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Report on Constant Water Supply. 51
Now lately, as we know, a new arrangement has been come to in London in connection
with fires. An extensive establishment is in process of formation, and a tax is levied to
maintain it. The constant supply of water is of the greatest importance in connection with
this question. If all be true that is in evidence, and the evidence appears to be of the best,
then the question of preventing or putting out fires is comparatively cheap and easy if you
only connect it with a constant water supply. The great objections put forth by the water
companies against the constant system appear, according to the evidence, to be connected
rather with the ease and profit of the companies than with any public good, or even with
the question of our getting our money's worth.
What occasion have we to consider these people? They in no way consider us; they
break up our best streets without need; they stop our traffic; they appear to use but little
forecast to put down their pipes when we are making anew our roads, but too often immediately
tear them up again. They stand upon the bond, upon the Act of Parliament made
under different circumstances.
The tearing up that grand new street, the Southwark-street, was a vile bit of business.
Let us see whether, having to pay a fire rate, the time is come to adjust our water
supply, and our water rate; and, if so, then must we at once organise, for this purpose,
a working committee of the London "Vestries.
The evidence appears to be clear enough. Mr. Martin, in 1850, resident engineer of the
Wolverhampton Waterworks, says: "The jet-pipe of the constant service was, by its ready
application and great force of water, the means of preserving a large amount of property
from destruction; and satisfactory experiments were afterwards made for a Birmingham
fire office." Mr. Storrat reports of Paisley:—"It is scarcely possible to burn a house, the
flow of water is so great and continuous—an ordinary floor of a house can be filled in ten
minutes. In nine fires out of ten, if fire-plugs are placed at convenient distances on the
mains, fire engines will be very seldom required." Fires, of course, get sometimes out of
control, by reason of the time it usually takes to get water to act upon them. A little, well
scattered, would at first suffice; leave it a little longer, there would be enormous waste with
little good—with sometimes more harm than good. In London it takes, on the average,
about 30 minutes to get the water to the fire ; on the constant system it could be brought to
bear within five minutes upon it. To use the auctioneer's words, in such a case as this, ''Time
is the essence of the contract." Mr. Gale, of Glasgow, says:—"In the event of fires, the
water is constantly at hand ; the plugs may be opened without delay, and the supply, with
such pressure as there is in Glasgow, Stirling, or Kilmarnock, has a better effect than
engines. Fires have," he says, " in this way been put quite out before the arrival of
the ongines." Mr. Baddeley, inspector to the Society for the Protection of Life from Fire,
says:—" Of 838 fires in my list, with the means of supplying water immediately, two-thirds
would have been stopped at once. On the south [of the Thames, there is constant delay;
and with a 'spreader,' very little water used early would suffice." Mr. Quick's evidence
is conclusive in favour, his present adverse views forwarded to the Bermondsey Vestry
notwithstanding. He says hose may be attached to the main in less than a minute, and
that when attached it would be far before any engine—jets from a 20-inch main would deliver
water in a continuous stream 70 feet high. The smallest street, he says, might have
a 3-inch main, affording one jet which would deliver 40 feet high—equivalent, that is, to a