Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.}3.] SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE.

We take this opportunity of announcing a design, closely associated with our Household Words, which we have now matured, and which we hope will be acceptable to our readers.

We purpose publishing, at the end of each month as a supplementary number to the monthly part of Household Words, a comprehensive Abstract or History of all the occurrences of that month, native and foreign, under the title of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE OF CURRENT EVENTS.

The size and price of each of these numbers will be the same as the size and price of the present number of Household Words. Twelve numbers will necessarily be published in the course of the year—one for each month—and on the completion of the Annual Volume, a copious Index will appear, and a title-page for the volume; which will then be called THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE of such a year. It will form a complete Chronicle of all that year’s events, carefully compiled, thoroughly digested, and systematically arranged for easy reference; presenting a vast mass of information that must be interesting to all, at a price that will render it accessible to the humblest purchasers of books, and at which only our existing machinery in connexion with this Work would enable us to produce it.

The first number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE will appear as a supplement to the first monthly part of Household Words, published at the end of the present month of APRIL. As the Volume for 1850 would be incomplete (in consequence of our not having commenced this publication at the beginning of a year) without a backward reference to the three months of JANUARY, FEBRUARY, and MARCH, a similar number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE for each of those months will be published before the year is out.

It is scarcely necessary to explain that it is not proposed to render the purchase of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE compulsory on the purchasers of Household Words; and that the supplementary number, though always published at the same time as our monthly part, will therefore be detached from it, and published separately.

Nor is it necessary for us, we believe, to expatiate on our leading reasons for adding this new undertaking to our present enterprise. The intimate connexion between the facts and realities of the time, and the means by which we aim, in Household Words, to soften what is hard in them, to exalt what is held in little consideration, and to show the latent hope there is in what may seem unpromising, needs not to be pointed out. All that we sought to express in our Preliminary Word, in reference to this work, applies, we think, to its proposed companion. As another humble means of enabling those who accept us for their friend, to bear the world’s rough-cast events to the anvil of courageous duty, and there beat them into shape, we enter on the project, and confide in its success.

THE TROUBLED WATER QUESTION.

My excellent and eloquent friend, Lyttleton, of Pump Court, Temple, barrister-at-law, disturbed me on a damp morning at the end of last month, to bespeak my company to a meeting at which he intended to hold forth. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘the Great Water Supply Congress, which assembles to-morrow.’

‘Do you know anything of the subject?’

‘A vast deal both practically and theoretically. Practically, I pay for my little box in the Regent’s Park, twice the price for water our friend Fielding is charged, and both supplies are derived from the same Company. Yet his is a mansion, mine is a cottage; his rent more than doubles mine in amount, and his family trebles mine in number. So much for the consistency and exactions of an irresponsible monopoly. Practically, again, there are occasions when my cisterns are without water. So much for deficient supply.’

‘Is your water bad?’

‘Not absolutely unwholesome; but I have drunk better.’

‘Now then, Theoretically.’

‘Theoretically, I learn from piles of blue books—a regular blue mountain of parliamentary inquiry instituted in the years 1810, 1821, 1827, 1828, 1834, 1840, and 1845—from a cloud of prospectuses issued by embryo Water Companies, from a host of pamphlets _pro_ and _con_, and from the reports of the Board of Health, that of the 300,000 houses of which London is said to consist, 70,000 are without the great element of suction and cleanliness; I find also that the supply, such as it is, is derived from nine water companies all linked together to form a giant monopoly; and that, in consequence, the charge for water is in some instances excessive; that six of these companies draw their water from the filthy Thames;—and the same number, including those which use the Lea and New River water, have no system of filtration—hence it is unwholesome: that in short, the public of the metropolis are the victims of dear, insufficient and dirty water. Like Tantalus of old they are denied much of the great element of life, although it flows within reach of their parched and thirsty lips. And by whom? By that many-headed Cerberus—that nine gentlemen in one—the great monopolist Water Company combination of London! Unless, therefore, we bestir ourselves in the great cause for which this numerous, enlightened, and respectable meeting have assembled here this day—’

‘You forget; you have only two listeners at present—myself and my spaniel. I can suggest a more profitable morning’s amusement than a rehearsal of your speech.’

‘What?’

‘Your theoretical knowledge is, I doubt not, very comprehensive and varied. But second-hand information is not to be trusted too implicitly. Every statement of fact, like every story, gains something in exaggeration, or loses something in accuracy by repetition from book to book, or from book to mouth.’

‘Granted; but what do you suggest?’

‘Ocular demonstration. Let us at once visit and minutely inspect the works of one of the Companies. I am sure they will let us in at the Grand Junction, for I have already been over their premises.’

‘A capital notion! Agreed.’

