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34 Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southivark.
SECTION II— GENERAL.
The Water Supply.
Professor Frankland states in his Annual Report to the Registrar General on the
results of monthly chemical analysis, with physical and bacterioscopic examinations
of drinking water during 1893, that the weather generally has been favourable to the
operations of the companies, save in February and October.
The water in use in St. George's is supplied by (a) the Lambeth Company ; (6)
the Southwark and Vauxhall Company. Both these companies draw their supplies
from the Thames, below Teddington Lock, the former at West Molesley, the latter at
Hampton.
The river above these points receives various contributions of organic matter of
animal origin, such as the drainage from manured land, the effluent from sewage
works, and even raw sewage itself. Indeed it has been computed that there is a
population of upwards of a million persons inhabiting the Thames Valley above the
intakes of the water companies, to say nothing of 1,600,000 animals living on the
same area. These numbers are moreover steadily increasing. The water is " hard."
It is, therefore, expensive for washing, and unsuitable for use in steam and kitchen
boilers and hot-water pipes, in which it produces incrustations and deposits.
The hardness of the water is almost entirely due to the presence of bi-carbonate of
lime in solution.
This is easily reducible by treatment with lime before delivery, a practice already
successfully carried out by the Colne Valley Company. This mode of softening is by
far the most economical, for it entails only about one-eightieth of the expense which
devolves upon the private consumer, in the shape of additional soap required for
washing.
The water, unlike that drawn from deep wells, varies largely in temperature,
being unpleasantly warm aud vapid in summer, and rea lily liable to become frozen
in the service-pipes in winter.
Professor Frankland asserts that disease-giving germs are prevented, by efficient
sand filtration, from gaining an entrance from the river into the companies' drinking
water. Although the Metropol s Water Act provides that "every company shall
effectually filter all water supplied by them within the metropolis for domestic use,"
there is no statutory definition extant of what is really meant by the term "effectually
filter."
Professor Koch, the greatest living bacteriologist, says of .the following rules:—
The observance of Nos. (2) and (3) would suffice to remove the danger of
infection from filtered water, so far as is possible to do so, by means of filtration
through sand. It should be observed that Professor Koch does not agree with
Dr. Frankland as regards the complete efficacy of sand filtration as a purifier of
water.