Part 11

To the application of these principles (together with a sufficient and appropriate distribution of water) far more than to chemical agents, or to the invention of mechanical traps, I believe that you must look for rendering inodorous the vicinity of your numerous gully-holes. I content myself with stating them to you, as a practical deduction from physical laws, without venturing to offer any opinion on the degree in which they are applicable within your jurisdiction, or on the manner in which they should be applied. For although, as principles, they have their foundation in physics, and although their importance to sanitary improvement is beyond measure great, all details relating to their application lie out of my province, and belong to a class of subjects in which your Surveyor’s opinion will, of course, be infinitely more useful to you than mine.

_Water-Supply._

During the past year, as in the preceding one, I have given frequent consideration to the subject of water-supply within the City.

I have already endeavoured to convey to you the deep sense which I entertain of its importance, and I have every reason to believe that your Hon. Court recognises, at its full weight, the necessity of providing for the City of London a supply of water which in quantity shall be ample, in quality pure, in distribution constant and accessible.

In my former Annual Report, and in some remarks subsequently addressed to your Committee of Health, I dwelt especially on such defects of our present system as relate to the quantity and distribution of water; endeavouring to illustrate the insufficiency of its supply to the poorer tenements of the City, and the extreme inconvenience which is entailed on their inmates, sometimes by dependence on a common tap, sometimes by the troublesome, expensive, and unwholesome necessity of storing water.

In reverting to this subject, I may correct a fallacy which is apt to prevail with respect to the abundance of supply. I have no reason whatever to doubt that a very liberal allowance of water is daily pumped into the City--enough, or more than enough, so far as I know, to fulfil all necessary purposes.

But those purposes are not fulfilled by it. A certain large figure is stated as representing the average quantity daily driven through the mains of the City; this quantity is divided by the number of residents within your area, and the inference is drawn that each individual inmate of the City has at his disposal 25 gallons a day; or (after deduction for public purposes and the like) 21¼ for his domestic supply. As an arithmetical conclusion from the premises this may be true: nothing can be less accurate as a practical representation of the facts. An average amount of three million gallons _per diem_ may, or may not, be pumped through the mains of the City: but to calculate the _available water-supply_ from this dividend, without previous deduction for the immense escape of _un-available water_ by waste-pipes or otherwise, gives a most fictitious result. The large waste which naturally arises in the system of intermittent supply has been well illustrated by some evidence given by Mr. Lovick before the late Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, in respect of a particular block of nearly 1200 houses.[47] Some of the houses were of the higher, and many of the poorer class, but the average might be stated to be of the middle class, and to present a fair example of an urban population. The drainage of all these houses was discharged through one main sewer. The run of water through this sewer was carefully watched and gauged every hour, during the night as well as the day, on days when the water was on, that is to say, when the intermittent supplies were delivered, and also on the ordinary days, when the consumption of the houses was from butts and cisterns, into which the intermittent supplies were delivered. The gaugings of the discharge of waste water into the sewer were checked by gaugings of the consumption of water from the butts and cisterns, during the interval of the delivery of the supply by the company. It was ascertained that the average quantity discharged _per diem_ through the sewers was 44½ gallons per house; but it appeared that, on the days when the intermittent supplies of water were on, the quantity discharged _per diem_ was 209 gallons _per_ house. The waste in this district from defects in house apparatus of distribution, incident to an intermittent supply of water, was, on the water days, three and three quarter times greater than the consumption on those days.

[47] General Board of Health Report on Supply of Water to the Metropolis, page 120.

No similar gaugings have, I believe, been made within the City; so I am unable to tell you with accuracy what are the proportions of waste and consumption. In an interview with your Committee on Health, when they were collecting information on the subject, Mr. Mylne, the engineer of the New River Company, stated (as a reason against fulfilling some object desired by the Committee) that within the City of London, in connexion with its distributing apparatus, there existed for the escape and waste of water, during the period of supply, ‘at least 10,000 open cocks.’

Assuming the accuracy of this statement, I doubt whether the average available supply of water for domestic purposes within the City can possibly exceed a quarter of its alleged quantity; and I am persuaded that there must be large numbers of persons to whom the enjoyment even of that reduced average is utterly unknown. Your Hon. Court, observing the incalculable waste, and knowing that the cost of water-supply (as of all other commodities) must of necessity vary according to the quantity supplied, can appreciate the consequences of so much fruitless expenditure.

