already on other occasions allowed me to state my knowledge at greater
length. But there is one evil in particular to which I would beg leave
to advert. Those works of drainage which are established under your
orders depend for their efficiency on a proper supply of water; and in
every case where you enforce the construction of house-drains, you order
that those drains shall be served efficiently with water. Your wishes on
this subject are nominally complied with by those on whom your orders
are served, but are often virtually evaded by a filthy and ineffectual
contrivance. The butt or cistern of the house--that on which the inmates
depend for their supply of fresh and pure drinking-water, is placed in
immediate contiguity to the privy, so as to reduce the requisite length
of connecting pipe to the fewest possible number of inches; the
application of water is not made discretionary on the users of the
privy, nor are any of the cheap and common self-acting contrivances
introduced; but the waste-pipe of the butt or cistern is conducted into
the discharge-pipe of the privy, so that, _periodically_, with a
frequency varying according to the arrangements of the water-company,
the arrears of excrement are removed, so far as the overflow of the
water-receptacle may have power to dislodge and propel them. Frequent
evidence has been before me of the insufficiency of this arrangement:
and, in addition to its actual failure (on the reasons of which your
Surveyor can speak more competently than I) there is strong reason to
object to its prevalence on other grounds. Water, as you probably know,
is a very active absorbent of many gaseous materials; and the open
butts, which are thus placed in immediate contact and communication with
privies, must rapidly become infected by their foulness. I need not
explain to you how injurious an addition this is to the other
objectionable incidents of water-storage, or how unattractive as a
beverage to the poor inhabitants of the City must be this vapid,
privy-flavoured stuff.
For this arrangement I can suggest to your Hon. Court no easy
alternative or remedy, so long as the distribution of water continues to
be on its present intermittent plan: but it is matter for extreme regret
that, by circumstances over which you have no control, the success of
your sanitary measures should be seriously diminished. By the
enforcement or execution of house-drainage, your Hon. Court has
conferred great advantages on many districts of the City; but it is my
duty to tell you that, in my judgment, the present condition of the
water-trade contributes to neutralise those advantages, and constitutes
a restriction on your power of doing good.
As respects the evils to which I have just adverted, unquestionably they
admit of abatement by devoting separate water-receptacles to the very
different uses of diet and drainage. But the expense of additional
cisterns in tenements so poor cannot be considered trifling; and I
believe that your Hon. Court would hesitate, even if you have the power,
to enforce this double burthen on the owners of house-property, at a
time when one may reasonably hope that the necessity for cisterns will
be superseded.
There can be no doubt on the extreme degree in which it is desirable for
the poor of the City of London, that water should be delivered to their
houses on the principle of constant supply, and that they should thus be
relieved from the expensive and unwholesome necessity of storing it in
small quantities and in improper receptacles. That it is _desirable_ is
a certainty within my official knowledge and on which therefore I can
give an opinion of my own. That it is _practicable_ is not within my
official knowledge; for in this part of the question are involved
various considerations of hydraulic engineering, on which I am
incompetent to offer an opinion. But I cannot ignore the fact, that in
many parts of England and Scotland the practicability of a constant
supply has been evinced by the very conclusive evidence of its success.
To some such instances I alluded in my last Report, and from the present
year I can quote you a striking additional one. At Wolverhampton, in
1849, the system of supply, which had previously been intermittent, was
made continuous. Instead of waste ensuing on the change, its immediate
effect was a reduction of 22 _per cent._ on the quantity consumed. So
great had been the unpopularity of the intermittent system of supply,
that at the time of the change the company had not more than 600
customers. Immediately on the adoption of the new system, their
customers increased, and within ten months had risen to 1400. This
increase was continuing up to the date of the Report (May 4th, 1850), at
which time they were adding to the number of their customers at the rate
of 50 each week. The above facts (as is well observed by the resident
engineer, Mr. Marten) may be taken as a fair test that the system of
continuous supply is one of superior adaptation to the domestic wants of
the public.
This case is but an inconsiderable fraction of the evidence which lies
before the public on the subject of continuous supply. With such
evidence before me, in contrast to what I observe of the distribution of
water within the City of London, I cannot refrain from repeating to your
Hon. Court my confirmed and deliberate opinion that our method of supply
is essentially bad, and that it withholds from the poorer population of
the City a large proportion of those sanitary advantages which it is the
object of water to confer. No doubt it will occur to you that against
evils of this nature--evils arising in the conflictive interests of
water-buyer and water-seller, the first principles of commerce imply a
resource; and that in this matter, as in others of the sort, a customer
holds in his own hands the remedy for his dissatisfaction. But although
the supply of water, in the hands of the powerful companies who vend it,
is in many respects a common transaction of trade, and as such is in
theory open to competition, yet I would beg to point out to your Hon.
