View report page

38
excessive quantities of organic impurity and were of very bad quality. The
inferior character of the samples mentioned evidently resulted from the want of
adequate storage at the Sunbury works.''
These samples were taken about the time the highly-coloured water was supplied
to the Haggerston Baths.
There was no reason to suspect the occurrence of any water-borne disease during
the year.
In accordance with the requirements of section 49 of the Public Health (London)
Act, 1891, communications relative to water supplies to houses being cut off were
received in respect to 60 premises on the New River district and 82 on that of the
East London. In many of these the intimations referred to premises which had been
vacated.
The subject of the water supply of tenement houses was considered by the
Health Committee in connection with a communication! from the London County
Council directing attention to certain police- court proceedings in 1894 taken by the
Sanitary Authority of Woolwich in respect to the water supply of a tenement house in
that Borough, and expressing a hope that the Borough Council of Shoreditch would
take all possible steps to secure the provision of a proper and sufficient supply of water
for the tenants of every floor of a tenement house. The decision of the magistrate
in the case alluded to> was that a water supply from a tap situate in the yard of this
particular tenement house was not a proper and sufficient supply within the meaning
of section 48 of the Public Health (London) Act 1891, and an order was n.ade for the
abatement of the nuisance, with five guineas costs.
The information afforded in the Council's letter is useful, because it goes to show
that the mere fact of there being a tap upon the premises from whrch a supply of water is
obtainable does not always mean that a tenement house has a proper and sufficient
supply within the meaning of the Act. The magistrate's decision, however, only
appllied to a particular house, and is not binding in respect to tenement houses generally,
and in the matter of the water supply of tenement houses each case will have to
be dealt with on its merits.
So far as this Borough /is concerned, the Health Committee, after enquiry, were
satisfied as to what was being done to secure a proper and sufficient water supply for
tenement houses, and it may be added that the matter of the water supply to all
premlises is one which has received a great deal of attention on the part of the Sanitary
Authority in the Borough. Shoreditch possesses many tenement houses in
which every floor has a water supply of its own, the houses having been specially
built or adapted for the purpose of being let /in tenements. There are, however,
numbers of small houses of from four to six rooms each which were built to accommodate
single families, but which have come to be occupied by members of more than
one family. To lay water on to floors above the ground floor in many of these
houses would involve considerable structural alterations. Sinks and waste pipes
would have to be provided, otherwise the necessity would be /continually arising of
having to deal wiith houses flooded owing to taps being left running. Moreover, in
many of the houses the only possible situations to be found for the sinks withiin the
dwellings, without radical structural alterations, would be within the dwelling rooms