Part 16

I now merely glance at this part of the subject, because you have 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.’

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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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

Hitherto, however, I have spoken of the waters supplied to the City, merely as regards that large impregnation of earthy material which they gather from their source; and I have criticised them only in respect of that admixture. Their essential chemical quality is one native to the soil from which they are derived; and whatever censure thus far belongs to them could only have been avoided by the selection of a different source. Chemistry, in the days of Morrys and Myddleton, was not sufficiently advanced to inform the water-merchants of a city on those different conditions which determine the fitness of a soil to serve as the natural or artificial gathering-ground of a supply; and by which (as they vary in different localities) hardness is imparted to the rain-fall of one district, while softness is preserved for that of another.