Understanding the Victorian Kitchen Victorian Kitchen Plumbing
The effortless luxury of turning on a faucet to bring fresh, clean, safe water into the kitchen is so new that it does not yet even qualify as a blip on the timeline of human history.
The same is true of sanitary sewer systems to carry away household waste, treat it, and return it safely to the environment.
All of these civilizing improvements began during the Victorian years and nearly a century and a half later,we still use many of these Victorian technologies virtually unchanged.
At the beginning of the Victorian period, a few homes had the luxury of a water pump right in the kitchen, but these were rare.
Urban dwellers relied on communal wells, several stories down and as much as a mile away. Rural families usually had their own well but otherwise needed the same bucket brigade to get water into the kitchen.
But, major improvements came during the last decades of the Victorian era that continued weill into the 20th century, including safe and reliable water delivery systems, the modern faucet, the ceramic sink, and the very beginnings of sanitary sewer systems and wastewater treatment.
Well into the Victorian era, getting water to the kitchen for cooking and washing required carrying it from a well or pump, a process that had barely changed since the dawn of mankind.
The big technological breakthrough during the first million years of human existence was the replacement of animal skins with ceramic urns and wood, then metal, buckets as water carriers. Buckets and urns allowed more water to be hauled with less effort and little spillage.
At the beginning of the Victorian period, a few homes had the luxury of a water pump right in the kitchen, but these were extremely rare, limited primarily to the rich and super rich.
Urban dwellers relied mostly on communal wells, several stories down and as much as a mile away. Rural families usually had their own well but otherwise needed the same bucket brigade to get water into the kitchen.
The "Smart" Windmill
In the mid-1800s, well over 80% of Americans lived and worked on farms and ranches. Fortunately for these rural citizens, 1854 was the year they were delivered from the age-old drudgery of carrying water by Daniel Halladay, an American engineer from New England, who, in that year, patented the first small, self-regulating, reliable windmill for pumping water.
Wind-driven pumps of various sorts had been around since 9th-century Persia and were common in parts of Europe, notably the Netherlands and East Anglia during the middle ages to remove water from low-lying farmland and feed irrigation systems.
These rudimentary devices required almost constant vigilance and adjustment, and worked only when the wind blew from one specific direction.
Halladay's "Self-governing Farm Wind Pump" was a "smart" windmill – nearly automatic – orienting itself to always face into the wind and adjusting the pitch of its blades in response to wind speed to keep shaft rotation constant.
Linked to a pump, it allowed water to be lifted effortlessly into an elevated tank where it was stored until needed.
By 1899 over 600,000 windmills were in use in the U.S., and an estimated 60,000 are still in use, mostly to water livestock. Many of thee are well over a century old.
Halladay joined with foundry owner John Burnham to form the U.S. Wind Engine & Pump Company in 1857 to manufacture his windmills in Batavia, Illinois.
By 1881, the company was the largest manufacturer of its kind in the world, and Batavia was home to so many windmill manufacturers that it had become known as "The Windmill City."
U.S. Wind Engine ceased manufacturing in the 1940s. Its facilities were converted to war production for the U.S. military. The last windmill factory in Batavia closed in the 1950s.
Electricity had come to the American rural marches and wind power was no longer needed to pump water. But, Batavia is still the "City of Energy" hosting the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory operated by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Batavia: If you are ever in Batavia, a stroll along the Fox river is recommended. Original windmills manufactured in Batavia have been located, purchased, carefully restored, and erected along the Batavia Riverwalk which currently has seven different models from various companies manufactured from 1867 to 1942. A plaque at each exhibit tells the story of the manufacturer and the particular model represented.
Windmills are back, not just to pump water for energy-conscious homeowners, but to generate electricity on a massive scale. Computer-aided versions of the technologies invented by Daniel Halladay over a century and a half ago still dominate the industry.
The Steam Pump and City Water
Windmills were not practical, however, for pumping the massive amounts of water needed by cities. Urban areas needed much more power than the wind could provide.
