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in many of the most respectable neighbourhoods, are
wholly unfit for the storing away of potable water. This
is especially the case in localities occupied by the labouring
and artizan class. These receptacles, requiring, as
they are known to do, such frequent and thorough
cleansings, but which they rarely obtain, should be entirely
abolished, and such an unremitting supply of water,
directly from the mains substituted, as would render both
butt and cistern (except perhaps in some cases for closet
purposes), wholly unnecessary.
Water waste-preventers are now in many places in extensive
use, and with the best results, and it is hardly reconcilable
with this circumstance, that the legislature should be so tardy
in requiring their general adoption, in connection with the
system of constant supply so long promised. Upon this
subject, the Registrar-General, through Dr. Frankland, has
recently remarked—" The intermittent system of distribution
still prevails in London, although the Royal Commission
on Water Supply have reported that the constant
service system ought to be promptly introduced to the
farthest extent possible, in the supply of the Metropolis.
Out of 22 towns in Lancashire and Cheshire, the water
supply of which was recently investigated by the Rivers
Pollution Commission, it appears that there is only one
which is not supplied on the constant system, and even
this exceptional town has a constant supply for from 12
to 15 hours out of the 24. It is singular that a system of
supply, which is elsewhere almost universal, and which all
unite in regarding as an urgent sanitary necessity, should
be found so difficult to introduce into the Metropolis."
As to the quality of the water which the Companies
continue to supply to this and other Districts south of the
Thames, the same authority may be referred to, to show
that there is still considerable room for improvement.
Reasoning upon the opinion so generally entertained, and
particularly by the Rivers Pollution Commission, "that
there is no river in the United Kingdom long enough to
effect the destruction of sewage by oxidation," the Medical
Officers of Health fully concur in the belief that water,
which is liable in ever so slight a degree to excremental