THE 
NEW ORLEANS 
SEWERAGE SYSTEM, 
COMMENCED WITH 
INAUGURAL CEREMONIES, 
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 1894. 
THE OLD PARISH PRISON 
AN APOSTROPHE. 
NEW ORLEANS: 
L. Graham & Son, Ltd., 44-46 Baronne Street, 
1894. • ■ THE 
Sewerage System of new Orleans 
INAUGURATED. 
From the " New Orleans Times-Democrat," April 19, 1894. 
Promptly at 12:30 yesterday afternoon, in the presence 
of Mayor Fitzpatrick, ex-Mayor Shakespeare and a large 
number of the representative citizens, and with imposing 
ceremonies, the ground was broken for the great work of 
sewering this city, a scheme conceived during the last city 
administration and being carried into operation during 
the present one. 
Dr. Holt, who is the president of the New Orleans 
Sewerage Company and who has been active in the mat- 
ter of perfecting the plans for sewering the city, had ex- 
tended to many of the prominent gentlemen of the city 
invitations to be present at the ceremonies incident to be- 
ginning work, and when the hour arrived there was a 
large crowd in the vicinity of Treme market, on the north 
side of which the gigantic sewerage machine is placed 
and where the first work will be done. 
The ceremonies took place in Treme Market, near the 
Parish Prison. After the crowd had assembled Mayor 
Fitzpatrick, directing his remarks to President Holt, said 
that the inauguration of the sewerage system was an event 
of Which the people of New Orleans should feel proud; 
that it would fill a long-felt want, and that those present 
rejoiced at being given an opportunity of witnessing the 
auspicious beginning of the work. The sewerage system, 
the value of which it was impossible to estimate, had been 
conceived by>the Shakespeare administration and adopted 2 
by the present council, and he, in common with all citi- 
zens, hoped to see it carried to a successful completion, 
as it meant so much for the best interests of the city and 
its future welfare. 
The selection of Dr. Holt as president, a gentleman 
whose name and reputation are so well known and hon- 
ored throughout the scientific world, he thought was a 
vast aid to the enterprise. The present efficient quaran- 
tine system was the work of Dr. Holt, towhose knowledge 
of practical sanitary science the city is indebted for its 
preservation from the scourges that once depopulated New 
Orleans. 
Mayor Fitzpatrick concluded his address with a most 
complimentary allusion to the directors of the sewerage 
company for having taken upon themselves the enormous 
task of sewering the city. 
Mayor Fitzpatrick delivered his speech in his usual 
calm, impressive manner, and at the conclusion of his re- 
marks he was greeted with liberal applause. Dr. Holt ac- 
knowledged the compliment paid him by gracefully bow- 
ing, after which he delivered the following address: 
DR. HOLT'S ADDRESS. 
Dr. Holt spoke as follows: 
Your Honor, Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen-An event so 
fraught with beneficence to the people of New Orleans, 
as this moment of actual breaking ground for the con- 
struction of the vast sewerage system, which is to purify 
and to help maintain in purity this city, such an event fully 
justifies all the honor we can possibly bestow upon the 
occasion and ourselves. It is emphasized in the cordial in- 
vitation to you, gentlemen, to grace the time and cause by 
the distinguished presence of representative citizens of this 
great municipal commonwealth. 
Look about you, and you will note an almost disap- 
pointing lack of ostentatious display. Neither flags nor 
music, booming guns nor flowing wine are here, naught 3 
save these silent evidences in ponderous machinery and 
ready gangs of laborers with spade and pick, which de- 
clare of a mighty work ahead, and of a determined pur- 
pose to drive on in the lines which engineering genius 
has set before us; never to stop or pause until the weary 
old tune of complaint and despair is forgotten, and a joy- 
ful sono- with new words is in the heart and mouth of all; 
until our citizens, at home and abroad, like Californians, 
are known for local patriotism, which some mistake 
for boasting: "We are a prosperous, progressive people, 
abreast of the times and close up to the music in the pro- 
cession of American cities. Our river is the biggest, our 
bridge is the grandest, our city is the cleanest, our homes are 
the brightest and our girls are the loveliest. New Orleans 
againstthe world, and New Orleans forever I" Your Honor 
and gentlemen, that is the tune for Orleanians to vocalize 
and to teach their children how to sing, captivating the world 
and filling this city with health and comfort-'seeking visit- 
ors, and our markets with capital for investment here. 