I would beg likewise to observe to you that this unapplied flood of water is in itself not unobjectionable. It would be of questionable advantage if the drainage of the City were so perfect as to carry all away without inundation of the soil; while under opposite circumstances, in every quarter where drainage is absent or faulty, evil must arise from the extensive and habitual infiltration of moisture.

On the extreme inconvenience which attends the storage of water in the poorer habitations of the City, I have already reported to you, and will now only add that increased experience has given much confirmation to my view. Their receptacles are generally such as contribute to the contamination of water, and are constantly so arranged as to invite an admixture of the most varied impurities.

In the large proportion of them, which are open casks, one sees habitually a film of soot floating on the surface; one sees (if indeed one can see so deeply into water which is often turbid and opaque) that filth and rubbish lie at the bottom; one sees the interior of the cask itself dirty and mouldering.

I now merely glance at this part of the subject, because you have already on other occasions allowed me to state my knowledge at greater length. But there is one evil in particular to which I would beg leave to advert. Those works of drainage which are established under your orders depend for their efficiency on a proper supply of water; and in every case where you enforce the construction of house-drains, you order that those drains shall be served efficiently with water. Your wishes on this subject are nominally complied with by those on whom your orders are served, but are often virtually evaded by a filthy and ineffectual contrivance. The butt or cistern of the house--that on which the inmates depend for their supply of fresh and pure drinking-water, is placed in immediate contiguity to the privy, so as to reduce the requisite length of connecting pipe to the fewest possible number of inches; the application of water is not made discretionary on the users of the privy, nor are any of the cheap and common self-acting contrivances introduced; but the waste-pipe of the butt or cistern is conducted into the discharge-pipe of the privy, so that, _periodically_, with a frequency varying according to the arrangements of the water-company, the arrears of excrement are removed, so far as the overflow of the water-receptacle may have power to dislodge and propel them. Frequent evidence has been before me of the insufficiency of this arrangement: and, in addition to its actual failure (on the reasons of which your Surveyor can speak more competently than I) there is strong reason to object to its prevalence on other grounds. Water, as you probably know, is a very active absorbent of many gaseous materials; and the open butts, which are thus placed in immediate contact and communication with privies, must rapidly become infected by their foulness. I need not explain to you how injurious an addition this is to the other objectionable incidents of water-storage, or how unattractive as a beverage to the poor inhabitants of the City must be this vapid, privy-flavoured stuff.

For this arrangement I can suggest to your Hon. Court no easy alternative or remedy, so long as the distribution of water continues to be on its present intermittent plan: but it is matter for extreme regret that, by circumstances over which you have no control, the success of your sanitary measures should be seriously diminished. By the enforcement or execution of house-drainage, your Hon. Court has conferred great advantages on many districts of the City; but it is my duty to tell you that, in my judgment, the present condition of the water-trade contributes to neutralise those advantages, and constitutes a restriction on your power of doing good.

As respects the evils to which I have just adverted, unquestionably they admit of abatement by devoting separate water-receptacles to the very different uses of diet and drainage. But the expense of additional cisterns in tenements so poor cannot be considered trifling; and I believe that your Hon. Court would hesitate, even if you have the power, to enforce this double burthen on the owners of house-property, at a time when one may reasonably hope that the necessity for cisterns will be superseded.

There can be no doubt on the extreme degree in which it is desirable for the poor of the City of London, that water should be delivered to their houses on the principle of constant supply, and that they should thus be relieved from the expensive and unwholesome necessity of storing it in small quantities and in improper receptacles. That it is _desirable_ is a certainty within my official knowledge and on which therefore I can give an opinion of my own. That it is _practicable_ is not within my official knowledge; for in this part of the question are involved various considerations of hydraulic engineering, on which I am incompetent to offer an opinion. But I cannot ignore the fact, that in many parts of England and Scotland the practicability of a constant supply has been evinced by the very conclusive evidence of its success. To some such instances I alluded in my last Report, and from the present year I can quote you a striking additional one. At Wolverhampton, in 1849, the system of supply, which had previously been intermittent, was made continuous. Instead of waste ensuing on the change, its immediate effect was a reduction of 22 _per cent._ on the quantity consumed. So great had been the unpopularity of the intermittent system of supply, that at the time of the change the company had not more than 600 customers. Immediately on the adoption of the new system, their customers increased, and within ten months had risen to 1400. This increase was continuing up to the date of the Report (May 4th, 1850), at which time they were adding to the number of their customers at the rate of 50 each week. The above facts (as is well observed by the resident engineer, Mr. Marten) may be taken as a fair test that the system of continuous supply is one of superior adaptation to the domestic wants of the public.

