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48
then drawn into the sewer —then flowing into the River Lea—then finding
their way by the leakage into the water for daily distribution, because a
query would naturally arise,—How came it after all that Hedges and his
wife inert first seized with the Cholera ?
But I am flinging aside theories and admitting as a fact that
the water was poisoned. A thousand strong at once in two institutions fly
in the face of it, and give the dictum a negative. If a high altitude be sought
for illustration, there it is at Stamford Hill—4 only dying at the rate of
10,000 persons, at 76 feet above Trinity high water mark—the same rule
of immunity applying among the residents of Clapton, Wanstead, Snaresbrook,
Walthamstow, and Woodford. If a low elevation be looked after, you
cannot well go lower—8 feet below High Water Mark—at Silver Town and
North Woolwich, where there was little or no fatality all through the epidomic.
If a middle level be investigated, at 12 to 18 feet altitude, 600 men
and women, as already stated, in the Stepney Union at Bromley escaped,
while at the Limehouse School 400 children romped and played, at intervals,
all through the summer of 18G6, and drank daily, and that many times,
from the said poisonous unfiltered water of Old Ford, under no restrictions,
without restraint, harmless going their way, and, to a child, passed spotless
through the pestilence.
The North Woolwich comparative exemption has been referred to a possible
supply from Lea Bridge by night in lieu of Old Ford; the two workhouses
to a something in the soil, in accordance with the doctrine of Professor Pettenkofer;
and Stamford Hill to the supply divided between the pure water of
Lea Bridge and the foul waters of Old Ford. But the supposition about
North Woolwich scarcely requires notice; the statement respecting
Stamford Hill,* of course from inaccurate information, is positively incorrect;
and as to the geological suggestions in connection with the workhouses, I
will venture to produce the same strata in the midst of the greatest mortality
of Limehouse Fields.
It has been said that the theory of the "explosion" is correct because its
effects have been co-extensive with the field of the water distribution. But
this is not the case; neither the outline nor the area in any way corresponds.
*To make sure about the Stamford Hill immunity, and the suggestion or assumption of a divided
supply, in company with a Medical friend, one of standing, I lately had an interview with the Hydraulic
Engineer at Old Ford. Mr. Greaves assured us that both at and all through the epidemic, as
well as for twelve months previously, the Old Ford water, and that alone, had supplied Stamford Hill
and other places thereabouts.