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health of Bermondsey, for the facilities afforded me by them for visiting some of these ships. In
one of them, visited with Dr. Williams, I found that the hold had a superficial capacity on section
of some 280 square feet, and its length was about 80 feet; it was capable, therefore, of containing
some 640 tons of ice, and was fairly clean, there being no likelihood, so far as I could ascertain, of
the ice being contaminated by bilge-water, or, indeed, in any ordinary way on board the vessel.
Most of the ice, we were told, came from lakes near Christiana (Brevik, Pornung, and Laurvik
were especially mentioned as being seats of the ice-industry). The ice is brought from Norway
between April and October; it is reckoned that if fortune favours about twenty-four days are
taken up from leaving London to returning to London again, but contrary winds, rough weather,
and fog cause uncertainty, indeed, a boat may be delayed as long as fourteen days at Gravesend.
The vessel inspected had loaded 640 tons in Norway, and the skipper expected to weigh off at
about 540 tons. We are told that the freight charge made was about 6s. 6d. a ton, and that the ice
fetched about 2s. a cwt. in London. The charges which had to be met included £1 for towing out
of the fiord, £10 for towing across, and .£3 for the Thames pilot. The vessel carried a crew of
nine men, who were all housed on deck and not in the hold; wind pumps were used to remove
water from the hold, it being all important to keep the ice dry. We were further informed that
various cargoes might be taken back to Norway on the return voyage ; coke, for instance, might be
carried, but, in that case, the hold would be washed out before being again filled with ice.
The lakes in Norway are farmed out for ice harvesting. They are situated in a sparsely
populated country and I was shown photographs of several of them which certainly suggested that
few, if any, sources of pollution of lake water could exist. In the removal of ice from the ships to
the lighters in the Thames or the Regent's Canal Dock there is some opportunity for contamination
of the blocks, and no special precautions are taken to prevent pollution during conveyance to the
ice-stores.
There are a number of premises of the kind just referred to in London—sometimes a railway
arch is thus used, in a few instances brick structures above ground, provided with more or less complete
means of insulation, have been erected for the purpose, and lastly there are a number of icewells.
In many of the stores there is great waste of ice. This was notably the case, for example,
in a comparatively old store enclosed by brick walls, lined internally with wood, the space between
being packed with sawdust; the capacity of the structure was such that when full some 800 tons
of ice could be stored, but the "suction of the bricks" was, according to the manager, so
great that after four or five weeks "you could walk round the ice" in the store, the blocks
immediately adjoining the walls having completely melted away. The question arises as to
what becomes of the waste-water in ice-stores and ice-wells. Some of the stores or wells
rest upon gravel or other pervious material, and the water soaks away: in other instances
there is a drain inlet at the bottom of the store or well and the water runs into the sewer.
Under the circumstances last named it cannot be denied that there is the possibility of back flow
from the sewer. The trapping of the inlet to the drain might be held to assume importance; I was
assured in most of the instances to which my attention was directed that the inlet in question was
trapped. Some of the ice-wells are in the near neighbourhood of the river or of a canal, and here
again is a possible source of pollution of the ice. Yet another cause of contamination arises from
the ice being trodden over again and again by dirty boots ; in only one instance did I find that any
precaution was taken as regards this matter. In this single case, however, the use of boots was
prohibited in the well, the men being required to wear clean clogs. At this depot, moreover, the
well was said to be washed down with a hose once a year, and the " cesspool" beneath the well was
cleaned out at the same time ; further the ice was dragged over a special hauling-way, and was not
allowed to lie on the wharf, or to be exposed to the contamination of ordinary yard surfaces, &c.
The remark generally made when attention is directed to the desirability of adopting
precautions as regards cleanliness, is to the effect that ice by melting continually purifies itself, and I
was even told that all that need be done is to swill the ice over with water when it is packed in the
carts for delivery, so as to make it look clean. The carts and barges in which the ice is conveyed
are not very carefully looked after in all instances. A barge may " ship " canal or Thames water,
for example, and the ice-carts are not always limited in their use to carrying ice ; there is nothing
to prevent a cart in which refuse has been conveyed from being pressed into service as an icecart
at times of stress, and during a period when little business was being done in ice, I have
been told of a contractor sending a number of ice-carts for use as platforms at a public meeting.
Observations made in the London streets outside fishmongers' premises, restaurants, etc.,
abundantly demonstrate that there are many possibilities of contamination even after the block
leaves the ice-cart. It is, for example, usually dragged along the roadway and over the pavement
on its way to the shop or to the storage vault. Reliance, of course, should not be
placed upon self-purification by melting of the outside layers as a safeguard against risk of
pollution, and clearly, in the case, at any rate, of ice intended for human consumption, proper
precautions should be taken which would preclude fouling by dirt from boots, from horsemanure,
road-sweepings, material expectorated upon pavements, and so on.
There are now a few factories in which artificial ice is made in London. The water used
in them is in some instances distilled water; in others it is obtained from the ordinary
London water service. At a factory supplied with Southwark and Vauxhall water, some 200
tons of ice had to be destroyed in 1903 owing to the fact that the water, after a period
when the Thames was in flood, was much discoloured, and at the edges of the ice and down
the middle of the blocks, the brown material thrown out during freezing had collected, causing
the ice to be quite unsightly. In some cases exhaust steam from steam-engines is condensed
and filtered to get rid of the engine-oil, and this filtered distilled water is then converted into ice.
Such ice, and, of course, also ice made from water specially distilled for the purpose, must be free
from microbial impurity ; the blocks are quite clear, and command an enhanced price when sold