View report page

14
The Tables at the end of this Report will convey the substance
of my observations in a form more convenient for
reference, and contain facts more in detail.
The means which have been adopted to effect such an
obvious improvement in the health of the place as that I
have reported to you, have been accomplished by public as well
as private expenditure. The paving of the footways, by your
Surveyor's Report, will be seen to have been carried to three
times the extent of the considerable amount of such work in
1857. Theextensive drainage and road-making there reported
to the Vestry, have contributed, perhaps, more than any other
direct means, to the present healthy state of the Hamlet.
The returns of the Inspector of Nuisances, which have
usually before passed through my hands, and been so brought
before you, have, I find, this year been related in the Report
of the Clerk to the Vestry, to which I beg to refer you. It
does not appear to me that the account there given describes
all the work done by him; in his, as in my department,
much being done, in addition, by persuasion and private
influence,—in many cases the most agreeable as well as the
most effective of means.
The condition of the water supplied by the different London
Companies is ascertained periodically by analysis by Dr.
Robert D. Thomas, F.R.S., of St. Thomas's Hospital. I have
before me four of those analyses; three of them were made
in the winter season of 1858 and 1859, and one in May
last. I have placed them in a single Table for more convenient
examination and reference. The water supplied by
the East London Company, it will be seen, contained a
larger quantity of inorganic impurity than the water of
most of the others; while the amount of organic impurity,
in a sanitary sense by far the more important of the two,
has proved small in each of the examinations.