Horizontal wells : a new application of geological principles to effect the solution of the problem of supplying London with pure water / by J. Lucas.

  • Lucas, J.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Horizontal wells : a new application of geological principles to effect the solution of the problem of supplying London with pure water / by J. Lucas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1] service provision of the new Water Act would have at least the effect of making every fire-plug represent an immediate supply of wrater: but although this Act wras supposed to come into force on the 21st of April last, I regret to have to mention that I am unable to point out as much as one instance in which the work of the Fire Brigade has been affected by it, and that in fact, as far as our business is con- cerned, the Act remains still, at the end of more than eight months, wholly inoperative.’ At a meeting of the Whitechapel District Board of Works, it was resolved unanimously that it would be oppressive to require compliance with the regulations authorized by the Board of Trade in respect to fittings providing for a constant supply.1 A similar resolution was passed at the Mile End Old Town and the St. George’s-in-the-East Vestries. This mode of arrangement for a constant supply, though a matter of detail, points to a w~ant of regard for the public, and a selfishness on the part of the Companies much to be regretted. Dr. Frankland, in the Public Health Beport in the Times of January 2nd, 1873, states that ‘ the waters of the Thames and Lea, even after filtration, are unsuitable for consumers’ use.’ Mr. James Odams points out the fact that the manure of market gardens, sewage farms, phosphate sewage works, is sent into the Lea ; and that, as no provision had been made for flood-waters by the sanitary engineers employed upon the river, the result is, ‘ That the vast population at the East End is condemned to drink these very wraters, though charged with an amount of sewage unequalled before the regulations were enforced.’1 It appears that this state of things must recur every time there is a flood. In the Fall Mall Gazette of January 23rd, 1873, there appears the following article. After explaining that the Lambeth Vestry con- sidered the regulations in respect to constant supply as ‘ oppressive,’ ‘ vexatious and conflicting,’ the Pall Mall adds, ‘ Judging, however, from the last Beport of the Medical Officer of Health for this district, it is perhaps as well that the supply is at present only intermittent: A number of cases of typhus fever have occurred, and, on analysis of the water, the medical officer reports it as ‘ unfit for domestic use, unless thoroughly filtered.’ The Shoreditch Vestry have condemned the regulations as unneces- 1