Court that, in regard of the City under your jurisdiction, no such check
and no such stimulus as competition can virtually be said to exist. In
every practical sense the sale of water is a monopoly. The individual
customer, dwelling in Cripplegate or in Farringdon, who is dissatisfied
with his bargain in water, can go to no other market; and however
legitimate may be his claim to be supplied with this prime necessary of
life at its cheapest rate, in the most efficient manner, and of the best
possible quality, your Hon. Court, hitherto, possesses no power to
enforce it.
All who have given impartial consideration to the subject seem to concur
as to the advantages which result from a control over the supply and
distribution of water being possessed by those who are responsible for
the drainage and cleanliness of a district. These different duties are
in such essential relation to each other that they would seem almost of
necessity to require a single direction and control. House-drainage
pre-supposes water-supply; water-supply pre-supposes house-drainage; the
efficiency of either implies their mutual adaptation; just as the
circulation of blood within an animal body implies uninterrupted
continuity of arteries and veins, each harmonising with the uses of the
other, to ensure the efficiency of the whole. But while the works of
drainage executed under your orders lose much of their sanitary
usefulness for want of an effectual water-supply, your Hon. Court has no
power of interference in the matter, closely associated as it is with
the performance of your other functions. These anomalies would be
removed, and a most beneficial power over the distribution of water
would be vested in the hands of your Commission, if in the renewal of
your Act of Parliament you procured authority to represent the citizens
in this matter. All the advantages which could possibly be gained by
competition, together with many benefits which no competition could
ensure, would thus be realised to the population under your charge; if,
namely, a clause were inserted in your Bill, empowering you, at your
discretion, to contract corporately with any person or any company for
the supply of water to the City of London.
In the Public Health Act (passed simultaneously with yours) an enactment
of this nature exists, authorising local boards of health to ‘provide
their district with such a supply of water as may be proper and
sufficient,’ and for this purpose ‘to contract with any person
whomsoever to do and execute all such works, matters, and things as
shall be necessary and proper, and to require that houses shall be
supplied with water,’ and to ‘make and levy water rates upon the
premises, at a rate not exceeding twopence per week.’ With a power like
this in your hands, you would easily enforce for the City of London
whatever method of supply you might deliberately believe to be best; and
you would then be enabled and entitled, in the application of other
clauses in your Act, to require of landlords acting under your orders,
a far completer, though less expensive, improvement of their property
than you are yet in a position to obtain.
In submitting to your Hon. Court my views as to the expediency of your
having a controlling power over the supply of water, I am glad to find
myself supported by the recorded opinion of the present Lord Mayor,
himself formerly the Chairman of a Commission of Sewers; and I am
induced to believe that such an addition to your functions might not be
objectionable to the water companies, as I observe that Sir William
Clay, the chairman of two metropolitan companies, has expressed himself
strongly on its ‘great and obvious convenience.’
* * * * *
2. Of equal importance with anything which relates to the distribution
of water are those momentous questions which relate to its _quality_,
and which tend to determine its fitness for human consumption.
Considering the great share of public attention which these questions at
present very properly obtain, the many projects which are broached for
improving the quality of our metropolitan supply, and the importance of
your being in a position to decide as to the merits of any plan which
may affect the City of London, I have thought it desirable in this
Report to submit to you some general observations on the subject. During
the last few months, I have accordingly been collecting such information
as might, in my judgment, be useful for this purpose. In pursuing one
portion of my inquiry--that which relates to the chemical constitution
of certain waters, I have availed myself of the permission of your Hon.
Court to procure a limited amount of assistance from some one more
conversant than myself with the practice of analysis. For this purpose I
have addressed myself to Mr. Thomas Taylor, lately Lecturer on Chemistry
at St. Thomas’s Hospital, a gentleman on whose skill and impartiality I
can implicitly trust. His account of the very careful analyses which he
has made is subjoined to my Report.[48] Concurrently with the experience
of other chemists, it has furnished me with material for many of the
conclusions which I am about to lay before you.
[48] See page 168.
The water which is supplied by the New River and East London companies
for the consumption of the City of London is substantially of one kind.
The River Lea, on which the East London Company entirely depends,
furnishes likewise much of the supply conveyed by the New River.[49] The
springs in which the latter originate are of the same chemical kind as
those which contribute to the Lea; and the artificial aqueduct runs its
forty miles of course through much the same country as the natural
river. Chemically, therefore, one description may apply to both; and I
the rather speak of them conjointly, as any extension of its resources
for our supply which the New River might obtain, would apparently be
provided by increasing considerably its present draught from the Lea.
[49] It appears that the New River Company at present derives about
two-thirds of its supply from the River Lea, and proposes to draw from
this source a still larger proportion. Any chemical difference of
quality in the City pipe-water (as between that supplied by the New
River and that by the East London Company) would probably not exceed
those limits of difference which prevail in respect of waters gathered
_under varying circumstances_ from one and the same source.
