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200
Dead Ends of Mains.— In the annual report for
1898, reference was made to dead-ends in water mains,
as an objectionable feature in the apparatus of water
supply, tending to produce sluggishness of flow and
fouling of the water, by the growth of organisms, with consequent
danger to the public health, unless the main at the
dead-end is flushed and cleansed with sufficient frequency.
This is done, according to the engineer of the company in
respect of whose district complaint was made in 1898. This
gentleman, at an interview with the sanitary committee, admitted
the evils of dead-ends, and stated that the company
were, and for some time past had been, engaged in abolishing
them. In the report for 1898, the opinion of the late Sir
Edward Frankland was cited as to the dangers latent in deadends,
in connexion with an outbreak of enteric fever in a
northern town. Whilst "unable to pronounce any authoritative
judgment as to the origin of the epidemic," Sir E.
Frankland was of opinion, " that the remarkable restriction of
it to an area in which an extraordinarily large number of
dead-ends of the water mains occur, pointed to particular
dangers attending such dead ends," to which he had referred in
his report as being "a causa sufficiens of the mischief." This is
one of the questions that might well be considered in connexion
with any Bill dealing with the water supply of the
metropolis, as in the projected Bill to amend the Public
Health (London) Act, 1891.
cutting-off powers of the companies.—The
Public Health (London) Act, 1891, sec. 49, gives effect to the
recommendation made in these reports, many years ago, that
a metropolitan water company should be required to give
nformation to the sanitary authority, when, from any cause,
they had exercised their statutory right to cut-off the water
supply to an occupied dwelling-house. Every company is
now required to give such notice within twenty-four hours