The preliminaries—consisting of the hasty bundling up of Mr. Lyttleton’s notes for the morrow’s oration, and the hire of a Hansom cab—were adjusted in a few minutes.

The order to drive to Kew Bridge, was obeyed in capital style; for in three-quarters of an hour we were deposited on the towing path on the Surrey side of the Thames, opposite the King of Hanover’s house, and a quarter of a mile west of Kew Bridge.

‘Here,’ I explained, ‘is the spot whence the Grand Junction Company derive their water. In the bed of the river is an enormous culvert pipe laid parallel to this path. Its mouth—open towards Richmond—is barred across with a grating, to intercept stray fish, murdered kittens, or vegetable impurities, and—except now and then the intrusion edgeways of a small flounder, or the occasional slip of an erratic eel—it admits nothing into the pipe but what is more or less fluid. The culvert then takes a bend round the edge of the islet opposite to us; burrows beneath the Brentford road, and delivers its contents into a well under that tall chimney and taller iron “stand-pipe” which you see on the other side of the river.’

‘And is _this_ the stuff I have to pay four pounds ten a year for?’ exclaimed Mr. Lyttleton, contemplating the opaque fluid; part of which was then making its way into the cisterns of Her Majesty’s lieges.

‘Certainly; but it is purified first. We will now cross the bridge to the Works.’

Those of my readers who make prandial expeditions to Richmond, must have noticed at the beginning of Old Brentford, a little beyond where they turn over Kew Bridge, an immensely tall thin column that shoots up into the air like an iron mast unable to support itself, and seems to require four smaller, thinner, and not much shorter props to keep it upright. This, with the engine and engine-houses, is all they can see of the Grand Junction Waterworks from the road. It is only when one gets inside, that the whole extent of the aquatic apparatus is revealed.

Determined to follow the water from the Thames till it began its travels to London, we entered the edifice, went straight to the well, and called for a glass of water. Our hosts—who had received our visit without hesitation—supplied us. ‘That,’ remarked one of them, as he held the half-filled tumbler up to the light, ‘is precisely the state of the water as emptied from the Thames into the well.’

It looked like a dose of weak magnesia, or that peculiar London liquid known as ‘skim-sky-blue,’ but deceitfully sold under the name of milk.

‘The analysis of Professor Brande,’ said Lyttleton, ‘gives to every gallon of Thames water taken from Kew Bridge, 19·2 parts of solid matter; but the water, I apprehend, in which he experimented must have been taken from the river on a serener occasion than this. To-day’s rain appears to have drained away the chalk—so as to give in this specimen a much larger proportion of solids to fluids than his estimate.’

‘In this impure state,’ one of the engineers told us, ‘the water is pumped by steam power into the reservoirs to which you will please to follow me.’

Passing out of the building and climbing a sloping bank, we now saw before us an expanse of water covering 3½ acres; but divided into two sections. Into the larger, the pump first delivers the water, that so much of the impurity as will form sediment may be precipitated. It then slowly glides through a small opening into the lesser section, which is a huge filter.

‘The impurities of water,’ said the barrister, assuming an oratorical attitude, to give us a taste of his ‘reading up,’ ‘are of two kinds; first, such as are mechanically suspended—say earth, chalk, sand, clay, dead vegetation or decomposed cats; and secondly, such as are dissolved or chemically combined—like salt, sugar, or alkali. Separation in the one case is easy, in the other it involves a chemical process. If you throw a pinch of sand into a tumbler of water, and stir it about, you produce a turbid mixture; but to render the fluid clear again you have only to adopt the simple process of letting it alone; for on setting the tumbler down for awhile, the particles—which, from their extreme minuteness, were easily disturbed and distributed amidst the fluid—being heavier than water, are precipitated, or in other words, fall to the bottom, leaving the liquid translucent. This is what is happening in the larger section of the reservoir to the chalky water of which we drank. I think I am correct?’ asked the speaker, angling for a single ‘cheer’ from the Engineer.

‘Quite so,’ replied that gentleman.

‘Provided the water could remain at rest long enough—which the insatiable maw of the modern Babylon does not allow,’—continued the honourable orator, rehearsing a bit more of his speech, ‘this mode of cleansing would be perfectly effectual. In proof of which I may only allude to Nature’s mode of depuration, as shown in lakes—that of Geneva for instance. The waters of the Rhone enter that expansive reservoir from the Valais in a very muddy condition; yet, after reposing in the lake, they issue at Geneva as clear as crystal. But so incessant is the London demand, that scarcely any time can be afforded for the impurities of the Thames, the Lea, or the New River to separate themselves from the water by mere deposition.’

‘True,’ interjected one of the superintendants. ‘It is for that reason that our water is passed afterwards into the filtering bed, which is four feet thick.’