The pipe-water consumed in the City has for its general chemical
character, that it contains a considerable quantity of carbonate of
lime, held in solution by an excess of carbonic acid. To this and
another salt of lime (the sulphate) the water chiefly owes the property
which is complained of under the name of _hardness_: it is by reason of
these salts, namely, that it decomposes a certain large proportion of
whatever soap is used with it; preventing the formation of a lather,
till those salts are exhausted by a wasted proportion of soap, by
boiling or otherwise, and hindering to that extent the several purposes
for which soap is employed. You are probably aware that soda is
extensively used in the laundry, as an antidote to this objectionable
quality of hard waters; and the excess of its employment tends, by
corrosion, very observably to hasten the destruction of washed articles
of dress. In the same measure as water possesses the property of
decomposing soap, its utility as an universal solvent is impaired; it
extends to various other substances which one seeks to dissolve in it
(especially to many vegetable matters) that same disposition to waste
them in the form of insoluble precipitates. Its conveniences for the
purposes of cooking and manufacture are _pari passu_ diminished.
Of the actual extent of which these disadvantages are sustained within
the City of London, I have no means of forming an exact opinion; but
statements are before the public (from the general correctness of which
I have no reason to withhold reliance and belief) rating the pecuniary
loss to the metropolis, in the two articles of soap and tea, at a very
high figure. You will see from Mr. Taylor’s observations the proportion
in which waste occurs, as regards one of these articles; namely that,
for the production of a lather in washing, the pipe-water of the City of
London, used without boiling, consumes from 13 to 19 times as much soap
as distilled water would consume.[50]
[50] It has been alleged that, by the use of soft water, the saving in
soap would probably be equivalent to the whole of the money at present
expended on water-supply; and that in the article of tea, the economy
would amount to about one-third of the tea now consumed in the
metropolis. It strikes me as possible that, in forming these
estimates, the argument may have proceeded too much from a
consideration of the hardness of London waters in their unboiled
state; and that sufficient allowance may not have been made for the
change which boiling produces. If boiling were prolonged for some
hours before culinary or detergent use of the water, the results (for
tea or soap) would be identical with those produced under the
employment of soft water. Notoriously this precaution is not taken:
but to avoid disputable ground, I confine myself to _the fact of
considerable pecuniary loss_, arising from the cause in question, and
I avoid any attempt to determine its exact amount.
The chemical constitution of these waters occasions another
inconvenience. Their carbonate of lime is held in solution (in the
chemical form of bicarbonate) by an excess of carbonic acid: under the
influence of heat this excess is gradually disengaged and driven off;
consequently, as they approach the boiling point, they begin to
precipitate the earthy salt which that gas was instrumental in
dissolving. Each gallon of water under these circumstances would deposit
from ten to fifteen grains of earthy matter on the interior of whatever
vessel might contain it, or on the surface of whatever solid--linen or
mutton, might be contained in the boiler. Hence arises the well-known
_furring_ of vessels in which such waters have habitually been boiled.
I refrain from dwelling on the economical considerations which arise in
these points of the subject, as very obvious inferences from the result
of chemical analysis; and I pass to other matters more strictly within
my own province of observation.
Is water thus constituted in any degree detrimental to the health of
those who drink it? It is not in a single word that this question can be
fairly answered. Almost insuperable difficulty belongs to it, from the
absence of any statistical method by which we might isolate the
water-drinking portion of our population, and might compare them, in
regard of the diseases to which they are liable, with similar sections
of population in soft-water districts and in harder-water districts.
Obviously, no other method of comparison can be unobjectionable; and, in
arguing the subject from such materials as I have, I can pretend to
nothing more than a rational approximation to truth.
Except in the comparatively few instances where active medicinal agents
are naturally dissolved in a water, its effects, if injurious, would be
so slow as to elude ordinary observation. If, as is exceedingly
probable, the same constitution of water as impairs its solvency out of
the body, do likewise operate against its being the most eligible
menstruum or dissolvent for processes occurring within the body--such
processes I mean as attend the act of digestion; if the lime and other
hardening ingredients which waste soap in our laundries, and tea in our
parlours, do similarly waste within us those organic agencies by which
our food is dissolved and converted; any result arising from this source
would be of gradual operation, would not easily admit of being traced to
its source, and (except in susceptible persons) would rarely produce
such symptoms as might immediately draw attention to their cause. The
ill effects (whatever they may be) arising from the use of hard waters
must be looked for in chronic impairment of digestion, and in those
various derangements of nutrition in distant parts (the skin and teeth
particularly) which follow as secondary results on such chronic
disorder. It would be ridiculous to look for the operation of an
ill-chosen water, after its habitual use during two centuries, as though
one were inquiring for the symptoms of an acute poison. The signs that
are to be ascertained among a population, if such signs exist, are those
which would evidence a premature exhaustion of the power of digestion,
and would testify that the machine on which we depend for that power had
been exposed to unnecessary and avoidable fatigue. This, I believe, is
the utmost which Medicine, proceeding from theoretical grounds, would
venture to say on the subject.
