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example, at Seething Wells, where, till lately, the Chelsea Company had
their intake. The rate of filtration of water should not exceed 540
gallons per square yard of filter-bed each 24 hours, and at this rate
filtration should be effective. The materials of filters are mainly sand,
shells, and gravel (increasing in coarseness towards the bottom) arranged
in layers of different thicknesses.
Domestic pollution of water, The efforts of the Companies to
supply well-filtered water are frequently neutralised by the neglect of
householders, who allow their cisterns, &c., to fall into a filthy state.
Water, moreover, often undergoes very dangerous pollution, of which
the householder may be all unconscious, viz.:—through the "wastepipe
" being connected with the house-drain, and consequently with
the sewer, to which it becomes a ventilator. Foul air is thus admitted
within the covered receptacle and becoming absorbed by the water
confers on it qualities of a deleterious character, and it may in
favouring circumstances be the means of spreading disease. No more
familiar example can be quoted than typhoid fever, endemics of
which have been traced to the pollution of good water in the domestic
cistern.
It is to be regretted that the Water Companies generally should have
failed in their duty to the public by neglecting to exercise their power,
under the " 14th regulation,"* to cause the abolition of the waste-pipe
universally. The Chelsea Company alone, in the western part of the
Metropolis, have to any appreciable extent given effect to the regulation.
The " Metropolitan Authority " (Board of Works) have not
interfered for the protection of the public—having practically ignored
the regulations from the first. Nor have the Local Government Board
taken any steps in the matter, although for years the Water Examiner
* The 14th regulation reads as follows:—" No overflow or waste 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 come into operation shall be removed, or at the option of the consumer,
shall be converted into an efficient 'warning pipe' within two calendar 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."