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11
6. CORRELATIVE MATTERS.
Water Supply.
It being indisputably established, by the chemical and
microscopical researches of Drs. Thomson and Hassall, that
the shallow well waters, in towns, abound in impurities
derived from above, and from cesspools and sewers
around—one opinion only can be entertained—that these
"infusions of filth" are unfit for drinking and culinary purposes,
and should only be used for extinguishing fires, watering
roads, and flushing sewers and drains. The East London
Company, who supply Bethnal Green, furnish a bright colourless
water which cxercises no solvent power upon lead.* The
analyses of 1851, and those instituted by Professor Hofmann
and Mr. Blyth, in the early part of 1856, give the following
results:—
YEARS.
HAEDNESS.
SOLID CONSTITUENTS
in grains per gallon.
Total Permanent Temporary Total Organic Matter Inorganic Matter
1851 15.00 .... .... 23.51 4.12 19.39
1856 13.98 7.53 6.45 22.05 1.09 20.96
In this Table, the terms Permanent and Temporary, as
applied to hardness, signify the reduction caused by 5 minutes
boiling. By improving the source, and filtering through a
bed of sand, the water of the East London Company has
undergone a diminution of 3.03 grains, per gallon, of organic
matter, and of 1.02 of hardness. When examined microscopically
by Dr. Hassall in 1854, it contained "organic
matter dead and living, pieces of vegetable tissue, and fragments
of granular organic debris." But of the Nine Water
Companies, the East London had, with two exceptions,—
West Middlesex and New River,—the least organic contamination;
* Report of Mr. Taylor to Mr. Simon.