Then away with this whining and drawling, at home and 
abroad, of a doleful ditty about dirty streets and filthy 
gutters, filthy premises and a filthy city, shocking and 
driving away, with repulsive suggestion and disgusting 
fact, our best friends, while furnishing terms of derision, 
founded on truth, too, for our commercial and industrial 
rivals and adversaries. 
As matters have stood these many years, the bad sani- 
tary conditions, the unavoidable result of a total lack of 
scientific and comprehensive systems of sanitary provi- 
sion in the disposal of sewage, in the disposal of garbage, 
and in an efficient method of drainage, have compelled 
our people in very truth to bear injurious testimony against 
their own city, discrediting her claims and their own es- 
tate. Could civic patriotism be more sorely tried than to 
find itself halting between a humiliating admission and the 
telling of a flagrant lie concerning facts glaringly revealed 
to the critical eye of an intelligent and unsparing world ? 4 
Under the old order, now waning to a close, we were 
compelled ourselves to testify against ourselves, to the ru- 
inous endamagement of us all, for a house divided against 
itself can not stand. 
The glorious sun of our prosperity began to rise, dis- 
pelling doubts and horrible fears with the weary night of 
suffering and despondency, when, in 1884, an end was 
made of the old quarantine, a ruinous bar to commerce but 
a cobweb against pestilence. The old quarantine, hoary 
with outrageous precedents of barbarous practices and tra- 
ditions of disastrous failure, had stood for decades, like 
unused gates upon the highway of pestilence, wide open, 
like gates of hateful Janus ever spread for war, while 
death and hideous destruction, leading pale and wall-eyed 
horror with gaunt misery in train, stalked through con- 
temptuously. In 1884 and 1885 these worthless gates and 
mischievous were from their rusty hinges torn, and in their 
stead the " new system of maritime sanitation," in all the 
detail of its complexity, no missing link, or part omitted, 
but in perfect working trim and thoroughly efficient, was 
invented, and then and there applied. 
This was the true dawning which drove the stygian 
gloom from hence, and heralded the day star of our hope; 
for without this assurance vouchsafed by sanitary science 
against the incursions and deadly ravages of foreign 
pestilence, all hope was at an end; the aspirations for 
commercial greatness, the longing for industrial enter- 
prise, the expectation of improvement in local conditions, 
were mere fantasies and speculative dreams. With this 
assurance, now by time and abundant test made doubly 
sure, there is no richer field for municipal improvement, 
for commercial and industrial ventures of every kind, than 
is offered in New Orleans. Until this assurance was 
made secure, capital and commerce, though lusty fellows 
of heroic boast and adventurous soul, were ever ready, like 
timorous hares expectant ot a howling pack, to take wise 
counsel of their heels and fly before the faintest scent of 
danger threatening to windward. 5 
We have boldly announced to the world the security of 
our position in the perfection of our defence. We have 
invited immigration, capital, and industry to come and 
abide with us. These have responded in increasing 
acquiescence, and hold themselves ready, in the fitness of 
time, to pour in upon us in gathering floods; but a re- 
sponsibility still rests upon us, and there yet remains much 
for us to do. Not .only do we owe it to ourselves and our 
children, but to the stranger within our gates seeking rest 
and recreation; to the capitalist, who comes for invest- 
ment ; to the manufacturer and the artisan we are under 
an obligation we can not honorably or prudently disallow, 
or, worst of all, shamelessly repudiate or deny, at least, 
without incurring merited and injurious odium. It is a 
solemn duty above all other duties, that we shall secure to 
these, as well, also, to our own families, every guaranty 
of protection of life, of health, and of all that appertains 
to social well-being, within the reasonable purview of the 
public care. If we owe this to strangers, who judge of 
us by these evidences of municipal enlightenment and 
Christian duty performed or neglected, how much more 
do we owe it to our wives and children ? 