Perhaps I need not inform you that indigestion, with all that follows
from it, is so frequent in the metropolis, in persons after the first
strength of youth, that, for large classes of society, a perfect
discharge of the natural process of digestion (such a discharge of it as
a lecturer would describe to be the exact type and intention of Nature),
is exceptional and rare. Unquestionably, in large numbers of cases, wine
and beer and spirits, rather than water, have to do with this effect.
Unquestionably, other influences of metropolitan life--and, not least,
the mental wear and tear which belong to its large excitement,
contribute immensely to this chronic derangement of health; but there
are reasons likewise for believing, that the quality of water consumed
is not a matter of indifference to the result. We cannot but give it an
important place among those influences of health or unhealth which we
consider _local_; and we cannot refuse to recognise the fact, that in
recommending our patients (as we do often recommend them) to try ‘change
of air’ for complaints which baffle us by their obstinacy, so long as
the subject of them remains in London, the course on which we rely for
success implies ‘change of water,’ equally with that other change to
which more popular importance is attached.
In illustration of this view, I may quote to you the experience of two
other towns. Dr. Sutherland stated, in evidence before the General Board
of Health, that having lived for a number of years at Liverpool (where
the water is said to be of about the same degree of hardness as ours),
he had long entertained a conviction that ‘the hard water, in a certain
class of constitutions, tends to produce visceral obstructions; that it
diminishes the natural secretions, produces a constipated or irregular
state of the bowels, and consequently deranges the health. He had
repeatedly known these complaints to vanish on leaving the town, and to
re-appear immediately on returning to it, and it was such repeated
occurrences which fixed his attention on the hard selenitic water of the
new red sandstone as the probable cause, as he believed it to be, of
these affections.’ (Rep. p. 51). And Dr. Leach, of Glasgow, stated
before the same Board, as the result in that town of two years’
experience of a substitution of soft for hard drinking-water, that in
his opinion, ‘dyspeptic complaints had become diminished in number;’
and that it had ‘been observed, since this change, urinary diseases have
become less frequent, especially those attended by the deposition of
gravel.’
Inferences useful for ourselves cannot be drawn from statements like the
above, on the fullest assumption of their accuracy, without comparing
the waters referred to with our own, more completely than is done by the
one characteristic of ‘hardness;’ and there may likewise be other
qualifications requisite for an application of the analogy. But those
disorders of health which are specified by the gentlemen quoted, as
produced by the use and diminished by the disuse of hard waters, are
such as might very probably stand in the relation of effect to their
alleged cause; results, namely, primary and secondary, of disordered
digestion.
Practically, I may tell you, that there are many individuals whose
stomachs are extremely sensitive to the impression of hard water, who
derive immediate inconvenience from its use, and who refuse to drink it
without artificial reduction of its objectionable quality. I may
likewise inform you that a physician, recently deceased, whose knowledge
of indigestion and its chronic effects (especially in relation to the
skin and urinary organs) was most profound and accurate, and whose
consulting practice in such disorders was for many years almost a
monopoly (I mean Dr. Prout) was in the habit of enjoining on his
patients the use of distilled water. He evidently considered that the
consumption of such waters as are habitually drunk in the metropolis was
detrimental, at least to an enfeebled digestion. This is an opinion
which, I have reason to believe, is generally entertained by medical
practitioners in London.
It may not be irrelevant to mention to you (since the influence of
imagination or of artificial habits can have little to do with this
result) that horses are liable to be much inconvenienced by hard water,
if unaccustomed to its use; and it is, I believe, notorious that grooms
in charge of racers habitually take the trouble of conveying with them,
to their temporary racing stables, a supply of the accustomed water.
Veterinary surgeons say that under the continued use of hard water,
which horses will avoid if possible, their coats become rough and
staring;--an effect, I may observe, analogous to those skin-disorders of
the human subject which are apt to occur from impairment of the
digestive functions.
Taking into account all these considerations, together with others of a
more technical description; and believing that water is eligible for
human consumption in proportion as it is free from the admixture of any
material foreign to its simple elementary constitution--exception being
made only of so much dissolved air as will render it sparkling and
palatable; I entertain no doubt that a water, devoid of considerable
hardness, would (_cæteris paribus_) for the purposes of cooking and
drinking, be far preferable to that which the companies now distribute
through the City of London.