The earliest pumps used to fill a large communal tank or elevated reservoir were operated by water wheels – taking advantage of the power of water to move water in great quantities.
For communities not conveniently situated near fast-moving rivers or streams, steam-driven pumps were harnessed to do the work.
Pumping water was the first application of steam power.
The Steam Pump
Thomas Savery invented the first practical steam-driven pump that he called the "Miner's Friend" in 1698 expressly for removing water from mines and quarries.
It was balky, temperamental, and prone to frequent breakdowns but still lifted more water than mule- and horse-powered pumps.
Thomas Newcomen improved on the "Friend" with his "Atmospheric Engine" in 1712.
Newcomen engines replaced the"Friend" throughout Britain and Europe to pump water out of mines. Its oscillating pump could raise water only about 25 feet, but it was still much more efficient than animal-power.
Hundreds were constructed throughout the 18th century.
Boulton and Watt
The next improvement came seventy years later.
James Watt [1], a Scotish inventor, developed a device that multiplied the power of the Newcomen engine by adding a steam condensing chamber that eliminated the energy wasted in earlier engines from repeatedly cooling and reheating the cylinder.
The Watts engine could lift water several hundred feet using about half the fuel the the Newcomen engine.
He also devised a crank mechanism that converted the engine's reciprocating movement to a more efficient rotary motion.
Watt's rotary linkage became the model for the driving mechanism used in nearly all steam locomotives, and was almost as important to industrial development as the Watt engine itself.
Watt entered a partnership with Matthew Boulton in 1775. The firm of Boulton and Watt was highly successful, manufacturing steam engines used throughout Europe and North America in its Soho Foundry.
Waterworks
The ability of steam engines to move lots of water was almost immediately applied to the logistical problem of supplying English cities with fresh water.
The West Ham Works opened in 1743 at Saynes Mill, Stratford, on a branch of the Lea River. Shadwell Waterworks (1750)[2], and Lea Bridge works (1767) supplied water to East London and its suburbs. All three of these facilities were absorbed by the East London Waterworks Company in 1843.
Water for South and West London – and later, Kensington – was supplied with water drawn directly from the Thames River by the Lambeth Waterworks company beginning in 1775. It built a resevoir at Streatham Hill in 1832, a second resevoir in Brixton Hill a few years later, and the Molesey Reservoirs in 1972.
Chelsea Waterworks Company supplied water to the central London and Westminster. It was the first water company to filter Thames river water using a process called slow sand filtration.[3]
Bothe companies were merged with the Metropolitan Water Board in 1904.
In the U.S., the first known use of steam to pump water for drinking was in New York in 1803.
The Manhattan Company installed two steam engines manufactured by Boulton & Watt to pump well water into a reservoir on Chambers Street in New York City.
The company, formed in 1799 ostensibly to provide clean water to lower Manhattan, was less interested in water than it was in banking.
It eventually became the banking goliath, JP Morgan Chase & Company, selling its water system back to the City of New York. [4]
The Fairmount Water Works opened in 1815 on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.
It was designed by Frederick Graff to use two steam pumps – a low-pressure Bolton & Watts-style engine built by Samuel Richards, at the Eagle Works in Philadelphia, and a high-pressure steam engine built by Oliver Evans at the Mars Works in Philadelphia – to move water from the river to reservoirs.
The company had troubles with its steam pumps, including a boiler explosion in 1818 in the high-pressure engine that killed two workmen. It reverted to water-wheel-driven pumps in 1822.
Columbia, South Carolina's privately-owned water system installed a steam pump in 1820 to move water from springs in Seaboard Park (now Finlay Park) to the distribution system supplying the city through cast-iron and lead pipes.
The Boulton & Watt-style low-pressure steam pump was built by Caledonian Foundry in Manchester, England.
Never profitable, Abram Blanding, its owner, sold the system to the city in 1835.
Chicago's 138-foot Water Tower was constructed in 1869 to house a steam pump that stored water drawn from Lake Michigan.
Built of limestone, it was one of the few buildings in the central city to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and has since become a well-known city landmark.