That we are mindful of this obligation, and are becom- 
ing, day by day, more sensitive and more responsive to 
its demands, let us bring forward now some points of 
testimony to set in evidence of a progressive era, which 
is gradually but inevitably crowding out the old order of 
slip-shod negligence and contented squalor. Let us for a 
moment look about, as I did after four years' absence, 
and see what has happened. The first amazing revelation 
of change from the good old times that strikes the eye is 
the silent departure of whole districts of the good, old- 
time mud streets; oftentimes, in rainy spells, changed to 
continuous lakes, and always, in such weather, dangerous 
quagmires, in which innumerable vehicles and sometimes 
horses and mules seemed hopelessly sunk. These were 
familiar sights in streets, even in our most fashionable 6 
quarters, which now afford a passage-way to loaded 
cotton floats, the coal cart, the baker and the butcher, 
driving in round canter, in July or January, rain or shine. 
In so short a time has this much been done to certain 
streets, the good, old, wise folks told us could never be 
redeemed. 
A few years ago we stumbled through these streets at 
night, in the uncertain and feeble rays of a yellow gas 
light (except in moonlight nights, when the gas was 
turned off); sometimes, in the late or very early hours, 
sheering to the middle of the street to steer clear of 
cowans and evesdroppers and such like uncanny ilk, 
children of darkness. Now, we no longer mutter a silent 
prayer and commit our souls to heaven, or keep our 
powder dry, but walk abroad at any hour of night as 
complacently as at noonday. 
Light is the enemy of crime, and New Orleans is 
to-day one of the best, if not the very best, lighted city in 
the United States. 
Our predecessors of old never made the slightest at- 
tempt systematically and scientifically to drain this city, 
but contented themselves with cutting an incomprehensi- 
ble tangle of huge cesspools, called drainage canals, that 
seemed to begin nowhere in particular and end eventually 
in the lake exactly where, under any conditions, they 
should never be allowed. To-day there is a comprehen- 
sive plan for a complete system of drainage evolved from 
minds of the ablest engineers, and backed by a large 
appropriation for a great part of the work. We may 
safely say that the days of stagnant gutters, of flooded 
streets and lake Julia are soon to be numbered with 
miseries past. 
A few years ago, and only under the pressure of dire 
calamity threatened, there were periodic spells of a spas- 
modic cleaning up ; house to house inspections, and a great 
array of carts suddenly mustered in, to do what should be 
done every day of the year, to remove garbage from prem- 7 
ises. To-day there is a systematized method, thoroughly 
scientific in rationale, contemplating the earliest and most 
complete equipment for garbage disposal. 
Even unprepared for the immediate handling and treat- 
ment of gigantic masses from Augean stables-for a plant 
must germinate and grow, it matters not whether it be a 
cotton plant or a rice plant, a tobacco plant or a garbage 
plant, this company, as I am informed, has moved out of 
the inhabited city as many as 520 wagon loads of nauseous 
and reeking filth in one day, by far the best record ever 
made in cleaning up this city. 
With the early completion of their plans and faithful 
performance of duty, a question of no doubt, what 
an amazing change from the dirty premises, the box on 
the banquette, and the ubiquitous yellow dog as sanitary 
guardian and garbage plant in one. But of all the munic- 
ipal improvements springing into existence under the 
vitalizing sunlight of our new prosperity, this vast out- 
spreading tree, whose base will be planted where yon dark 
prison stands, whose trunk, in divided forks, will extend 
both north and south, and whose ramifying limbs and 
twigs will ultimately be coextensive with the streets and 
premises of the city, this great sewerage system must take 
precedence of all the rest. 
To usher in this mighty innovation for the public weal 
you are invited here to-day. 
It is a truth of common note that the events in whose 
beginnings are inclosed the richest future in the affairs of 
man, and oftentimes his destiny, are they in which, like an 
unpretentious bud, is enfolded in microscopic smallness 
the leaf, the flower and fruitage of a glorious consum- 
mation. 
