None of the villages have any drains whatever. It is the practice to throw everything in the shape of sewage, garbage, refuse, and even solid excrement into the highway, on to the green and the adjacent midden [waste] heaps. And into a ditch if such be handy … Almost every cottage has in front of it a midden-heap …

Britain had managed its sanitary arrangements quite well for a number of centuries, drawing water from relatively unpolluted sources, disposing of waste without difficulty. The village drew water from wells and streams, distributed excreta over the fields. Prolonged drought caused a shortage of water and a stink. ‘Fever’, never entirely absent from the rural community, erupted into local epidemics. Infant mortality would rise and the medical man [would] talk wisely of ‘summer diarrhoea’ or ‘infantile cholera’. When the rain came, as it always did, the water level of surface wells rose quickly, dried ordure leached into the soil, and the village reverted to its normal condition of too wet rather than too dry. It had worked for centuries without producing unbearable conditions and persisted in remoter country districts until almost the present day …