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UPON THE SANITARY STATE OF CLERKEN WELL.
9
But when we consider the quantity of the supply, it is miserably deficient.
In several of the courts, where hundreds of people live, the supply is solely
derived from one tap, the yield of which lasts for half or three-quarters of
an hour in the morning. To this the inhabitants have to run, leaving their
occupation, and collecting their share of this indispensable commodity, in
vessels of whatever kind may be at hand—even chamber utensils. The
water is then kept in the close, ill-ventilated tenements which they occupy,
until it is required for use. The fault lies here, indisputably, with the landlords,
who will not provide a reservoir of proper capacity, and with the
Vestry, who will not or have not compelled the landlords to do so.
This very important point requires urgent attention. How can the poor be
clean without water to wash themselves and their clothes? Consider the foul
state in which the linen of the sick poor must be who have but so scanty a supply
of water for washing purposes. Consider the great facility given to the
spread of infectious diseases where the cloihes, saturated with the morbid
poisons, are necessarily worn by the convalescent, to diffuse the infection among
rich and poor who may perchance come near him.
Now where so insufficient a water supply exists to the houses, we might
expect that Baths and Washhouses would supply the deficiency. But there
are none in the district! Hence, no wonder at the dirty state in which a
large number of the inhabitants are met with.
In one of my earliest weekly reports to the Vestry, I proposed the provision
of public washers—i.e. poor washerwomen, employed by the parish to
wash the clothes of those who were incapable of doing this for themselves, or
of paying others to do it. There can be no question that such functionaries
would greatly contribute to control the diffusion of zymotic diseases, and to
prevent many parentless families from being thrown upon the parish for their
support.
whose spores always exist in the air, will fall into the water, and will there vegetate
upon carbonic acid and ammonia absorbed from the atmosphere. The germs of the
Infusoria will next succeed, and will subsist upon the minute Algæ. In this way we
obtain a complete Flora and Fauna of microscopic beings. If there be organisms in
decay, so much the more will all thrive and increase. So that—and here is the
important point—the existence of these beings indicates either that the water has
been long and freely exposed to the air, or that it abounds in decaying matter. In
the first case, the large number will depend upon the slow increase during a long
period of exposure to air, where food is scarce. In the second, to the rapid
growth and multiplication in midst of an abundant supply. Now, we have almost
conclusive evidence that it is the organic matter, existing in solution and in a state of
decomposition, which produces or favours the spread of zymotic disease; and as
abundance of minute organisms may exist without any organic matter in decay, the
mere presence of minute organisms cannot be held conclusive that the water abounds
in decaying organic matter, or that it is unwholesome. The New River water
contains the smallest possible amount of organic matter, no more, or even less, than
the Plumstead water, purified by Dr. Clark's process, the most perfect applicable on
the large scale. Hence, when we find one or two of these organisms—for they are
extremely few and very difficult to discover—we are led to the conclusion, consistent
with the fact of the small amount of organic matter shown to be present by chemistry,
that these beings indicate the free exposure of the water to the air. Now, having shown
that the presence of these organic beings is merely worthy of consideration as regards
their indication, for they themselves are innoxious, and the small quantity of organic
matter present contradicting the idea that they are numerous, we have every reason
to be satisfied with the water. The organisms found in the New River water are
also almost entirely unicellular Algae, which, it is well known, are the inhabitants of
the purest waters.