Sea-side water : an examination into the character of the water supply at the watering-places of England and Wales : abstracted from a series of reports prepared for and published in The Sanitary Record during 1877-8 / by G.W. Wigner.

  • Wigner, George William, 1842-1884.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sea-side water : an examination into the character of the water supply at the watering-places of England and Wales : abstracted from a series of reports prepared for and published in The Sanitary Record during 1877-8 / by G.W. Wigner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    water, it is quite safe to say that in every one of these cases, if th© impurities derived from accidental or 'preventable contamination were doubled, the waters would still be well within the limits of first-class waters, while all of them are purer than the Kent Water Company’s supply to London. These and a few others, therefore, form the upper division of the first class. On the other hand, taking the maximum of the valuation scale, I am of opinion that in most cases, unless special circumstances which may be brought to light modify the view of the particular case in question, a value of 100 should be looked upon as absolutely prohibitory, and as a proof that the water is utterly unfit for any domestic use. I pass now to an epitome of the results obtained in this Inquiry, viewed from what I may call a national rather than a local point of view. Out of the 107 places reported upon, 53 have a first-class supply, 34 have a second-class supply, and 5 have a third-class supply, while 15 places are supplied by wells of which unfortunately many (I may say most) are bad, and out of the 107 places 16 have wells in addition to the public supply, and in some of these cases also the wells are very bad. At the first glance there is a point of great interest evident in the relation between the residential population and the visiting population, of the places supplied with pure water and those supplied with water of a less degree of purity. The population of the 53 places which are included in the first-class table is somewhere about 450,000, and the number of visitors during the whole season may be estimated at 1,300,000—that is, the visitors are in the proportion of about 290 to every 100 of the residential population. The population of the 34 places which are comprised in the second-class table is 260,000, and I estimate the total number of visitors at 360,000; that is, where the water is less pure than it is in the former places, the proportion of visitors is 135 to every 100 of population. The population of the five places which rank as third class is 60,000, but the number of visitors has fallen still lower in proportion, being estimated at about 40,000, or 67 to every 100 of population. With regard to the towns supplied by wells only, the population is estimated at 40,000,and the visitors at 40,000 also. It would not, however, be wise to attempt to subdivide these wells into classes, because the number of places which have first and second-class well supplies is so small that it would be dangerous to draw any inference from them except that, viewing the question in a general light, well water may usually be considered unfit to drink until it has been analysed and found pure. Therefore, leaving out of the question those towns which are supplied by wells alone, and considering only those which have public water supplies, we have a clear
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