Sanitary Measures -- Supply of Water in the Metropolis

Editorial. London, Saturday, January 25, 1848.

Our attention has been forcibly directed to a project now before Parliament, emanating from the Lambeth Water Works Company, of immense importance in a sanitary point of view. This Company propose, at great outlay, to improve the water-supply in Lambeth, and to extend their operations, so as to supply Norwood, Dulwich, Streatham, Brixton, Mapbun, Balham, etc., with water from purer sources than any yet selected by the different water companies of the metropolis. It might be supposed, that at the present critical period, when the eyes of the public are so keenly directed towards all measures having a sanitary tendency, any such undertaking as that we have referred to would be certain to meet the favourable consideration of Parliament and the Government; aid it will indeed be most discreditable if any private or other influences are allowed to set it aside without a full and partial examination of its capabilities for good.  We willingly embrace the present opportunity of remarking on the subject of water-supplies to the Metropolis and the other great cities -- a subject most interesting to the entire community, and peculiarly so to medical men, as the head and front of the great movement now in operation in favour of sanitary reform.

Moralists have often descanted on the vast human hive which constitutes modern London; the streams of population passing to and fro in the main thoroughfares; the buildings, ships, and vehicles, and the great highways of land and water which the metropolis presents.  But the world underneath ground, the subterranean wonders of this huge city, though not less wonderful, attract less attention and curiosity.  If we could peel off the epidermis and integument of flagstone, pitching, macadamizing, and wood, we would see beneath them all the concourse of tube, pipe, and conduit, of every form and variety, which are constantly engaged in the conduction of water, gas, sewerage, and electrical telegraph, for the accommodation of the inhabitants. These unseen circulations, which supply the light and water, and absorb and excrete the debris of nearly two millions of inhabitants, exceed in magnitude those of any other city of ancient or modem times. The aqueducts of the old civilization fade in importance before the reservoirs and pipes of the moderns. The gas and water companies of London alone are computed to employ upwards of 8000 miles of tube, which intersect and anastomose with each other in every direction.

Every water reservoir, with its gigantic tuning-fork for purposes of propulsion or filtration, is a source of water-circulation; every gasometer is an artificial centre of light to the streets and habitations; every modern built house has its excretory duct in connection with the system of sewerage, without which it would be impossible for mankind to live in health in large communities; and latterly, Lothbury has been made, the central depot, towards which it is proposed to converge, underground, all the different lines of electric telegraph, so that this part of London may become the centre of instantaneous intelligence to the whole island.

Perhaps these works illustrate the predominant tendency to utility, without care for external show, which is one of our prominent national characteristics, and which is in many things undoubtedly carried to a faulty excess. But if there is a grandeur in utility which may cope with ornament and decoration. The wits of the town and men of taste have jeered and condemned the fountains of Trafalgar-square, pointing to the splendid fountains of the Place de la Concorde and the gardens of Versailles, as a contrast most unfavourable to our national pride; but the utilitarian might refer with satisfaction to the extraordinary assembly of tubes and ducts under the ground at Charing-Cross, as in some measure compensating far the want of taste exhibited above the surface. As regards number, this situation is the very centre of the metropolitan pipeage, upwards of thirty lines of pipes traversing it in various directions. And if Paris has its showy fountains, for fetes and holidays, it is obliged to maintain, at the present time, 30,000 water-carriers for its every-day supply of this essential liquid; all this waste of human labour being employed to do that which pipe and cistern effect so much more conveniently on this side of the Channel. Those, to the stranger, mysterious hieroglyphics at the corners of the streets -- Fire Main, F. P. 6 ft. E. --with an occasional turncock, are all the signs we meet with of the provident water-services of the metropolis.

But it is upon the water-supply of the metropolis we wish more particularly to remark. The great era in the history of the London water-supply was the first conduction of water from the New River; but the gradual development of the system from the open springs or streams to the complex arrangements of the existing waterworks is full of interest.  In Stow's Survey of London, and Nelson's History of Islington, many interesting particulars are narrated of the ancient water-courses and conduits of the metropolis. Before the Conquest, and for two hundred years afterwards, the city of London and its environs were traversed by various small streams, from which, in addition to the Thames, the inhabitants obtained supplies of water. The river of Wells, or Walbrooke, rose to the north of Moorfields, passed along London Wall, Bishopsgate, and Moorgate, and ran through the city in an open channel, having several bridges erected over it. The river Fleet appears at that time also to have been an open channel, navigable for barges of considerable burden as high as Holborn Bridge; another water or bourne ran within the city, through Lang-bourne ward, supplying that part in the east, and in the west there was another great water, called Old-bourne (Holborn). There were also wells in various parts of the city and suburbs, amongst which we may mention many whose names remain to the present day --
as Holy-well, Clements-well, Clarkes-well, Skinners-well, Fags-well, Todes-well, and Rads-well.  In 1285, water was first conveyed from a conduit at Paddington, by means of leaden pipes, to the Cross, in Cheape, and between 1430 and 1440 pipes of six inches in diameter were laid to the Standard in Cheapside from a series of wells at Ty-bourne, and also from the Highbury Conduit and White Conduit to Cripplegate, and from Lambe's Conduit to Cripplegate.

As the population increased, the streams became polluted; many of the wells were affected by cesspools and by the soakage of foul drainage; and the springs, in numerous instances, were intercepted or cut off by excavations in the construction of buildings, sewers, and other works. In 1544, the Corporation of the City of London obtained an Act to enable them to convey water to London from Hampstead Heath, Marylebonne, Hackney and Muswell Hill.  This act recites "that either from the faintness of the springs, or from the dryness of the earth, the accustomed course of the waters coming from the old springs and ancient conduit heads are gone, decayed, diminished, and abated, and daily more and more likely to fail, to the great discomfiture and displeasure of the inhabitants within the city, and suburbs thereof."  Notwithstanding these grave apprehensions, and the great privileges this Act conferred, nearly fifty years elapsed before this object of it was realized.