This case is but an inconsiderable fraction of the evidence which lies before the public on the subject of continuous supply. With such evidence before me, in contrast to what I observe of the distribution of water within the City of London, I cannot refrain from repeating to your Hon. Court my confirmed and deliberate opinion that our method of supply is essentially bad, and that it withholds from the poorer population of the City a large proportion of those sanitary advantages which it is the object of water to confer. No doubt it will occur to you that against evils of this nature--evils arising in the conflictive interests of water-buyer and water-seller, the first principles of commerce imply a resource; and that in this matter, as in others of the sort, a customer holds in his own hands the remedy for his dissatisfaction. But although the supply of water, in the hands of the powerful companies who vend it, is in many respects a common transaction of trade, and as such is in theory open to competition, yet I would beg to point out to your Hon. Court that, in regard of the City under your jurisdiction, no such check and no such stimulus as competition can virtually be said to exist. In every practical sense the sale of water is a monopoly. The individual customer, dwelling in Cripplegate or in Farringdon, who is dissatisfied with his bargain in water, can go to no other market; and however legitimate may be his claim to be supplied with this prime necessary of life at its cheapest rate, in the most efficient manner, and of the best possible quality, your Hon. Court, hitherto, possesses no power to enforce it.

All who have given impartial consideration to the subject seem to concur as to the advantages which result from a control over the supply and distribution of water being possessed by those who are responsible for the drainage and cleanliness of a district. These different duties are in such essential relation to each other that they would seem almost of necessity to require a single direction and control. House-drainage pre-supposes water-supply; water-supply pre-supposes house-drainage; the efficiency of either implies their mutual adaptation; just as the circulation of blood within an animal body implies uninterrupted continuity of arteries and veins, each harmonising with the uses of the other, to ensure the efficiency of the whole. But while the works of drainage executed under your orders lose much of their sanitary usefulness for want of an effectual water-supply, your Hon. Court has no power of interference in the matter, closely associated as it is with the performance of your other functions. These anomalies would be removed, and a most beneficial power over the distribution of water would be vested in the hands of your Commission, if in the renewal of your Act of Parliament you procured authority to represent the citizens in this matter. All the advantages which could possibly be gained by competition, together with many benefits which no competition could ensure, would thus be realised to the population under your charge; if, namely, a clause were inserted in your Bill, empowering you, at your discretion, to contract corporately with any person or any company for the supply of water to the City of London.

In the Public Health Act (passed simultaneously with yours) an enactment of this nature exists, authorising local boards of health to ‘provide their district with such a supply of water as may be proper and sufficient,’ and for this purpose ‘to contract with any person whomsoever to do and execute all such works, matters, and things as shall be necessary and proper, and to require that houses shall be supplied with water,’ and to ‘make and levy water rates upon the premises, at a rate not exceeding twopence per week.’ With a power like this in your hands, you would easily enforce for the City of London whatever method of supply you might deliberately believe to be best; and you would then be enabled and entitled, in the application of other clauses in your Act, to require of landlords acting under your orders, a far completer, though less expensive, improvement of their property than you are yet in a position to obtain.

In submitting to your Hon. Court my views as to the expediency of your having a controlling power over the supply of water, I am glad to find myself supported by the recorded opinion of the present Lord Mayor, himself formerly the Chairman of a Commission of Sewers; and I am induced to believe that such an addition to your functions might not be objectionable to the water companies, as I observe that Sir William Clay, the chairman of two metropolitan companies, has expressed himself strongly on its ‘great and obvious convenience.’

* * * * *

2. Of equal importance with anything which relates to the distribution of water are those momentous questions which relate to its _quality_, and which tend to determine its fitness for human consumption.

