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from the above figures that there are serious differences in the
amount of organic matter found in the water supplied by the three
Companies (West Middlesex, Chelsea, and Grand Junction), all of
these drawing water at the same part of the river. The West
Middlesex and Chelsea are nearly alike, but the Grand Junction
figures are, as a rule, higher. The explanation of this difference is
that the Grand Junction has only a storage reservoir for unfiltered
water equal to 2.9 days, whereas the Chelsea has 14 and the West
Middlesex has 18.7 days' supply. The storage and subsidence
reservoirs of the West Middlesex Company are 117½ acres, that
of the Grand Junction only 15 acres. The Grand Junction have
the means during floods of pumping from the gravel beds adjoining
. the Thames, and it is claimed that "this is practically equivalent to
an addition to their storage resources." That this is not so the
above table is evidence, for it is in those months when the Thames
was reported as being "turbid and discoloured" that the increase of
organic matter occurred. These were January, 12 days; March,
12 days; April, 17 days; and December, 13 days.
During periods when the river is not in flood the water which
soaks through the natural gravel beds is said to be in excellent
condition, but during times of flood, not only these gravel beds, but
the filters themselves may be submerged, and as it is only lately that
cesspools have been done away with in Sunbury and Hampton, where
the intakes of the Companies are, when a flood came the contents of
the cesspools were carried into the river, hence there was always the
possibility of infection being in the water, and of that water being
imperfectly filtered. Professor Corfield has no doubt " that the
unseasonable prevalence of typhoid fever in November and
December in London is due to the distribution of inefficiently
filtered river water, containing the poison of the disease in sufficient
amount, however, only to attack the most susceptible persons among
the population." This view is supported by Mr. Shirley Murphy, in
his report to the London County Council for 1894, and by the
experience of certain towns on the River Merrimac (narrated in the
reports of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts), which drew
their supplies from that river. Infected sewage entered the river
several miles above the intakes of the Water Companies, and typhoid
fever broke out on more than one occasion as a result. The Thames
Conservators have recently made improvements at their locks, &c.,
whereby water may get away more readily at times of flood, and the
Joint Committee of the Water Companies has a very large reservoir
in construction at Staines, which will bring the Grand Junction
Company up to the same level as the Chelsea and West Middlesex.