View report page

71
pipe, other than a ' warning-pipe,' shall be attached to any
cistern supplied with water by the Company, and every such
overflow or waste-pipe existing at the time when these regulations
came into operation (i.e., in 1872) shall be removed, or
at the option of the consumer, shall be converted into an
efficient ' warning pipe ' within two calender months next after
the Company shall have given to the occupier of, or left at the
premises in which such cistern is situate, a notice in writing
requiring such alteration to be made." I am not quite disposed
to agree with the water examiner that the "particular object," if
the means by this, the only object, of the above regulation, is
to prevent the waste of water; for in that case we might be
poisoned with impunity for all the companies would care, provided
they were not inconvenienced by any shortness in the supply
of water. I have always contended that a very particular object of
the regulation was, as Colonel Bolton puts it, "to get rid of the
poisonous effluvia and gases from the drains which would otherwise
ascend through the waste pipe, and not only be partly absorbed by
the water in the cistern, but be partly mixed with the air in
the houses, thereby becoming a cause of fever and disease."
In such terms, Colonel Bolton, month after month, and year after
year, reports to the Local Government Board, which is a sort of
Board of Health, but all without effect. In respect of old houses
and old fittings, no change is made; the waste-pipes continue undisturbed.
The companies hold that "existing fittings" must
be deemed to be "approved fittings" under the 35th regulation,
and therefore that they have no right to issue, generally, any order
to abolish waste-pipes under the 14th regulation. At all events
they do not—with one exception. The Chelsea Company took the
subject up earnestly, and got the waste-pipes abolished at a time
when the scarcity of their water supply rendered economy necessary ;
and thus they effected a great sanitary improvement at no
great cost to individual householders ; and without difficulty, it may
be added, householders, on a proper explanation being made, recognizing
the necessity and advantage in a sanitary point
of view of the abolition of the waste-pipes. I entered
upon this question, however, so fully in my last annual report,
that I shall forbear further remarks now, meanwhile continuing
to hope that some means may shortly be found of
inducing the companies to put the regulation into force, or of
enabling the sanitary authority to do it for them. I entirely concur
in the advice Colonel Bolton gives to householders to attend to
the fittings and cleanliness of their cisterns, upon which depends
in a great measure the purity and abundance of the domestic
water supply; and I have been permitted, once again, in the present
year to impress the necessity of such attention to cleanliness,
&c., by addressing a paper containing information on the subject