Both of these structures are listed in the National Register of Historic Places along with the Fairmount Waterworks, also preserved as a city park.
The Faucet
Getting water into the house was a major technological accomplishment but controlling the water once it was in the house was equally important.
This is done with the modern faucet, a Victorian invention.
In 1845 Guest and Chrimes, a brass foundry in the city of Rotherham, England, patented the first faucet.
It operated using a screw mechanism and leather washers to reliably regulate the flow of water.
It was a marvelous improvement over earlier water control technology that consisted of some version of driving a plug (or bung) into the end of a pipe to stop the flow of water and removing it to start water flowing again.
The Compression Faucet
The Guest and Chrimes innovation was to move the plug inside the body of the faucet, operating it with a hand screw rather than a mallet.
It was the earliest form of what came to be called a compression valve.
Turning the handle of the faucet raised and lowered a stem. At the base of the stem was the plug consisting of a stack of leather disks that was pressed into a brass or bronze seat until water flow stopped.
Loosening the screw backed the plug away from the seat so water could flow again.
Early compression faucets had problems, however, the most troublesome being that leather washers wore out quickly and had to be replaced often.
Excessive wear persisted even after hard rubber replaced leather in washers. The screw action that opened and closed the valve also had the effect of grinding the washer into its seat, wearing it out quickly so it had to be replaced fairly often.
The Fuller Faucet
The competing technology was the Fuller Ball Valve, patented by Henry W. Fuller of Brooklyn, New York in 1879
In Fuller's valve, a handle attached to an offset cam opened and closed the water channel using a small rubber ball [5] attached to a stem.
Because the cam mechanism did not grind the rubber ball but rather merely compressed it to stop water flow, the mechanism lasted much longer between repairs.
However, the cam required only about a half turn to operate requiring a deft touch to precisely control flow volume.
By the turn of the 20th century, compression valves that required several turns to reach maximum water flow were being replaced by new models that required no more than a quarter turn, putting much less twisting force on the compression washer, reducing wear, and extending the life of the washer.
In the end, better design and improved rubber saved the day for the compression faucet.
Fuller ball valves, despite several improvements in the technology over the years, died out almost overnight in the 1920s and are no longer to be found except in vintage plumbing stores. Even replacement parts are becoming hard to find.
Modern Facets
The compression valve mechanism was the model for faucet operation for more than a century.
It was supplanted only in the 1950s by the washerless faucet valve that revolutionized the industry and made modern singl-handle faucet possible.
Today even the washerless valve has largely passed into history, having been replaced by the even more reliable ceramic disc cartridge valve invented by in the 1970s.
For more information on the mechanics of a modern faucet, see Faucet Valves and Cartridges.)
The Kitchen Sink
Kitchen sinks in the early years of the Victorian era were used for more than just washing up. They were also handy for chopping and slicing meat or cleaning fish, with the waste washed out into the yard to be consumed by chickens and other livestock.
Many were "dry sinks." They had no drain. For washing up, a wooden tub filled with water would be placed in the sink.
Wood and Stone
Most early sinks were made from wood lined with lead, copper, or "German metal" (an alloy of copper, tin, and nickel).
Without the lining, wood sinks barely lasted a few years before needing to be replaced.
The more well-to-do, primarily along the Atlantic seaboard, may have had stone sinks but they were relatively rare.
The more fragile marble and limestone were used in bathrooms but rarely in the more demanding kitchen environment.
Stone for kitchen sinks was the more durable slate or soapstone, common in the Northeast, rare west of the Appalachians because suitable slate and soapstone were hard to find locally and had to be imported.
Enamelled Cast Iron
Cast-iron sinks came into widespread use in the U.S. after fixture manufacturers learned to bond glass to iron.
They were featured in catalogs beginning in the 1870s.
Sinks were often wall hung with tall backsplashes and wide drainboards on each side of the sink.
Sanitary and easy to maintain, these "porcelain" sinks virtually eliminated wood sinks within a few years.
