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"Appendix B."
REPORT OF GAS EXAMINER.
Report on Daii.y Testings of Gas supplied by the Wandsworth
and Putney Gas Company from October, 1903, to March,
1906, and on Testings of Gas supplied by the Mitcham and
Wimbledon Gas Company during the same period.
As it is now rather more than two-and-a-half years since a
daily examination of the quality of the gas supplied by the Wandsworth
and Putney Gas Company was instituted, and as recent gas
legislation has somewhat modified the present aspect of gas manufacture
and hence also of gas-testing, the time seems appropriate for a
report dealing with the results of daily testings obtained to date, and
with such points of legislation as have a special bearing on the gas
supplied to the Wandsworth Borough Council.
Wandsworth
and Putney
Gas Co.—
Brief Retrospect
of Gas
Legislation.
In order to fully appreciate the present aspect of legislation
it will be necessary to briefly refer to various Acts of
Parliament which have preceded the Wandsworth and
Putney Gas Act of 1900, by which Act the daily testing
of the gas was first laid down.
As far back as 1860,and before the appointment of the Gas Referees,
an Act " for better regulating the supply of gas to the Metropolis " was
passed by which certain tests were made, and it was enacted that the
testing-places should be " as near as may be, but not more than 1,000
yards from the gas works," that is, not in the gas works themselves.
In 1868 the Gas Referees were appointed, and since then the
following tests were made and have been made daily in the Metropolitan
area, viz., illuminating power, sulphuretted hydrogen, sulphur other than
sulphuretted hydrogen, ammonia and pressure. The following Gas
Companies were, however, specially excluded from jurisdiction under
this Act, viz., Wandsworth and Putney, Mitcham and Brentford.
In 1880 the words defining the distance of the testing-places from
the gas works were omitted and it was left to the discretion of the
Gas Referees to place them where they thought fit, that is, as centrally
as possible in reference to the population.