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41
which I allude has reference principally to the costliness of the
apparatus and fittings on which the companies insist as a condition
of constant service; and not to the exercise of the powers
they possess, but do not as a rule employ, to improve the present
system by insisting on the due carrying out of the really useful
and valuable regulations quoted above. The adoption of this constant
system would enable us to get rid of our cisterns, if not
altogether, yet so far as the supply of water for culinary use and
drinking is concerned. The neglect of cisterns to which I referred
above, would then be a matter of less moment; and as the pipes
would be always charged, we should be less liable, than we are
now, to the contamination of water, for such an accident as I am
about to mention would be almost impossible. Complaint was
made that the first portion of water entering certain cisterns in a
street and mews at Notting Hill, each time the water was turned
on, was of a disgusting character; and this happened at a time
when there was an obstruction of the sewer in the mews, the effect
being to saturate the ground and flood the surface with sewage
and surface drainage. I surmised that the main was defective,
and that when the water was turned off the sewage was sucked
into the pipe to fill the vacuum, and then forced through the service
pipes so soon as the water was turned on. It turned out, so
I was informed by the Company, that the defect really existed in
a service pipe of one of the houses; the effect, however, was the
same, and dangerous nuisances of this kind may occur at any
time, or in any locality, urider similar circumstances, so long as
the intermittent system of water supply is continued. In the
present instance several cases of illness were traced to this fouling
of the water, and had the sewer contained typhoid excreta, the
results might have been lamentable in the extreme, and of the
same kind as at Over Darwen, and at Lewes during the recent
epidemics of Enteric Fever. As I have remarked in another
place, we seem as far off as ever from the constant system, the
only gleam of hope in respect of it being that the companies have
made, and are making extensive preparations, so as to enable
them to supply their districts when called on to do so. They are
enabled to give a constant supply even though it should not be
required of them by the Metropolitan authority, and they would
be gainers by so doing, if the prevention of waste is really of any
moment to them, which may be reasonably doubted. The Metropolitan
authority is the Metropolitan Board of Works, a body
which it is well known are unwilling to execute the authority conferred
on them by the Act, strongly disapproving, as they do, of
the regulations, the stringency of which they did their utmost, but
in vain, to modify.
MORTUARY.
I cannot allow the subject of a mortuary to pass without a brief
reference, and an expression of my great regret that the parish is
still unprovided with one. As I have stated in former reports, the