Stone sinks persisted, but solely as an asechetic choice, and most "stone" sinks made today are of engineered materials made of a composites of stone dust and a plastic binder rater than natural stone.
Ceramic Sinks
Glazed ceramic sinks followed toward the end of the Victorian period.
These these more delicate maerials were more often found in bathrooms where damage from a cast-iron skillet was less likely.
Sanitary Sewers
Before faucets became common, sinks were filled from a bucket, or more rarely, from a pump. Dirty water was drained into the yard or into a bucket to be emptied into the yard.
Sanitary sewers arrived only very late in the Victorian era.
Prior to the middle of the 19th century, most American cities east of the Mississippi had some sort of primitive sewers to supplement cesspools and outhouses, both of which were common and very smelly.
The odor of human waste was so pervasive in densely populated Victorian urban neighborhoods that residents simply learned to ignore it as an unavoidable "natural" phenomenon like fog and cold weather.
Early sewers were what are now called "combined systems" in which both stormwater and wastewater were diverted to nearby streams or rivers. Often these were a hodgepodge of privately owned systems, sometimes just a pipeline of hollowed-out logs.
By the middle years of the 19th century, it was becoming clear to urban planners that improvements were needed.
The rapidly developing germ theory of disease led to growing awareness of how many illnesses were transmitted by pathogens in drinking water.
This better understanding led to the "hygiene movement" for better overall sanitation including improved disposal of sewage to avoid water contamination.
Major efforts to clean up American cities and install safe water and sewer systems were soon underway. The year 1850 saw the beginning of large sewer projects.
Chicago's ambitious plan to build a comprehensive system of sewers to move stormwater and waste into the Chicago River required the entire city to be raised as much as fifteen feet to allow the sewers to freely drain by gravity, a massive undertaking even with an 1850 population of a mere 30,000.
The Chicago River, however, proved to be unsuitable as a drain for the city's waste. It discharged into Lake Michigan from which Chicago also drew its drinking water.
The problem was revealed unmistakeably when in 1885 an unusually heavy rainstorm resulted in sewage being flushed far enough out into Lake Michigan to reach the city's intakes of freshwater.
Contaminated drinking water caused typhoid and cholera outbreaks that killed over 10% of the city's population, then over half a million.
The solution was to reverse the course of the Chicago River so that it flowed away from Lake Michigan and into the Des Plaines River to be ultimately flushed into the Mississippi River.
The project started in 1897 and was completed three years later – an astoundingly short time considering the technology of the day.
It required the construction of a series of locks and canals including the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and was the largest municipal earth-moving project up to that time.
The Panama Canal: The techniques learned during the reconstruction of Chicago's sewers helped make building the Panama Canal possible a few years later.
New York also begain its construction of a sewer system in 1850 and built over 70 miles of sewers within five years. By 1902, sewers served virtually all the developed sections of the city, and even tenement houses began offering private flush toilets.
Most early sewer pipes were made of wood.
They came in two styles: stave style, made by pressing beveled boards together with steel banding (similar to how wooden barrels are made), or hollowed-out logs.
Wood pipes were installed across the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They were surprizingly durable, many lasting well over 100 years before being replaced.
Philadelphia's first sanitary sewer was constructed with hollowed-out spruce logs. These were replaced with cast iron pipes in the early 1800s.
Cast iron had a high risk of corrosion, however, so different coatings were developed to extend the life of the pipes.
One of the most successful was concrete used to line the inside of cast iron pipe, a technique still widely used today.
Waste Treatment
Treatment to remove the impurities from sewer water was, however, in its infancy.
In smaller towns and cities, discharge into nearby streams and rivers was widely considered to be a sufficient treatment due to the dilution of the sewage in the larger volume of flowing water combined with natural processes of decontamination.
In larger urban areas, however, the amount of sewage discharge soon overwhelmed the ability of nature to digest contaminants.
Sewer Farms
One of the earliest ssolutions tried was sewer farming in which wastewater was used to fertilize surrounding farmland. The method was widespread in the arid West where water was relatively scarce and large acreages of suitable land were available.
