ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an excerpt from Report Upon the Sewage Works of Some Towns in England, Recently Visited. The Cam Purification Committee of the Cambridge Improvement Commission has authorized a visit only to Stroud, but Rowe, its surveyor, goes further afield and offers a relatively informal report on nine towns with which he is familiar – whether entirely by personal visits is not clear. Richard Reynolds Rowe was not mainly a sewage expert, even though at the end of his life he was president of the Institution of Sanitary Engineers. When Rowe wrote in 1869, sewage farming was losing its utopian status. It had been examined by two prominent select committees and a long lasting Royal Commission; was still being investigated by the British Association. The authorities of Cheltenham, after much enquiry and consideration, have decided upon conducting a sewage farm upon a large scale by irrigating many acres of land with the filtered or defecated sewage water.