Considering the great share of public attention which these questions at present very properly obtain, the many projects which are broached for improving the quality of our metropolitan supply, and the importance of your being in a position to decide as to the merits of any plan which may affect the City of London, I have thought it desirable in this Report to submit to you some general observations on the subject. During the last few months, I have accordingly been collecting such information as might, in my judgment, be useful for this purpose. In pursuing one portion of my inquiry--that which relates to the chemical constitution of certain waters, I have availed myself of the permission of your Hon. Court to procure a limited amount of assistance from some one more conversant than myself with the practice of analysis. For this purpose I have addressed myself to Mr. Thomas Taylor, lately Lecturer on Chemistry at St. Thomas’s Hospital, a gentleman on whose skill and impartiality I can implicitly trust. His account of the very careful analyses which he has made is subjoined to my Report.[48] Concurrently with the experience of other chemists, it has furnished me with material for many of the conclusions which I am about to lay before you.

[48] See page 168.

The water which is supplied by the New River and East London companies for the consumption of the City of London is substantially of one kind. The River Lea, on which the East London Company entirely depends, furnishes likewise much of the supply conveyed by the New River.[49] The springs in which the latter originate are of the same chemical kind as those which contribute to the Lea; and the artificial aqueduct runs its forty miles of course through much the same country as the natural river. Chemically, therefore, one description may apply to both; and I the rather speak of them conjointly, as any extension of its resources for our supply which the New River might obtain, would apparently be provided by increasing considerably its present draught from the Lea.

[49] It appears that the New River Company at present derives about two-thirds of its supply from the River Lea, and proposes to draw from this source a still larger proportion. Any chemical difference of quality in the City pipe-water (as between that supplied by the New River and that by the East London Company) would probably not exceed those limits of difference which prevail in respect of waters gathered _under varying circumstances_ from one and the same source.

The pipe-water consumed in the City has for its general chemical character, that it contains a considerable quantity of carbonate of lime, held in solution by an excess of carbonic acid. To this and another salt of lime (the sulphate) the water chiefly owes the property which is complained of under the name of _hardness_: it is by reason of these salts, namely, that it decomposes a certain large proportion of whatever soap is used with it; preventing the formation of a lather, till those salts are exhausted by a wasted proportion of soap, by boiling or otherwise, and hindering to that extent the several purposes for which soap is employed. You are probably aware that soda is extensively used in the laundry, as an antidote to this objectionable quality of hard waters; and the excess of its employment tends, by corrosion, very observably to hasten the destruction of washed articles of dress. In the same measure as water possesses the property of decomposing soap, its utility as an universal solvent is impaired; it extends to various other substances which one seeks to dissolve in it (especially to many vegetable matters) that same disposition to waste them in the form of insoluble precipitates. Its conveniences for the purposes of cooking and manufacture are _pari passu_ diminished.

Of the actual extent of which these disadvantages are sustained within the City of London, I have no means of forming an exact opinion; but statements are before the public (from the general correctness of which I have no reason to withhold reliance and belief) rating the pecuniary loss to the metropolis, in the two articles of soap and tea, at a very high figure. You will see from Mr. Taylor’s observations the proportion in which waste occurs, as regards one of these articles; namely that, for the production of a lather in washing, the pipe-water of the City of London, used without boiling, consumes from 13 to 19 times as much soap as distilled water would consume.[50]

[50] It has been alleged that, by the use of soft water, the saving in soap would probably be equivalent to the whole of the money at present expended on water-supply; and that in the article of tea, the economy would amount to about one-third of the tea now consumed in the metropolis. It strikes me as possible that, in forming these estimates, the argument may have proceeded too much from a consideration of the hardness of London waters in their unboiled state; and that sufficient allowance may not have been made for the change which boiling produces. If boiling were prolonged for some hours before culinary or detergent use of the water, the results (for tea or soap) would be identical with those produced under the employment of soft water. Notoriously this precaution is not taken: but to avoid disputable ground, I confine myself to _the fact of considerable pecuniary loss_, arising from the cause in question, and I avoid any attempt to determine its exact amount.

The chemical constitution of these waters occasions another inconvenience. Their carbonate of lime is held in solution (in the chemical form of bicarbonate) by an excess of carbonic acid: under the influence of heat this excess is gradually disengaged and driven off; consequently, as they approach the boiling point, they begin to precipitate the earthy salt which that gas was instrumental in dissolving. Each gallon of water under these circumstances would deposit from ten to fifteen grains of earthy matter on the interior of whatever vessel might contain it, or on the surface of whatever solid--linen or mutton, might be contained in the boiler. Hence arises the well-known _furring_ of vessels in which such waters have habitually been boiled.

I refrain from dwelling on the economical considerations which arise in these points of the subject, as very obvious inferences from the result of chemical analysis; and I pass to other matters more strictly within my own province of observation.