Many cities in California including Fresno and Pasadena had extensive sewage farms as did Salt Lake City, Utah.
However, by the 1930s an increased focus on food hygiene, urban growth, and widespread objection to the odor of raw sewage drifting on the wind put an end to most sewer farming.
The practice has not entirely died out, however. Many communities in the Midwest and California still dispose of de-odorized and treated sewer sludge by using it for fertilizer.
Our town, Lincoln, Nebraska uses treated sewer sludge to fertilize the extensive farmland owned by the city.
The crops produced on the land are sold and profits used to offset the cost of wastewater treatment, one of the reasons that Lincoln water and sewer services are some of the least expensive in the Nation.
Another is the use of the methane generated by waste treatment as a source of renewable fuel used by the city-owned Lincoln Electric System to generate electricity since 1991.
Advances in Waste Treatment
By the last decades of the 19th century, advances in microbiology lead to new processes for the treatment of wastewater.
Coney Island, New York began treating sewage in 1887 using chemical precipitation, a process of adding lime to absorb harmful pollutants, converting them to solid precipitates that settled at the bottom of a pool leaving the water relatively clear.
Experiments conducted in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 using aerobic micro-organisms led to the discovery in 1914 by two British engineers, Edward Ardern and William T. Lockett, of activated sludge which a was much less expensive method of precipitating solids.
The first plant in the U. S. to use the process was built in San Marcos, Texas in 1916 followed by larger pants in Houston; Indianapolis; and Chicago. The resulting sludge, after drying, was disposed of in various ways, primarily for use as a high-quality fertilizer or garden compost.
The process is still in widespread use – as is the fertilizer.
One of the most widely sold brands is Milorganite®, a product of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District made by sterilizing and pelletizing its sewer sludge and selling it in bags throughout the U.S. to home gardeners.
Other uses include spraying the treated sludge on farmland and golf courses. As early as 1925 the U.S. Golf Association was recommending using sludge as an inexpensive and effective fertilizer. It is usually diluted and sprayed through the course's underground sprinkler system at night.
The Clean Water Act
Even as late as the 1940s, however, not every community treated its sewage and of those that did, many did not perform secondary treatments to remove remaining non-solid pollutants from sewer water before discharging it into streams and rivers.
Growing public concern over pollution lead to the passage of in 1948 the Federal Water Pollution Control Act,popularly known as the Clean Water Act.
The law required states to treat their sewage and provided Federal assistance to publicly-owned treatment plants.
Following the publication of Rachel Carlson's ground-breaking Silent Spring [6] in 1962 and resulting heightened concern over polluted waterways, the Act was amended in 1972 to give control over polution from treatment plants to the newly established Environmental Protection Agency.
Victorian Kitchen Appliances
A well-equipped Victorian kitchen might include dozens of appliances, large and small.
Some would be familiar: meat grinder, coffee mill, mixer, blender, slicer, ice cream maker, and butter churn may still be found in a modern kitchen.
The difference would be the power source. Modern appliances largely run on electricity. Victorian appliance on muscle power. … (Continues)
Footnotes:
- The results of Upton Sinclair's undercover investigation of meatpacking industry practices were disclosed in his novel, The Jungle in 1905. Outraged public reaction drove the passage of the first consumer protection laws passed by Congress in 1906: The Meat Inspection Act, enforced by the Dapazrtment of Agriculture, and the Pure Food and Drug Act enforced by what eventually became the Food and Drug Administration. The laws made the food industry responsible for food safety.
- The 1965 publication of Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed exposing the auto industry's lack of concern for vehicle safety led Congress to unanimously pass the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act establishing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and marked a historic shift in responsibility for automobile safety from the consumer to the manufacturer where it still rests today.
- But, of course, the ultimate exposé novel is still Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe published in 1852. The book's emotional portrayal of the impact of slavery envigorated the abolitionist movment in the North and enraged the South, eventually leading to civil war and the Thirteenth Amendement that finally abolished chattel slavery in all of the United States and its territories.
Rev. 01/04/25