Flush with the praise of plumbers through the ages

Sunday, June 11, 2006

BOOK REVIEW: Norman Ritter

Rockport author W. Hodding Carter's heritage is two generations of distinguished journalism, but his latest book honors a profession with a much lower profile: plumbing.

He traveled widely to see landmark sewer systems, early water closets and wretched places that had neither.

Reading "Flushed," we learn that the Chinese "probably practiced the earliest known form of plumbing in the fifth millennium B.C. They used pipes made from bamboo. Cool stuff, but that's about all we know."

Sometime in the third millennium B.C., the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan built water systems that in many ways would rival and surpass any other water system, except that of the Romans, until the middle of the 19th century, Carter writes.

It was the Harappan civilization that gave us the plumber and the first indoor plumbing. The mains that carried wastewater to a cesspit were tall enough for people to walk through. Carter says that "even today, nothing like this exists for nearly half of the world's population."

The author asks us to think about this historic contribution. "On a fundamental level, what is more important to you: Electricity or running water? Your computer or your toilet?"

The Greeks introduced lead pipes (earlier pipes were made of terra-cotta), but the Romans built greater aqueducts and public baths using such pipes and established plumbing as a profession, Carter tells us. The Roman word for plumber is "plumbarius."

"Ancient Romans weren't shy about expelling bodily wastes, so latrines were set up for conversation, often in a wide-open room with no partitions separating the occupants," Carter explains. The Baths of Antoninus in Carthage, the largest in the Roman Empire, contained 1,600 marble seats for latrines.

More than a thousand years after the collapse of the Roman Empire, The Worshipful Company of Plumbers was incorporated in England, and its charter made it unlawful for anybody to "use the art of mystery" of plumbing without being a member of the brotherhood.

To meet London's need for more water, an artificial channel 38 miles long was built in 1613 to supply the city's homes with water from Hertfordshire. Six hundred men labored for five years to build the open channel, and the cost of a year's supply of water for a typical household increased to 26 shillings - four times the cost of water from the old Cheapside cistern.

To provide more surface area for the growing city, the waterways were covered and soon became flowing cesspools. The infant mortality rate rose, and the Thames became so polluted that only bacteria and eels could survive in it. The "Great Stink"

of the summer of 1858 prompted Parliament to act, leading to the creation of a new sanitation system under the direction of Joseph Bazalgette, a noted civil engineer.

The project took decades to complete, but it put an end to the stench and cholera epidemics, Bazalgette became a hero. Carter toured one of the underground tunnels and marveled that it probably served some 3 million people a year.

Today, with more stringent sewage treatment rules in place, more than 115 species of fish are found in the Thames.

Visiting India, the author learned that only 232 of the nation's 5,003 towns had sewer systems. Citizens of the other 4,771 communities used dry latrines or nothing at all. The sacred Ganges River, known as Maa Ganges (Mother Ganges), is a source of drinking water as well as a place to bathe and scatter ashes after cremation. The river festers with untreated sewage and bodies that are only partially cremated, yet people cook with Ganges water.

Carter cites Richard Trethewey of television's "This Old House" as America's most recognizable plumber, but his favorite man with a wrench is obviously George Haselton, a widely traveled "surfing plumber," who owns a large plumbing company in Rockport.

When the author theorized that Haselton's trade didn't get much respect because customers were embarrassed that the details of their private lives were shared with their plumbers, Haselton was ready.

"Yeah, we know details even we don't want to know. I've always thought they got it wrong with Jesus. They made him a carpenter to show how humble he was, right? Well, they should have made him a plumber."

Carter is the son and grandson of prominent journalists. Hodding Carter II, a Bowdoin graduate, studied journalism at Columbia University and worked for newspapers and wire services before starting his first newspaper, the Hammond Daily Courier, in his hometown of Hammond, La. In 1938, he merged two papers to establish the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Miss.

He wrote editorials critical of populist Louisiana governor and later U.S. Sen. Huey Long, racist Sen. Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi and the White Citizens' Councils. Widely acclaimed as the spokesman of the "New South," Carter won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, particularly a series on the mistreatment of Japanese-American soldiers returning from World War II. He continued to write editorials after his eldest son succeeded him in directing news operations.

Hodding Carter III worked for the Delta Democrat-Times for 18 years - as a reporter, editorial writer, managing editor and associate publisher.

He served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs in President Carter's administration, was a Wall Street Journal columnist, a television host and recently retired as president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. He is currently a professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Norman Ritter was a Life magazine correspondent, bureau chief and associate editor and is now a freelance journalist and communications consultant.

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