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REPORT No. 25, DATED JULY 21, 1857.
At the last meeting of this Committee I informed you that the Secretnry
of the Great Central Gas Consumers' Company would call on me to confer
with me respecting the alleged pollution of the well in Mrs. Soanes's ynrd,
How Common I.ane. He accordingly did so on Thursday, July 9th. He
rather feebly denied that the well was injured by any process or act of the
Company's servants, or by anything which took place within the premises of
the Company. He produced, in confirmation of his denial, a certificate
affirming the absence, stated to be nearly complete, of sulphuretted hydrogen
in the water of the well in the Company's premises,—wishing me to infer
that if the well on the Company's premises was not injured, another well
nearly a quarter of a mile distant, if injured, was not injured by anything
which took place within their precincts. It appeared, however, that the two
wells were of a totally different character, one being a surface well, and the
other Artesian, so deriving the supply of water from different sources. The
surface well at Mrs. Soanes's is twelve or fourteen feet deep, and the other
upwards of two hundred; the one is fed by the percolation of rain-fall through
the superficial soil and gravel,—the other, after passing through about two
hundred feet of clay, is supplied by the water in the chalk basin.
The tanks for holding wet lime charged with impurities, which I believe
to be the cause of this injury to Mrs. Soanes's well, and also of other various
nuisances, the Secretary assured me, were in the act of being annihilated,
their place to be taken by water and fluid-proof tanks, strongly built in
brick and cement, and that the new ones were being constructed as fast as
bricks and cement could be put together, and that he hoped, as far as the
public question was concerned, that assurance would be satisfactory.
I wish this Committee to observe that the Great Central Gas Company's
Works and those of the Commercial Gas Company, are about equally distant
from Mrs. Soanes's well; and that the reason why I attach the commission of
the injury to the Great Central, and not to the Commercial Company, is, that
at the latter establishment the material is not used which contains the
chemical compound which has spoilt the water in Mrs. Soanes well. At the
Commercial Company's Works it is wholly dispensed with, and superseded
by a better but more expensive process of purifying, while in the Great
Central wet lime is freely employed.
The abatement of the offensive effluvium did not meet
our expectations. The fluid pumped up from the Cemetery
was somewhat less loathsome, but still remained a cause of