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121
" If any person supplied with water by such Company wilfully or
negligently causes or sutlers any fittings to be out of repair, or to
be so used or contrived as that the water supplied to him by such
Company is or is likely to be wasted, misused, or unduly consumed
or contaminated, or so as to occasion or allow the return of foul
air or other noisome or impure matter into any pipe belonging to
or connected with the pipes of such Company, he shall for every
such offence be liable to a penalty not exceeding five pounds; or
" If any person supplied with water by such Company wrongfully does,
or causes, or permits to be done, anything in contravention of the
provisions of the Special Act or this Act, or wrongfully fails to do
anything which, under any of those provisions ought to be done
for the prevention of the waste, misuse, undue consumption or
contamination of the water of such Company, they may (without
prejudice to any remedy against him in respect thereof) cut off
any of the pipes by or through which water is supplied by them to
him, or for his use, and may cease to supply him with water so
long as the cause of injury remains or is not remedied; and in
every case of so cutting off or ceasing to supply, the Company
shall, within twenty-four hours thereafter, give to the nuisance
authority, as defined by the Sanitary Act, 1866, notice thereof."
The 33rd Section of the Act, moreover, provides that:
" The absence in respect of any premises of the prescribed fittings
after the prescribed time, shall be a nuisance within Section 11
and Sections 12—19 (inclusive) of the Nuisances Removal Act for
England, 1855, and within all provisions of the same, or any other
Act applying, amending or otherwise relating to those Sections;
and that nuisance, if in any case proved to exist, shall be presumed
to be such as to render the premises unfit for human
habitation within Section 13 of the Nuisances Removal Act for
England, 1855, unless and until the contrary is shewn to the satisfaction
of the Justices acting under that Section."
I have thought it right to quote the above Sections in their
entirety, but I may at once state that I do not know of a single
case in this parish in which a Company has cut off the supply
by reason of the " absence of the prescribed fittings," or by
reason of defective fittings leading to waste, misuse, undue
consumption, or contamination of water; and this, possibly, may
be the reason why not one of the Companies, in any case within
my recollection, has ever given the statutory notice to your
Vestry, as the nuisance authority, of their having cut off the