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154
should be left to their remedy for the recovery of debts like other
traders. No doubt, as I then said, it seems, at first sight, not
unreasonable to allow a Company to discontinue the supply when
a customer fails to pay. But water is a prime necessary of life,
and the absence of it in an inhabited house constitutes a serious
nuisance; the Companies, moreover, enjoy a valuable monopoly, so
that, economical laws notwithstanding, the Legislature would be
justified in dealing with this matter in an exceptional way.
Public attention was directed to this subject by the act of the
Grand Junction Water Works Company in cutting off the supply
from the whole of Hayden's Mews, Portobello Road, Notting
Hill, in December last, under circumstances fully set out by me in
a Special Report (No. 13, 1884, December 17tl, p. 79). The
Mews is private property. It contains 20 separate premises,
belonging, with one exception, to one person. The stables were
let to an omnibus proprietor, the rooms to a number of separate
tenants. At the time when the water was cut off for nonpayment
of the water rent, 15 sets of rooms were occupied, the number of
inhabitants being 81. The tenants of the rooms were under
agreement to pay a weekly rent, which, as far as they were concerned,
covered the cost of the water supply. The occupier of
the stables, which are supplied with water from a cistern or
cisterns in the upper part of the premises common to the rooms
and to the stables, had agreed to pay the water rent, but failed to
do so, alleging that it was not fair that he should pay for the
water consumed by other people. He complained also of the
excessive increase in the amount of the water rent, an increase
resulting incidentally from the Company's defeat in the wellknown
Dobbs case. But as he was in arrear at another stable
yard, and at his private house also, and as his affairs went into
liquidation not long after the water had been cut off, it is at
least probable that pecuniary difficulties were at the bottom of
his neglect, and that his failure to appeal against the Company's
charges arose from his inability to meet any portion of them.
The Company had an indubitable right to cut off the water
under the provisions of the Waterworks Clauses Act, 1847, one