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water foul and offensive; besides which, they are so
constantly in a dilapidated state that they rarely
hold sufficient water from day to day. This has been
a matter of considerable anxiety to my predecessor,
Mr. Simon, and to myself from the very beginning of
our office, and it has been the subject of frequent
reports to you. As far back as the year 1849 Mr.
Simon remarked that "in inspecting the courts and
alleys of the City, one constantly sees butts for the
reception of water either public or in the open yards
of houses, or sometimes in their houses; and these
butts, dirty, mouldering, and coverless, receiving
soot and all other impurities from the air, absorbing
stench from the adjacent cesspool, inviting filth from
insects, vermin, sparrows, cats, and children, their
contents often augmented through a rain-water pipe
by the washings of the roof, and every hour becoming
fustier and more offensive." At the present
time, with all the improvements that have been
made since Mr. Simon wrote, this is frequently the
state of the water receptacles in the City; and no
sanitary supervision can prevent it while the present
intermittent supply of water to the houses of the
poor, with the intermedium of the filthy butt, exists.
I have been at great pains to examine chemically and
microscopically the quality of the water in some of the
worst of these receptacles; and although the dissolved
impurities have not been so large as I had expected,