‘How do you make up this enormous bed?’

‘The water rests upon, and permeates through, 1st, a surface of fine sand; 2d, a stratum of shells; 3d, a layer of garden gravel; and 4th, a base of coarse gravel. It thence falls through a number of ducts into cisterns, whence it is pumped up so as to commence its travels to town through the conduit-pipe.’

We were returning to the engine-house, when Lyttleton asked the Engineer, ‘Does your experience generally, enable you to say that water as supplied by the nine companies, is tolerably pure?’

‘Upon the whole, yes,’ was the answer.

‘Indeed!’ ejaculated the orator, sharply. ‘If that be true,’ he whispered to me, in a rueful tone, ‘I shall be cut out of one of the best points in my speech.’

‘Of course,’ continued the Engineer, ‘purity entirely depends upon the source, and the means of cleansing.’

‘Then, as to the source—how many companies take their supplies from the Thames, near to, and after it has received the contents of, the common sewers?’

‘No water is taken from the Thames below Chelsea, except that of the Lambeth Company, which is supplied from between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges; an objectionable source, which they have obtained an act to change to Thames Ditton. The Chelsea Waterworks have a most efficient system of filtration; as also have the Southwark and Vauxhall Company; both draw their water from between the Red House, Battersea, and Chelsea Hospital. The other companies do not filter. The West Middlesex sucks up some of Father Thames as he passes Barnes Terrace. Except the lowest of these sources, Thames water is nearly as pure as that of other rivers.’

‘Perhaps it is,’ was the answer; ‘but the unwholesomeness arises from contaminations received during its course; we don’t object to the “Thames,” but to its “tributaries,” such as the black contents of common sewers, and the refuse of gut, glue, soap, and other nauseous manufactures; to say nothing of animal and vegetable offal, of which the river is the sole receptacle. Brande shows that, while the solid matter contained in the river at Teddington is 17·4, that which the water has contracted when it flows past Westminster is 24·4, and the City of London, 28·0.’

‘But,’ said the Engineer, ‘these adulterations are only mechanically suspended in the fluid, and are, as you shall see presently, totally separated from it by our mode of filtration.’

‘Which brings us to your second point, as to efficient cleansing; you admit that without filtration this is impossible, and also that only three companies filter; the deduction, therefore, is that two-thirds of the water supplied to Londoners is insufficiently cleansed. This indeed, is not a mere inference; we know it for a fact, we see it in our ewers, we taste it out of our caraffes.’

‘But this does not wholly arise from the inefficient filtration of the six companies,’ returned an officer of this Company, ‘the public is much to blame—though, when agitating against an abuse, it never thinks of blaming itself. Half the dirt, dust, and animalculæ found at table are introduced after the water has been delivered to the houses. Impurity of all sorts finds its way into out-door cisterns, even when covered, and few of them, open or closed, are often enough cleansed. In some neighbourhoods water-butts are always uncovered, and hardly ever cleaned out. The water is foul, and the companies are blamed.’

‘The blame belongs to the system,’ said the barrister. ‘Domestic reservoirs are not only an evil but an unnecessary expense. Besides filth, they cause waste and deficient supply: they should be abolished; for continuous supply is the real remedy. Let the pipes be always full, and the water would be always ready, always fresh, and could never acquire new impurities. Still, despite all you say, I am bound to conclude that although one-third of the water may arrive in the domestic cisterns of the metropolis in a pellucid state, the other two-thirds does not.’ Mr. L. then inscribed this calculation in his note book, whispering to me that his pet ‘dirty water point’ would come out even stronger than he had expected.

We had now returned to one of the engine-rooms.

‘You have tasted the water before, I now present you with some of it after, filtration,’ said the chief engineer, handing us a tumbler. ‘This is exactly the condition in which we deliver it to our customers.’

It was clear to the eye, and to the taste innocuous; but Lyttleton (who I should mention, occasionally turns on powerful streams of oratory at Temperance meetings, and is a judge of the article,) complained that the liquid wanted ‘flavour.’

‘In other words, then it wants _impurity_’ replied one of our cicerones with alacrity, ‘for perfectly pure water is quite tasteless. Indeed, water may be too pure. Distilled water which contains no salt, is insipid, and tends to indigestion. It is a wise provision of Nature, that waters should contain a greater or less quantity of foreign ingredients; for without these water is dangerous to drink. It never fails to take up from the atmosphere a certain proportion of carbonic acid gas, and when passing through lead pipes it imbibes enough carbonate of lead to constitute poison. Dr. Christison mentions several severe cases of lead (or painter’s) cholic, which arose chiefly in country houses to which water was supplied from springs through lead pipes. The most remarkable case was that at Claremont, where the ex-king of the French and several members of his family were nearly poisoned by pure spring water conveyed to the mansion through lead pipes.

