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constant service from the mains of the water companies;
and in this endeavour I have met with the
most cordial co-operation from the two companies
which supply the City with water; but in no case
have I been able to overcome the objections of landlords,
who fear the expense of a novel contrivance;
and it is unfortunate that your legal powers do not
enable you to prescribe the mode whereby such
water should be furnished. In the year 1866, when
cholera was prevalent in the eastern part of the City,
your sanitary committee, acting on my advice, distributed
among the landlords of all the poorer dwellings
in the City a notice respecting the dangers of
the present system of supply, and asking them to
adopt the more wholesome, and in the end less
expensive, method of supplying water to their tenements
directly from the mains; at the same time informing
them that the New River Company were
ready to supply the inhabitants with water for drinking
and other purposes, by means of a stand-post in
each house, or in the courts, on condition that the
same was provided with some effective apparatus to
prevent waste—the cost of which would be much
less than that of erecting separate cisterns; and with
the view of demonstrating the advantages of this
method of supply, the Commissioners erected at their
own cost 18 of such stand-posts, with waste-water
preventers, in various parts of the City; but nowhere,