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48 Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
or to single houses are insufficient or altogether absent, or that the water is turned on
much too short a time.
Inspections made in this parish within the last year have shown that in numbers of cases
the poor have no water receptacles, properly so called, at all. In others they have as
makeshifts, tubs, jars, barrels—wholly unsuited for the purpose; these, moreover, kept in
overcrowded and uncleanly living rooms, or in extremely filthy yards. In others, that
there are receptacles, in bad repair, or more or less rotten and tainted. In most cases these
receptacles are without covers, notwithstanding they are almost necessarily placed in situations
full of offensive emanations; or where they must, in various ways, receive dust, smoke,
and the like. To show the almost impossibility of keeping water reasonably pure in the
receptacles in use, let it be again noted and never forgotten, what kind of receptacles are
usually in use among the poor; that they are generally placed of necessity near to closets,
privies, dustheaps, untrapped sinks, open drains, and in filthy sloppy yards—that from these
and other causes it is almost impossible to keep water other than in a tainted atmosphere.
The full force and vital consequence of this argument will be understood, by calling to
mind how largely water absorbs deleterious and other gases. 1000 gallons of water are
known to dissolve at the common temperature—
46 gallons Oxygen
25 ,, Nitrogen
2500 ,, Sulphuretted Hydrogen, a sewer and privy gas productive of fever.
1000 ,, Carbonic Acid
500,000 ,, Ammonia, a product of animal decomposition, as in urinals.
The result of all this is, among the poor especially, that the supply is very impure indeed;
and in quantity it does not perhaps exceed, on the average, five gallons per individual
among this class of people.
This, whether a little more or less, is altogether inadequate ; consequently filthy houses
and filthy habits, and the result of these, disease, personal degradation and neglect.
It should further be noted that on the Sunday, when the working classes can especially
spare time for cleansing, there is virtually no water supply at all. This has been by them
often and very bitterly complained of.
The Edinburgh Revieiw says: "Wherever the blame of inadquato supply to the London
poor may rest, and it appears to rest more with the proprietors than the water companies,
the undeniable fact is that, notwithstanding the vaunted 26 gallons per head per diem
declared to be furnished to Londoners, thousands of the poor get but little of it directly
any day ; and none at all on Sundays."
The Committee may, perhaps, in connection with present or expected disease, be permitted
a few practical remarks, not altogether wide of the subject. Cholera may arise from
a tainted air, but it has over and over again been proved to arise from unclean drinking
water; and as this parish has in times past suffered more than 2,000 deaths from epidemic
cholera and diarrhoea, the purity and sufficiency of water supply and storage are of the
highest consequence.
The purity of the supply is not even now as it ought to be. The brown earthy matter
formerly suspended in the water received in the London butts before the sewage was