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of instances. Many rooms were disinfected by tlie contractor,
as well as numerous parcels of clothing, bedding, etc., at the
cost of persons able to pay.
WATER SUPPLY.
Professor Frankland's Report.— Believing it to be desirable
that your Vestry, as the body responsible in this great Parish for
carrying into effect the provisions of sanitary legislation, should
receive the latest and best information on all points connected with
the water supply, a subject of great importance in relation to the
public health, it has been my custom, for many years, to summarise
the reports prepared annually by Professor Franldand, for the
Registrar-General, and by Colonel Sir Francis Bolton, R.E., the
official "Water Examiner," appointed under the Metropolis Water
Act, 1871. I do so again this year. Dr. Frankland deals mainly
with the quality of the water in its chemical and microscopical
aspects, and in respect to its fitness for dietetic and domestic
purposes, he being, as is well-known, adverse to riparian sources
of supply; while Sir Francis Bolton's observations have reference,
inter alia, to the condition of the water in bulk, at the intakes,
and to its physical qualities when delivered to the consumer—in a
word, to whatever relates to the collection, subsidence, filtration,
storage, and distribution of the water.
London is mainly supplied from the rivers Thames and Lea, but a considerable
and increasing quantity of water is obtained from deep wells
sunk in the chalk, not only by the Companies which obtain their entire
supply from that source, but also by some of the old Companies which
thus supplement their intake of river water. The average daily volume
supplied per head of population in 1884, was 29 gallons.
Dr. Frankland is consistent in his preference for "deep well water," taking
it as the standard of purity in comparative observations on the waters
generally. 1 n a previous report he described it as being "delicious and
wholesome "and uniformly excellent for dietetic purposes, maintaining
that in the interests of temperance and public health, it should, as soon
as possible, be substituted for that portion of the Metropolitan supply
which is drawn from polluted rivers. This "pure spring water," he said,
"is everywhere abundant in the Thames basin: in dry seasons it constitutes
the sole supply of the Thames and the Lea, and, even after the