At the present time the Metropolis is supplied from numerous sources. That civilization which has blocked up the primitive streams and springs has stretched out in different directions to bring this daily necessity in abundance to every nook and corner. The New River Company obtain supplies by Myddleton's Aqueduct, from the New River, near Ware, and from the river Lea, near Hertford. This Company supplies 100,000.houses, including manufactories, with about 240 gallons each, daily. The East London Company have their principal station at Old Ford, near Bow. Their reservoirs are supplied by a canal which conveys the waters of the river Lea from Lea Bridge. This Company supply about 70,000 houses, including manufactories, with an average quantity of about 120 gallons per diem each house. The West Middlesex Company have their works at Hammersmith, on the banks of the Thames, with reservoirs at Barnes. They supply 25,000 houses with an average of 185 gallons a day. The Grand Junction Company at present obtain their supply of water from the Thames at Brentford, which they distribute to about 14,000 houses, at the rate of 350 gallons a day each. The Chelsea Company have their works on the banks of the Thames, at Chelsea. This Company supply 20,000 houses with as average daily quantity of 135 gallons each per diem. The Hampstead Water Works Company formerly depended for a supply upon small springs and collections of water between Highgate and Hampstead. In 1833 this Company constructed a well at the bottom of Hampstead Heath, which did not prove a very successful undertaking, and they are now occupied in the construction of another -- the rills of water supplying the original reservoirs having, from the extension of building, become common sewers, and an attempt to restrict parties from passing foul drainage into them, by an action at law, having failed. The Lambeth Company possess extensive reservoirs at Streatham and Brixton, with a pumping establishment on the Thames, at Lambeth. They supply 22,000 houses with an average of 185 gallons each daily. The Southwark and Vauxhall Company derived their supplies from the river Effra, at Kennington, until the foul drainage rendered it desirable to relinquish this source; their present supply is from the Thames at Battersea-fields. Their works have recently been enlarged, and they supply about 25,000 houses with, on average, 150 gallons of water per day. Of the Kent Water Works, little is known; they obtain their supplies from the river Ravens-bourne, near the Broadway, Deptford. Thus the sources whence water is supplied to the Metropolis are diversified, and some of them extend to considerable distances. Two motor powers-propulsion by steam, and the law of hydraulics, that water finds its own Level, irrespectively of curves and undulations--are sufficient to distribute this element in all situations in which it may be required, whether to the housetop, the manufactory, or the kitchen.

But the exigencies of the present day require that the sources of supply should be again extended, if health, comfort, and the necessities of the suburban populations are to be properly provided for. We must make a new migration in search of purer water, just as our ancestors did when they left the wells and streams of former times for the water-service which we now possess, but which has at length become impure or inadequate. We must either delve deeper, or draw a larger circle. It will be seen that not less than five of the London water companies obtain the principal part of their supplies from the Thames -- the highest point at which water is obtained being near Brentford. When obtained in a state of tolerable purity, towards the last of the ebb tide, the qualities of Thames water are so excellent, that it has always been preferred by mariners for long voyages -- a sure test of its superiority. But in the vicinity of London, various causes, such as the tide-way, the constant turbidity produced by the numerous river steamers, and the immense increase of the London and suburban drainage on the banks of the Thames, are rapidly doing for the river what the extension of building and drainage did for the streamlets and bournes of the ancient City many centuries ago. There is a growing conviction that the waters of the Thames, near London, notwithstanding the improved modes of filtering, are becoming far too impure to be tolerated under a good sanitary code. The Lambeth Company have been the first to mature a noble plan for supplying water to an extensive district, from the River Thames, at a point so high as to be altogether free from the evils of tide-way, the steamers above bridge, and the metropolitan drainage. They propose, at an estimated expense of £123,000, to obtain water from the Thames at Ditton, that being the highest point to which they can ascend with the permission of the conservators of the river, who are bound to see that water is not abstracted from the bed of the river where there would be any danger of impeding the barge and other navigation. This project is, undoubtedly, of great value in itself, but if approved of by the legislature, it would be the signal for the removal of all the other waterworks from Lambeth, Chelsea, Battersea, Hammersmith, etc., further up the river, out of the sphere of the impurities of these places; this would be an incalculable gain to the community in a sanitary point of view, and we cannot imagine that any opposition to such a measure would be permitted to succeed. It is one which alike commends itself to the protection, pr at least the impartiality, of the Sanitary Commission and the Government. It proposes, not only to commence the revolution of the present water-service, but to supply an important district not yet approached by water companies, thus infusing a circulation into a new limb of the metropolis.

The most specious objection to such a commencement of the regeneration of the water supplies of the metropolis, is the argument, often urged, that the Government should take the whole subject under their own direction, and that every new expenditure renders the assumption of such powers by any government more and more difficult.  The centralizing plan applied to such a subject as the water-supply, may or may not be the right one.  There are very strong objections to the discouragement of private enterprise which must be caused by such an extension of the system of centralization.  But the question is this -- Are the Government ready at once to commence their functions as the suppliers of water?  If not, we hold that parliament is bound to pass the best measures which come before it, under the auspices of responsible public companies.  The system of centralization has been advocated with equal zeal for railways; but, in the meantime, where railways have been necessary, they have not been delayed or impeded in order that Government might have hereafter an easier task.   Such mode of proceeding would indeed be an inversion of the order of legislation.  One word more, and for the present we have done.  We have argued this question as we conceive it should alone be argued -- namely, as a purely sanitary question, and without any reference to private interests or rival companies.

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