Charles Dickens wrote in Dombey and Son about the massive destruction in the process of construction.
He wrote:
(a) Houses were knocked down, streets broken through and stopped.
(b) Deep pits and trenches were dug into the ground.
(c) Enormous heaps of earth and clay was thrown up.
(d) There were hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness. According to one newspaper reader the underground railways were a menace to health because the compartment in which he travelled was filled with passengers smoking pipes. The atmosphere was full of mixture of sulphur, coal dust. The gas lamps gave foul smell. By the time the train reached Moorgate he was nearly dead of suffocation and heat.
