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purifying the gas, and in recent years considerable protests had been
made by the companies, who alleged that the process created a
nuisance and was injurious, and asked in the first instance for a wider
limit as regarded the amount of this impurity. In January, 1904, at
the instigation of the metropolitan gas companies, an enquiry was
held by a Committee appointed by the Board of Trade, by which the
whole subject of gas testing in the metropolis was fully considered.
The Report of this Committee known as the Metropolitan Gas
Committee was published in May, 1904, and is a document well known
to all who are interested in the subject, and the recommendations
contained in it gave rise to considerable activity in gas legislation.
Without entering into details which are more or less fresh in the
memory of most, it will be remembered that among other suggestions
it was proposed that the lime purification process should be abolished
but that testing for sulphur other than sulphuretted hydrogen should
be continued as before and that the companies should not be liable to
forfeitures in this connection.
It was also recommended that in consideration of the increasing
employment of gas for heating purposes, the calorific power of the gas
should in future be tested and that inasmuch as flat-flame burners were
still much used by a large section of the public, the testing of the
illuminating power of the gas by means of flat-flame burners should
also be introduced.
The Metropolitan Gas Companies were not slow to take advantage
of these suggestions and as a result the London Gas Act, 1905, was
passed and became law on January 1st of this year. In this Act the
above suggestions of the Metropolitan Gas Committee were embodied
with some slight modifications.
As a natural result the Wandsworth and Putney Gas Company
recently (October, 1905) asked the Wandsworth Borough Council to
consider how far they would follow the course taken by the London
County Council and dispense with the penalising for "the small extra
fraction of sulphur" that would remain in the gas by the disuse of
lime purification, pending the Company's obtaining the authority of
Parliament to secure the same relief as had been given to certain other
London Companies. The Wandsworth Borough Council after