If these beginnings of great things to come were 
heralded with clanging bells and resounding guns, the 
whole structure of human history would have to be re- 
built, for no event pregnant of mighty consequence in 
the history of a people, shaping development and follow- 8 
ing the curves and lines of religious, political and material 
destiny, but invariably it has begun in quiet, lowly ways, 
as we do this day, in delving the earth with humble.spade, 
and as began our primal sires. 
It is meet that in the history of this mighty work, so 
freighted with beneficent consequence to this people and 
to generations yet unborn, that we should follow the fated 
precedent which decrees all normal growth to proceed 
through lines of evolution preordained in the germinal 
conception of the creature. Through this day's toil and 
sweat we bring to pass and signalize the cherished dream 
of years in the beginning of a vast work, which shall, 
from this moment hence proceed, and shall not cease 
until the outspreading branches of this great subterranean 
tree shall have entered every cottage and every palace, 
every hotel, factory, banking house, store, shop, hospital, 
asylum, almshouse and prison, carrying from thence, 
silently but speedily, as the flight of an arrow, unseen 
and unobserved, every vile and putrefactive substance 
which sewage can convey. 
This vast municipal body is but the indefinite extension 
of the body individual, and so of physiological functions 
and pathological derangements. How speedily would a 
person pine and perish in his own corruption but for the 
great sewers inwardly provided; the kidneys and intesti- 
nal tract carrying off as fast as formed the poisonous mat- 
ters of burnt-out ash from the natural combustion within 
living tissues. What a fearful monstrosity would a human 
creature be without such sewers. He could get along 
without the washing of his face, without clean clothes, 
electric lights, paved streets, or even a garbage plant; but 
the sewers he must have or die immediately. 
Look around you now and consider the self-poisoning, 
the foul and contaminating excreta, having no organs of 
issuance, but pent up in this body politic. Consider this 
huge animal and heavy feeder; this anatomical compound 
of 260,000 actively-functioning members, casting out 9 
continually, each from itself, the waste and offensive 
products of destructive tissue change, or, as one of the 
doctors just now graduating would say, katabolism or 
retrograde metamorphosis. 
What a gross monstrosity, scarce half made up, is this 
immense living creature, without those natural passage- 
ways for cleansing and keeping pure every tissue and 
fibre of its own composite organism; and precisely such 
a mal-formed beast is the city of New Orleans, without a 
sewerage system. No marvel that offensive odors and 
disgusting sights repel. No wonder that a high annual 
death rate, with all of its implied sickness and industrial 
loss, prevails, and all preventible. 
The New Orleans Sewerage Company is a most 
learned and skilful surgeon, who does his work only in 
accordance with approved ana scientific methods of asep- 
tic and antiseptic surgery. 
This masterful and eminent chirurgeon has planned for 
his municipal patient a bold, but not daring, plan for re- 
lief from the aches and miseries, from the nausea and 
convulsive seizures which have so long racked and raged 
within; and is about to begin-without anaesthesia-a 
brilliant operation in laparotomy. ' Not restoring, but 
actually creating an entire urinary and intestinal tract, and 
establishing, pardon your Honor, an artificial anus. 
The highest attainments of modern surgery are eclipsed 
and pale to commonplace procedures beside the brilliant 
achievement and splendid results sure to follow, without 
chance of accident or fatal relapse, this operative measure, 
contrived by Surgeon George E. Earl, C. E., in consulta- 
tion with Surgeons Rudolf Herring, C. E.; George E. 
Waring, Jr., C. E., and B. M. Harrod, C. E. This is 
the corps of surgeons who will presently immortalize their 
names in this imperishable monument to sanitary engineer- 
ing skill, to be embodied in the secret depths of this living 
and sentient municipal being. 10 
And I, as the official head of the New Orleans Sewer- 
age Company, am tendered the conspicuous honor of 
handling the glittering knife, shaped for special use, as 
you will see, like a spade, with which the operation is to 
begin. 
THE OLD PARISH PRISON.* 
But let me here a moment pause and apostrophize reflectively; 
For this is fateful ground, with bloody stain imbrued. 
The scene of many a tragedy. 
