Supplying equitable and safe sanitation – flushing toilets, sewers, and piped water – is a major social challenge. Victorian London was famously the site of one of the earliest major state projects to provide public urban sewerage. What is largely forgotten is the period thirty years prior to this, in which private firms had provided increasingly extensive sewerage connections to domestic property. This experience helped convince the elites, who were the earliest adopters of the importance of a city-wide sewer system.
In the early 1800s London was overwhelmed by its own waste. Households traditionally had dumped their waste into cesspits; the collected excrement was later sold as fertilizer. But as London’s population doubled from 1815 to 1860, this system became unsustainable. In response the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was formed in 1848. This has been understood as a turning point for London’s sanitation, with the state stepping in to solve London’s waste problem. However, my research reveals that a widespread private drainage system had already taken root by then.
The 1848 Metropolitan Sewers Act required households to connect to city sewers. In fact many had been doing since the early 1800s. With private companies supplying piped water, wealthier households installed flushing toilets that created too much waste for their cesspits. At first this was illegal, but in 1815 private connections to the city’s sewers were legalised, creating a free market in sewerage.

My research reveals that there was strong demand for private drainage from 1812 to 1848. I document a significant increase in household drainage adoption during these years. This raises two critical questions: who was adopting drainage, and why did the state eventually step in to mandate it?
Who adopted drainage?
Private drainage was driven by demand, but adoption mirrored the socio-economic divides common to urbanizing cities. A leading reformer observed that sanitation access, and thus life expectancy, was closely linked to occupation and income.
To explore this, I analyse the adoption of drainage in four London parishes, comparing the average year of adoption on each street with the number of servants per household (a proxy for wealth). Two key insights emerge.

First, households in the top ten per cent of wealth adopted drainage an average of 8.4 years earlier than other groups. This can be partly explained by their social networks and the diffusion of knowledge among the elite. Many persons of means were aristocrats, lawyers, or government officials with good access to advanced knowledge.
Second, surprisingly, the poorest households adopted drainage earlier than those who were in the middle of the wealth distribution. The explanation? Wealthy families often paid for drainage in nearby streets, particularly for servant housing or charity-owned properties. For example, philanthropist Walpole Eyre funded 1,800 feet of drainage in St. John’s Wood, and Palmer’s Charity provided a private sewer for Palmer’s Village in 1836. This suggests that some form of wealth redistribution was at play, even before sewage became a public government projection. This challenges the view that the market was incapable of addressing sanitation for the poor. Still, it’s important to recognize that overall sanitary conditions remained deplorable for most poor households until the state system took hold in the 1860s.
Why did the state intervene in 1848?
If private drainage adoption was growing, why did the state step in and mandate it in 1848? The answer lies in the same knowledge networks that influenced the wealthy to adopt drainage early. These networks also facilitated a growing understanding among London’s elites that drainage should be treated as a public good.
By 1848, many early adopters were playing key roles in sanitary reform and governance. This shift in thinking among the social and political elite helped create the demand for state-mandated drainage. While private drainage wasn’t a perfect system—its redistributive capacity was limited— it nonetheless contributed to the eventual political movement for public sanitation.
Conclusion
Because the narrative of Victorian sanitation is often framed solely in terms of state intervention, the importance of private drainage adoption has been understated. London’s elites, who were early adopters of private drainage, played a significant role in pushing for state involvement. This underscores the idea that even in a market-driven system, early patterns of adoption can have profound political consequences.