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51
Captain Tyler, who was commissioned by the Board of
Trade to enquire specially as to the quantity and quality of
the water supplied to the East of London, has just made
his report, from which the following is taken as evidencing,
in the strongest possible manner, the necessity of similar
inquiries being instituted in other districts. Many a
parallel case to that quoted can, there is little doubt, be
found in even the best conditioned districts.
"At No. 85, Hare Street, 34 people had one butt belonging to the
landlord, in w hich one of the staves was split, so that it would only hold
15 inches, or 20 gallons, instead of 40 to 43 gallons of water; one leaky
barrel, which would only hold 18 instead of 36 gallons; and two smaller
sound casks, which would hold, the one 18, the other 25 gallons. This
double house belonged to a Member of the Metropolitan Board of
Works. There was only one f inch pipe shared between it and No. 80,
and yet the tenants were in want of storage more than of water. The
split butt at No. 85 was the only one they could drink from. The same
defects are apparent on inspection at every turn in the poorer districts.
Pipes bent and broken; taps leaking, stuck fast, or missing; receptacles
of every description, butter-firkins, tar-barrels, wine-butts, or cisterns, in
all conditions of filthiness, leakiness, rottenness, or ill-repair; covers
inefficient, or absent even where they have been supplied. The water
runs sometimes over the side in place of into the butt, and too frequently
runs to waste as long as it is turned on. In other cases, where there is
a plurality of houses on one pipe—and there are in the East London
District 500 cases in which four or more houses depend upon one servicepipe—the
supply intended for each is unequally divided, according to
the energies and opportunities of their inhabitants, among the whole.
The purest water that can be delivered is hopelessly contaminated
directly it leaves the service pipes by the dirty condition of the
receptacles."
It is, then, to the receptacles, quite as much as to the
water that goes into them, that we have to look to secure
ourselves against imbibing the germs of Cholera and other
diseases. Who that has ever looked through a microscope
at a small portion of the sediment of a glass of water drawn
from an ill-conditioned cistern or water-butt (and I have
on more than one occasion given the local authorities of
this Sub-district ocular demonstration of what is occasionally
to be met with in such water) but will instantly
interest you to know that among the analyses in my books, I find one of water
from a gentleman's house on Putney Heath which gave—
Total impurities 56.0 grains per gallon.
Organic matter 17.5 „ ,,
The water was cloudy from presence of Sulphate of Lime in suspension. The
amount of dry mineral matter, 24 5 grains, is not very much above what is tolirated,
but the organic matter is about six times too high."
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