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195
Board should be further requested to amend the 14th Regulation
also, so as to require the Water Companies to serve a
notice upon consumers to sever all connections of waste-pipes
of cisterns with drains. Your Vestry made a representation to
the Local Government Board on this subject ten years ago,
and it was supported by many of the Sanitary Authorities.
The local Companies were also requested to exercise their
powers to enforce the cutting off of waste-pipes, but took no
step beyond—in common with the other Companies—issuing
a circular letter to their customers, indicating the desirability of
their doing this, in conformity with the advice of the Medical
Officer to the Local Government Board, given in view of the
then threatened visitation of Cholera. The Board had communicated
to the several Authorities the advice of their
Medical Officer, which was but a repetition of what the late SirFrancis
Bolton, the Water Examiner, had been insisting on,
month by month, for years, in his reports, but without effect.
Should there bean outbreak of Cholera this year, it is probable
that the Board will once more tender the same advice to the
Sanitary Authorities, as they did last year, but without taking
any steps to enable those Authorities to give effect to their advice,
by procuring the desired amendment of the regulation. It
would be well could the Board be induced to comply with the
recommendation transmitted to them by your Vestry on the
subject, in 1883, when, moreover, they were also asked to give,
or obtain, power to enable Sanitary Authorities to enforce
other of the regulations having a sanitary bearing ; those
numbered 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 31, and 32,
being specified. Your Vestry's action in this important matter
was fully set out in my Annual Report, for 1882, pages 117
to 1 26 inclusive, and I would recommend that the attention of
the Local Government Board be again invited to the subject.
It may be here mentioned that the regulations of the
Water Companies were made in 1872, under the provisions
of sec. 17—25 of the Metropolis Water Act, 1871, and have
never been altered. But any company may repeal or alter