‘Mercy!’ I exclaimed, with all the energy of despair that a mere water-drinker is capable of, ‘if river water be unwholesome, and pure water poison, what _is_ to become of every temperance pledgee?’

The Engineer relieved me: ‘All the Chemists,’ he stated, ‘have agreed that a water containing from eight to ten grains of sulphate of magnesia or soda, to the imperial gallon, is best suited for alimentary, lavatory, and other domestic purposes.’

We were now introduced to the great engine. What a monster! Imagine an enormous see-saw, with a steam engine at one end, and a pump at the other. Fancy this ‘beam,’ some ten yards long, and twenty-eight tons in weight, moving on a pivot in the middle, the ends of which show a circumference greater than the crown of the biggest hat ever worn. See, with what earnest deliberation the ‘see,’ or engine, pulls up the ‘saw,’ or balance-box of the pump, which then comes down upon the water-trap with the ferocious _àplomb_ of 49 tons, sending 400 gallons of water in one tremendous squirt nearly the twentieth part of a mile high;—that is to the top of the stand-pipe.

‘We have a smaller engine which “does” 150 gallons per stroke,’ remarked our informant: ‘each performs 11 strokes, and forces up 4400 gallons of water per minute, and thus our average delivery per diem throughout the year is from 4,000,000, to 5,000,000 gallons.’

‘What proportion of London do you supply?’ asked Mr. Lyttleton.

‘The quadrangle included between Oxford Street, Wardour Street, Pall-Mall, and Hyde Park; besides the whole of Notting-hill, Bayswater, and Paddington. We serve 14,058 houses, to each of which we supply 225 gallons per day, or, taking the average number of persons per house at nine, 25 gallons a head; besides public services, such as baths, watering streets, or manufactories; making our total daily delivery at the rate of 252 gallons per house. This delivery is performed through 80 miles of service pipes, whose diameter varies from 3 to 30 inches.

‘Now,’ said my companion, sharpening his pencil, ‘to go into the question of supply.’ He then unfolded his pocket soufflet, and brought out a calculation, of quantities derived, he said, from parliamentary returns and other authorities more or less reliable:—

Gals. daily. New River Company 20,000,000 Chelsea Company 3,250,000 West Middlesex Company 3,650,000 Grand Junction Company 3,500,000 East London Company 7,000,000 South Lambeth Company 2,500,000 South London Company and Southwark Company 3,000,000 Hampstead Company 400,000 Kent Company 1,200,000 —————————— 44,500,000 Artesian Wells 8,000,000 Land-spring Pumps 3,000,000 “Catch” rain water (say) 1,000,000 —————————— Making a total quantity supplied daily to London, from all sources, of 56,500,000

‘An abundant supply,’ said an engineer eagerly, ‘for as the present population of the metropolis is estimated at 2,336,000, the total affords about 24 gallons of water per day, for every man, woman, and child.’

‘Admitted,’ rejoined Lyttleton; ‘but we have to deal with large deductions; first, nearly half this quantity runs to waste, chiefly in consequence of the intermittent system. I live in a small house with proportionately small cisterns, which are filled no more than three times a week; now, as my neighbours have larger houses and larger reservoirs, the water when turned on runs for as long a time into my small, as it does into their capacious cisterns, and consequently, if my stop-taps be in the least out of order, a greater quantity descends the waste pipe than remains behind. This is universally the case in similar circumstances.’

‘_We_ supply water daily, Sundays excepted,’ remarked the Engineer.

‘Then you are wiser than your neighbours. But every inconvenience and nearly all the waste, would be saved by the adoption of the continuous system of supply. Secondly, a large quantity of water is consumed by cattle, breweries, baths, public institutions, for putting out fires, and for laying dust. The lieges of London have only, therefore, to divide between them some 10 gallons of water each per day; and, as it is generally admitted that a sixth part of their habitations are without water at all, the division must be most unequally made. That such is the fact is shown by your own figures—your customers get 25 gallons each per day, or more than double their share. For this excess, some in poorer districts get none at all.’

‘That is no fault of the existing companies. As sellers of an article, they are but too happy to get as many customers for it as possible; but poor tenants cannot, and their landlords will not, afford the expense. If the companies were to make the outlay necessary to connect the houses with their mains, they would have no legal power to recover the money so expended—nor indeed is it clear, that were they inclined to run the risk, the parties would avail themselves of it. In one instance, the Southwark and Vauxhall Company offered to construct a tank which would give continuous supply to a block of 100 small houses, at the rate of 50 gallons per diem to each—if the proprietor would pay an additional rate sufficient to yield 5 per cent. on the outlay, such additional rate not exceeding one half-penny per week for each house, but the offer was declined.’