London Under by Peter Ackroyd

Author:Peter Ackroyd
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780385531511
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-31T20:00:00+00:00

Building the Tower subway, 1860s (illustration credit Ill.24)

The younger Brunel took over the work only to discover that the tunnel was coming close to the bed of the Thames. That part of the river was then packed with bags of clay, but they were not enough. In the spring of 1827 the Thames broke through once more; one workman died in the flood, and another died of fever and dysentery after the event. Marc Brunel was afflicted by the first of several strokes. The mythic horrors of the underworld had taken a large toll, and the elder Brunel himself considered that his men had been “sacrificed” in their work of defying the natural world; they had entered a part of the underworld that had never before been visited. There were sometimes outbreaks of panic among the workers that had no discernible cause. On one occasion screams of “Help!” were heard coming from the tunnel; a miner had fallen asleep and had dreamed of flooding.

At the beginning of 1828 the river once more inundated the workings; there were cries of “The Thames is in! The Thames is in!” It was said that the ground above the tunnel seemed to come alive. Two men died in the deluge, but Isambard Kingdom Brunel was swept by the force of the water up the shaft to the surface. At the time of the calamity a parson from Rotherhithe deemed it to be “a just judgment on the presumptuous aspirations of mortal men.” He might have repeated the words of God to Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you.” It was wrong to go beneath the earth, closer to the infernal regions. The project was discontinued, and was not revived until the advent of government money in 1835.

On their return to work, at the beginning of 1836, the miners were confronted by another horror of the underworld. They were digging their way through old earth that was heavily impregnated with foul gases, described by one of their number as “vomiting flames of fire which burnt with a roaring noise.” Bright flame would burst from the face of the excavation.

Marc Brunel’s diary is a litany of sorrowful mysteries. On 16 May 1838 he recorded the incidence of “inflammable gas. Men complain very much.” Ten days later he wrote that “Heywood [a miner] died this morning.… Two more on the sick list. Page is evidently sinking very fast …” The metaphor of “sinking” is interesting; Page was going down even further than the others. Brunel also noted that “the air is excessively offensive. It affects the eyes. I feel much debility after having been some time below.… All complain of pain in the eyes.” Some of the workmen in fact suffered from blindness, temporary or permanent, that became known as the “tunnel disease.” Epidemics of diarrhoea added their own horror to the polluted air. On 10 August 1838, the foreman of the works was escorted to a lunatic asylum where he could not be left unattended.

“It

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