Sewer Walk - 1895

“Not to solve a Cronin murder mystery, nor to bring to an untimely end a bright young life, but simply and solely to satisfy an abnormal condition of curiosity did a Spectator reporter yesterday afternoon march out of the city hall and descend by straight up and down ladder into the bowels of the James street sewer.”

“In the James Street Sewer : An Afternoon Trip        Through the Sewage”

Hamilton Spectator. February 14, 1895

          On Wednesday February, 13, 1895, an oddly attired young man drew many glances as he walked along James street north towards a sewer trap near the city hall.

          As the young man, a reporter with the Hamilton Spectator, later noted, “sewer society rules differ somewhat from those of other society, yet they are just as strict and confining. The correct thing to wear when going calling in an ordinary city sewer is a pair of long, rubber boots, an old blouse and any old thing for a hat. The older the blouse the better, for you will find it continually scraping up an acquaintance with slime hanging from the sewer side.”

          The reporter found that there was a certain method of walking in a city sewer, a very different style than the normal way of walking : “in the sewer, to save your head from kissing the brickwork above, you must strike the attitude of the small boy who ate a green apple and was sorry for it. And if you walk in the sewer long enough, you will also, like the boy, be sorry.”

          With the city’s sewer foreman as a guide, and with a lantern in hand, the reporter followed the James street sewer southward and described his surroundings as follows : “on either side rose the slimy sides of the egg-shaped passage, and above – very close above – was the roof, from which an occasional drop of water would drop, striking your neck and sending a shiver down your spinal column.”

          As the walk continued, the reporter came upon two workmen, with a wheelbarrow and a big box, who were engaged in cleaning out the bottom of the sewer. The debris they were removing included “stone from the mountain, bricks loosened from the big sewer and its smaller connections, wood and coal and a hundred other things – all helping to fill up and choke the passage.”

          After the tour was completed, the sewer foreman asked if the reporter wanted to exit from the sewer at a point on James street south and walk back to the city hall.

          The reporter took another look at the clothing he was wearing and firmly answered : “No, I’ll go back in the sewer.”

          The reporter’s description of his experiences in the James street sewer concluded with him noting that “beneath the water gurgled, and overhead the trolley cars rumbled, while never once in the whole trip did a sewer rat make its appearance. Nearly an hour in the sewer and yet it did not seem more than half that time, everything was so peculiar, strange, but, it cannot be said, beautiful.”