Adelaide city in 1870s racked with health problems; dirty water, poor sanitation from lack of proper drainage

Boys in Freeman Street, Adelaide city, in 1860. The poorer parts of the city, particularly in the west, were rife with public health problems in the 19th Century made worse by the lack of  sanitation without a proper drainage system.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Adelaide city's death rate In the 1870s was nearly double that of the rural areas of South Australia, although hundreds died in Moonta (327 in 1873), Kadina and Wallaroo from typhoid caused by contaminated water.

The city's unhealthy state, especially in the poorer area, was compounded by lack of proper sanitation, together with a lack of clean water and effective rubbish removal and destruction. Most houses in the city at this time only had cesspits that were baled out periodically by night carters who dumped the sewage on the park lands. The few buildings with water closets drained into soakage areas in the park lands.

Although a start on deep drainage for Adelaide city originated in the mid 1850s with the first Waterworks Act, it wasn’t until the early 1860s that a basic system was installed along King William, Rundle and Hindley streets and parts of North and East terraces. By 1868, there were no more extensions to the deep drainage because of the “crippled state of finances”, and it took another 16 years before the entire Adelaide city was connected to deep drainage.

In the 1870-71 session of pariament, Henry Strangways introduced the first motion for Adelaide drainage. He drew attention to the bad smells in the city, the enormous sewage already absorbed in the ground and the need to push the city corporation into action. But the government was content to claim that the state of the city was nowhere as bad as represented. The city council was forced to carry out its own systematic inquiry in 1872.

House of Assembly members Judah Moss Solomon and Rowland Rees argued the need for deep drainage. The River Torrens Improvement bill in 1872 touched upon diverting sewage drains from the Torrens River but a clause to that effect was eventually deleted. 

Public health measures brought some general improvements in living conditions, particularly for the city's poorer residents. After the Health Act 1873, a central board of health was set up by the South Australian government. But power was held at the local government level where each municipality had its own board of health. The City of Adelaide's board of health, made up of the whole council, had the town clerk as its secretary.

A commission appointed by parliament in 1875 to inquire into the whole question of sanitation in the province simply confirmed what was already known. The existing system in the city was described by the overseer of drainage and the town clerk. The East Terrace collecting tanks regularly overflowed and became offensive. After heavy rains, the Botanic Garden was inundated with impure matter. Director Richard Schomburgk's young daughter died of typhoid. 

Rundle Street drainage was carried to a tank in North Terrace and down Frome Road to the River Torrens where all liquid waste was dumped. Solid refuse was still taken from the tanks and deposited near Adelaide Gaol. Hindley and Morphett streets drainage flowed to the willows near Adelaide Gaol to be supposedly absorbed. The corporation paid £4,400 per annum for scavenging and employed 12 carts and 24 men on the work, as well as three licensed nightmen who emptied cesspits and buried nightsoil in the olive plantations near the gaol. A few water closets were connected to corporation drains and the corporation was spending more than £1,000 per annum on keeping pits in proper order and in cleaning drains.

If the government was impressed with the findings of the sanitation commission and its warnings, as being reminded of the action being taken in London, it did little about them.

In 1876, Adelaide city's central board of health ordered its own city corporation, under the Public Health Act of 1873, to disconnect all underground drains that emptied onto the park lands. The corporation couldn't comply until a proper system of drainage had been established, so the central board of health took them to the supreme court. The case was eventually postponed and proceedings abandoned.