Review of the report by the General Board of Health on the supply of water to the metropolis : contained in a report to the directors of the London (Watford) Spring Water Company / by Samuel Collett Homersham.

  • Homersham, Samuel Collett.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Review of the report by the General Board of Health on the supply of water to the metropolis : contained in a report to the directors of the London (Watford) Spring Water Company / by Samuel Collett Homersham. 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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    fore, to find in a Report making so important a proposal, the re- sult of the most circumspect inquiry, and a cautious but a full and fair statement of the whole truth, so far as it is known, or can be ascertained by the Board. The Board represent the hardness of the Thames as of 16 degrees, that is to say, of the same hardness as would be produced by dis- solving 16 grains of chalk in a gallon of pure distilled water; and they justly represent the New River, and the other sources of supply that they recommend to be abandoned or rejected, as not materially different in hardness from the Thames. I wish I was able to accept this statement of the Board, which is the main foundation of their recommendation to abandon the present sources of supply, and to buy up the existing works, as an unvarnished and incontrovertible statement; but it is my unpleasant duty to show you that this statement is exaggerated, and that, even when stript of its exaggeration, it presents but a part of the whole truth. In the first place the Thames is very seldom so hard as 16 degrees. Instead of stating the average hardness of the river, the Board have been pleased to give almost the highest degree of hardness that ever occurs. The Board should have stated that it is not unusual to find that the water in the supply-pipes of the Companies is one-third less hard than what the Board have repre- sented as the hardness of the Thames. Now it would not be fair to represent this lower degree of hardness as the customary hardness of the water supplied to the consumers, because this would be repre- senting the water not at the average hardness, but near its lowest hardness; but neither, on the other hand, is it fair dealing in the Board to represent the highest degree of hardness as the average hardness; where this very quality of hardness has been made by them the basis of a proposal to abandon all the existing water- works of the greatest metropolis in Europe, and to make a purchase, at the expense of confiding ratepayers, of property now at the artificial value of six millions and a half sterling. All the hardness of the Thames and the kindred waters in ques- tion, except about one or two degrees, is due to the presence of chalk (held in solution in the form of bicarbonate of lime). Now, as already explained, chalk thus held in solution is mostly de- posited by boiling. This is a most important peculiarity of a chalk water. Lime held in solution in any other manner could not be