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26
Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
and 10,738 people, or 4.29 per 10,000 died; whilst in 1886 one company supplied,
and that for a few days only, unfiltered water, and the epidemic was almost entirely
confined to the area of the company 's supply; but it killed 5,596 people, or 18.4 per
10,000 of the entire population of London."
Bacterially—according to the method of gelatine-plate culture devised by Professor
R. Koch—the Southwark and Vauxhall Company's water, taken from the main, is
the worst in quality of the five companies drawing their supplies front the Thames
The water of the Lambeth Company comes next, having one-fourth the number of
microbes or germs than was present in the water of the first-named company.
The water, likewise, issuing from the Southwark filter beds, gave the largest
number of microbes, and three times as many as that coming from the Lambeth beds
In September, 1892, I urged upon the Vestry to cause a full and immediate
enquiry to be made into the storage of all water used, or liable to be used, for
drinking and domestic purposes. This I did, knowing that a large number of the
numerous water-cisterns usually placed on the roofs of the 41 artizan model
dwellings, within the parish, were either without covers, or imperfectly covered, and
removed a few feet only from the free vents of the soil pipes, and that they contained
filthy water, owing to the want of cleansing and an efficient supervision of the
houses by the owners.
Sufficiently frequent and periodical inspection of cisterns, impossible with the
present slender inspectorial staff, would, I believe, tend materially to lessen the
needlessly high sick and death-rates from such preventable water-borne diseases as
diarrhœa and typhoid fever, and would, also, go a long way towards warding off and
preventing cholera—now threatening—from getting a footing in this district.
It must be remembered that no amount of after-inspection will ever be able
to give back the victims, or check the rapid spread of cholera, if the enemy be once
permitted to steal a march upon the water-cisterns.
Drinking-water has been supplied in a large number of cases direct from the
main—the cisterns (filling the flush-tanks in the w.c.'s), being used temporarily only
in times of need. The accompanying diagram will explain better than I can do in
words, the system of water supply already adopted in the Peabody Buildings, Black
friar's Road, and in the case of a few other lofty model dwellings in the parish—a
system I am endeavouring to introduce into other similar buildings, whenever the
water pressure proves to be sufficient and continuous.
DIAGRAM (See next page.)
Although the water companies are obliged by their "special Acts" to furnish
a sufficient supply of water for domestic use, effectually filtered, on leaving the
settling tanks, and supplied under constant pressure to a height far above the
topmost story of the highest house in Southwark, my experience is that the pressure
given by the Southwark and Vauxhall Company is frequently intermittent, and quite
insufficient to cause the water to reach the upper stories of "flats." Consequently
one is driven to the continued use of cisterns—not infrequently a fertile source o???
danger, dirt, and disease.
The polluted porous subsoil of Southwark—some 20 feet in depth—being o???
made earth, sand, and gravel, allows of the more or less free passage of surface
washings, as well as the contents of faulty drains and sewers, and disused cesspits
and burial grounds, which give extra body to the saline waters of the shallow wells
in the vicinity. Samples of mineral water from the 11 remaining surface pump
wells in the district submitted to Dr. Muter—the public analyst—for examination
proved, as one would expect, to be all highly charged with sewage and other
deleterious matters, and dangerous therefore to the public health. I have caused all
hese wells to be either closed and filled up, or safeguarded.