View report page

45
of poison from the works at Old
Ford. Conceding, for the sake of
argument, the force of this hypothesis,
in its origin adopted by the
Registrar-General, Mr. Simon, and
others very distinguished in the
world of science, flanked by the
gallant and versatile Captain Tyler;
yet I would seriously enquire, what
have the outbreaks of 1848-9 and
1853-4 south of the Thames to do,
by way of analogy, with the explosion
in the East in 1866? The
Lambeth Company, at that time,
was receiving its supply of water—
incredible as it may seem, from the
Thames itself, near Hungerford
Bridge, when the deaths from
Cholera were 12.5 per 1,000; while
the Southwark and Vauxhall found
its resources from a locality, little
better, at Battersea, when the mortality
was nearly as great, or 11.8.
The removal to Thames Ditton, by
the Lambeth Company, before the
socond outbreak in 1853-4 led to a
diminution to 3.7 per 1,000. Now
this is all very well as shewing that
good water is better than bad,
which every one knows, and that
foul water, contaminated with the
sewerage of 2 to 3,000,000 people,
is totally unfit for use, and immensely
exaggerates a Cholera
epidemic. But beyond this all