ABSTRACT
Waiheke is an island about 40 minutes’ ferry ride from central Auckland in New Zealand. While the easterly parts of the island remain rural and are served only by dirt roads, the areas in the west, close to the ferry terminal, form a commuter suburb for Auckland. In London, at the start of the nineteenth century, most drainage was the responsibility of landowners and parish boards, while foul waste was dealt with on a property-by-property basis through cesspits and night soil men. By the end of the nineteenth century, this situation had utterly transformed: a centralised sewer system collated and treated surface water and foul waste from across the city. The story of the Broad Street pump cholera outbreak provides a detailed window into water and sanitation within a small part of London in 1854. Though it post-dates the requirement that cesspits were connected to sewers, it shows the limited effects that this change had wrought.
