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17
Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1895.
3. That the stand-pipes set up by the Companies were inadequate in number,
and were not allowed to remain in use for a sufficiently long period during
each day.
4. That, in addition to other evils, the necessity of carrying water from the
stand-pipes to the tenements of lofty " Models " was both inconvenient and
costly to tenants.
Copies of my Annual Reports, which deal with the subject of the Parish water
supply for domestic use, were handed by me to Major-General Scott, and his attention
particularly drawn to the following marked passage:—
"In a few of the "Model" Dwellings I have induced the owners to supply
water direct from the rising main. The cisterns, periodically cleansed, supply the
water-waste preventors in the water-closets; and in times of need only, a tap
attached to the head of a pipe coming from the cistern, and joining the rising main,
affords a temporary and secondary supply. This system, particularly with a constant
supply, is found to work admirably in practice.
" This plan, however, cannot be applied in the case of lofty " Model " Dwellings
supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company. The reason for this is
that the Company fails to carry out the obligations to provide water at the pressure
clearly laid down in their private Act, which would more than reach the highest flat
in Southwark."
It cannot be too frequently repeated that cisterns for the supply of drinking
water are often the means of sowing broadcast the germs of diarrhoea, typhoid fever,
and cholera. Moreover, they are more frequently than not badly placed ; and in
times of frost, owing to their exposed position, the water within them is converted
into ice, and the tenant has perforce to seek his water from the standpipe, or else go
without.
With the constant system of water supply now in vogue to nearly 80 per cent,
of the houses in London, one would like to see, and at the first blush be inclined to
anticipate, the gradual disappearance of the cistern into the limbo of the past, along
with the wood-rotting water butt and other nearly obsolete sanitary abominations.
Under existing conditions, however, such a radical cure is, in my opinion, likely
to prove infinitely worse than the disease itself, and until some better and more
practical remedy be introduced, the cistern, used only when water is obtained from
the rising main, will have to be tolerated as a necessary evil.
Customs and Inland Revenue Acts.
1890, s. 26 (2), and 1891, s. 4.
Sixteen tenements, occupied by about 90 persons, have been examined by me
during 1895. This duty has been performed at the request of the respective owners,
with a view to the granting of certificates by your Medical Officer, by virtue of which
exemption from inhabited house duty may be claimed under the provisions of the
Acts.
The Act of 1890 provides that, " before exemption from duty can be claimed the
house be so constructed as to afford suitable accommodation for each of the families or
persons inhabiting it, and that due provision be made for their sanitary requirements."
The Act of 1891 stipulates that the annual value of each separate dwelling within
the house " shall not amount to .£20."
Certificates were given in each of these sixteen cases in which application was
made.