The old Parish Prison! with tottering walls and sunken roof, 
Lo, where it stands! wrapped in awful silence of Cimmerian gloom, 
Barred and grated. 
Hideous portal of bottomless perdition! 
Black with presage of abandoned hope! there it looms, 
Frowning and repellent. 
In that residence of woe, excess of wickedness doth grow. 
Monsters of cruelty, of knavish cunning and rebellious spleen; 
Victims to vice of hideous mien, mope in sullen enmity; 
Or murder time in grovelling sports obscene, 
• Mere slaves of sensuality. 
That misshapen and dreary pile, shaggy with age, 
" Hath witnessed huge affliction and dismay, 
Mix'd with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. 
The dismal situation waste and wild; 
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, 
As one great furnace flames, yet from those flames 
No light, but rather darkness visible 
Serves only to discover sights of woe, 
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 
And rest can never dwell." 
Thou citadel of crime and shame, 
Thou insatiate maw by Justice cram'd 
With living, -dead humanity. 
Thy piteous tale of darkest woe might well 
Comparison with horrors from profoundest hell, 
But now we seal thy doom. 
We consign thee, thy doors, and cells and massive walls, 
Thy clanging bolts and bars of steel, 
The frightful ghosts that haunt thy halls, 
Thy instruments of discipline and vengeance, 
Thy dolorous corridors, and blackened arches, 
Thy stains of tears, and atmosphere of moaning sighs, 
We banish all, and speedily, 
To dusty oblivion, in everlasting shades, 
There to dwell in infamy. 11 
Thou paralyzing spectre, housed in dread reality 
Of midnight shrieks in mad'ning dreams, here frozen in solidity 
We exorcise thee from this ground, in Holy Name! 
In thy hateful place shall rise in glorious antithesis [crown'd 
A beauteous form, by science reared, by art adorned and heavenly 
All radiant with benison of life and comfort, health and joy, 
A temple of Hygeia. 
In open, verdant spaces 'round, where criminal feet now tread, 
Mellifluous bees with drowsy sound shall toil in flow'rs outspread; 
While childish feet in boisterous play 
Shall chase the golden hours away, 
In guileless innocence. 
Hon. Mayor Fitzpatrick, gentlemen of the press and 
fellow-citizens, our guests, in the name of the New Orleans 
Sewerage Company, I extend to you a grateful acknowl- 
edgment of the honor conferred in your attendance here 
to-day. 
Like Cato of old, who, in season and out of season, 
continually proclaimed the destruction of Carthage for the 
salvation of Rome; so, for years, my refrain has been and 
shall be: 
"New Orleans, to be saved, must be sewered and drained." 
Mr. George Dunbar at this stage presented Dr. Holt 
with an ornamental spade, attached to which was the fol- 
lowing: " Presented to Dr. Joseph Holt, president of the 
board of directors, in honor of the inauguration of the 
construction of the sewerage system of the city of New 
Orleans." The recipient, in accepting the gift, said that 
no jeweled ornament could be received by him with 
greater appreciation than the humble instrument by which 
he would begin the capital operation of municipal laparot- 
omy. 
Ex-Mavor Joseph Shakespeare added a few words, say- 
ing that the scheme had been inaugurated by the city at a 
time when the people of the city were greatly in doubt as 
to its feasibility. He had studied the matter and found it 
practicable, and believed that when completed would prove 12 
the most beneficial movement in the march of progress 
ever made by the city. 
The gentlemen present then moved in a body to the 
place where the dirt was to be broken for the first work 
of excavation. Under the long elevated railway kind of 
machinery the crowd stood in the hot sun, while Dr. Holt, 
with the gilt spade, dug up half a dozen shovelfuls of dirt 
and dumped them into a massive receiver, which was ele- 
vated by steam, like a dredging machine bucket. This 
completed the ceremony of breaking the ground, and the 
crowd dispersed. 
* The old Parish Prison "an antique and gloomy pile of stuccoed 
brick that still stands on Orleans street, just beyond Congo Square, was 
built in 1830." A veritable bastile and an unwelcome curiosity of the 
"Old French Quarter."