paintings of local scenes and it is so frustrating not to know anything about him and give him due credit!

Surrey Basin, Rotherhithe

London Bridge

Dividing Rotherhithe from Deptford in the 1850s. Rotherhithe's lost river: Earl's Sluice.

Earl's Sluice by George Yates in 1826

The Earl's Sluice was a natural water-course that flowed from Denmark Hill to the Thames.  It is thought to have been named after the Earl of Gloucester who was the Lord of the Manor of Camberwell and Peckham in the 12th Century.  It became known as the Earl's Main Sewer in the 1820s. 

Until 1899 Earl's Sluice marked the boundary between St Mary's Parish in Rotherhithe (which was then Surrey) and St Paul's Parish in Deptford (then Kent). It is clearly shown on Cary's 1937 map (below), running along the dotted border marker where Surrey ended and Kent began, passing under the Grand Surrey Canal and Plough Lane (today's Plough Way) and emerging by the George Stairs just south of the East Country Dock (which was later expanded and became today's South Dock).

The dotted line between the Docka and Duck Stairs
and George Stairs at the top of this map shows the
line that the river took. Cary's map of 1837. 

Earl's Sluice was also known locally, and far more evocatively, as Black Ditch due to its unlovely role as an open sewer.  Thankfully, it was eventually closed in some time after 1870.  Although not the most obvious subject matter for an artist, George Yates painted a watercolour of it in 1826 (at the top of this post).  The very poorest areas in Southwark during the early 1800s were in industrial Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, every gap filled by small, chaotic, often poor quality housing and overcrowding.  The unsanitary drains and a lack of proper sewerage brought with them a variety of fast-spreading diseases.

The Thames itself, fed by many of the drains and sewers that contained waste from houses and businesses, was part of the problem, supplying heavily contaminated water back unto people's homes for washing, cleaning and cooking.  In 1827 the water supplied by the Thames via a number of companies into homes was described by the pamphleteer John Wright as "a fluid saturated with the impurities of fifty thousand homes - a dilute solution of animal and vegetable substances in a state of putrefaction - alike offensive to the sight, disgusting to the imagination and destructive to the health" (quoted in Stephen Halliday's The Great Stink of London).  

Although the problem of the quality of Thames water was eventually addressed, first by bringing in water from unpolluted rivers, and then by filtering water destined for domestic use through sand for decades, matters were so bad that by the mid 1850s the polluted Thames was a most unappealing malodorous entity, which was seriously detrimental to those living around it and using it. A number of outbreaks of water-transported cholera in Rotherhithe, for example, spread to Bermondsey and Southwark, where polluted conditions were compounded by dense housing.  Many people died. There were particularly bad outbreaks in 1849 and 1854. It was not known at this time that cholera was carried in water, but these tragedies did lead to a public inquiry that connected poverty and diseases, building on earlier attempts to reform London's sanitation systems, or the lack of them.   John Snow, to whom a page is dedicated on the Oxford University Press blog (widely credited with being the father of epidemiology) realized that cholera was partially water-born, but it took a very long time for his findings to be accepted.  Eventually, further studies eventually identified the links between poverty, inefficient disposal of human waste and disease in water sources, and the urgent need for clean household water.

A number of small natural rivers that drained into the Thames were used as open drains and sewers, and these too became badly polluted. One of these was the Earl's Sluice. It was described by a sanitary inspector for the period from February 1856 to March 1857 as follows (now preserved on the Wellcome website):

The first thing that strikes any person making a tour of sanitary inspection in Rotherhithe is the number of uncovered ditches its very boundary line for a long distance being a wide filthy black open sewer now there is no fact more clearly proved in medical science than that the inhalation for any length of time by human beings of the exhalations or effluvia from ditches drains or sewers is injurious to the health.

Eventually all of these rivers, which include the Earl's Sluice, and the better known Fleet and Tyburn, were enclosed and still run beneath London, and sometimes over it in pipes.   

I am indebted to the London Geezer website for the details of the route it took.  Its source was in Denmark Hill, from where it flowed north through Camberwell, heading up Camberwell Road and then east along Albany Road, crossing the Old Kent Road before moving east again, and eventually heading up Rotherhithe New Road, where it met the River Peck near Millwall's stadium.  From here it headed north east.  A pipe containing water from the Earl's Sluice crosses the railway near Rotherhithe New Road. See Diamond Geezer's full account of the route it took before it emerged in the Thames at around St George's Stairs, where it is marked by a Thames Water sign as a sewer outlet.  

A wall of the bridge that ran over the river, together with its boundary stone is preserved here, moved here as a memorial in 1988.   You can find it just to the east of South Dock on the Thames Path (photograph below).