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for preventing waste. Your Vestry, upon my recommendation,
applied to the Local Government Board to obtain legislative power
to enable the Sanitary Authority to enforce the regulation; but
without result, although the application—which was endorsed by
many of the Vestries and District Boards—arose out of a
memorandum by the Board's Medical Officer, recommending
severance of waste-pipes from drains, made at a time when it was
thought that Asiatic cholera might be imported; and although
his advice was in harmony with the views of the then Water
Examiner. The introduction of the Public Health (London) Bill
during the current Session, appearing to afford a convenient
opportunity for conferring this power of carrying out the Water
Regulations on the Sanitary Authority, communications were
addressed to the President of the Local Government Board, recommending
the insertion of a clause to give effect to my views
on the subject, but without effect.
Cutting-off Powees.—Section 74 of the Water Works
Clauses Act, 1847, gives power to the Companies to cut off the
water supply if the rate is not paid. Such a power cannot be
safely entrusted to any commercial body, having regard to the
importance of the water supply in relation to the public health.
In 1884 a striking exercise of this power on the part of one of
the Companies supplying Kensington, who deprived 80 people in
a mews of the supply for which they had paid the landlord in their
weekly rent—he, however, not having paid the rate—led to communications
being made to the Local Government Board and to
the Sanitary Authorities, which, by drawing public attention
pointedly to the subject, contributed to bring about a partial
remedy by legislation. I had for some years previously, contended
that the power of cutting-off the supply of water from a house for
non-payment of the rate should be taken away from the Companies,
and that they should be left to their remedy like other traders, the
rate being treated as a debt to be recovered—if they did not think
fit to enforce their right to prepayment.*
* Vide Monthly Reports, 1 and 2, February 1st and March 1st, 1883, pp. 6—8,
and 13—18.