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II. I am sure that I do not exaggerate the sanitary importance of water, when I affirm that its unrestricted supply is the first essential of decency, of comfort, and of health; that no civilization of the poorer classes can exist without it; and that any limitation to its use in the metropolis is a barrier, which must maintain thousands in a state of the most unwholesome filth and degradation.

In the City of London the supply of water is but a fraction of what it should be. Thousands of the population have no supply of it to the houses where they dwell. For their possession of this first necessary of social life, such persons wholly depend on their power of attending at some fixed hour of the day, pail in hand, beside the nearest stand-cock; where, with their neighbours, they wait their turn—sometimes not without a struggle, during the tedious dribbling of a single small pipe. Sometimes there is a partial improvement on this plan; a group of houses will have a butt or cistern for the common use of some scores of inmates, who thus are saved the necessity of waiting at a standcock, but who still remain most insufficiently supplied with water. Next in the scale of improvement we find water-pipes laid on to the houses; but the water is turned on only for a few hours in the week, so that all who care to be adequately supplied with it must be provided with very spacious receptacles. Receptacles are sometimes provided: and in these, which are often of the most objectionable description, water is retained for the purposes of diet and washing, during a period which varies from twenty-four to seventy-two hours. One of the most important purposes of a water-supply seems almost wholly abandoned—that, namely, of having a large quantity daily devoted to cleanse and clear the house-drains and sewers; and in many cases where a waste-pipe has been conducted from the water-butt to the privy, the arrangement is one which gives to the drainage little advantage of water, while it communicates to the water a well-marked flavour of drainage.

I consider the system of intermittent water-supply to be radically bad; not only because it is a system of stint in what ought to be lavishly bestowed, but also because of the necessity which it creates that large and extensive receptacles should be provided, and because of the liability to contamination incurred by water which has to be retained often during a considerable period. In inspecting the courts and alleys of the City, one constantly sees butts, for the reception of water, either public, or in the open yards of the houses, or sometimes in their cellars; and these butts, dirty, mouldering, and coverless; receiving soot and all other impurities from the air; absorbing stench from the adjacent cesspool; inviting filth from insects, vermin, sparrows, cats, and children; their contents often augmented through a rain water-pipe by the washings of the roof, and every hour becoming fustier and more offensive. Nothing can be less like what water should be than the fluid obtained under such circumstances; and one hardly knows whether this arrangement can be considered preferable to the precarious chance of scuffling or dawdling at a standcock. It may be doubted, too, whether, even in a far better class of houses, the tenants’ water-supply can be pronounced good. The cisternage is better, and all arrangements connected with it are generally such as to protect it from the grosser impurities which defile the water-butts of the poor; but the long retention of water in leaden cisterns impairs its fitness for drinking; and the quantity which any moderate cistern will contain is very generally insufficient for the legitimate requirements of the house during the intervals of supply. Every one who is personally familiar with the working of this system of intermittent supply, can testify to its inconvenience; and though its evils press with immeasurably greater severity on the poor than on the rich, yet the latter are by no means without experience on the subject.

The following are the chief conditions in respect of water supply, which peremptorily require to be fulfilled:—

1. That every house should be separately supplied with water, and that where the house is a lodging-house, or where the several floors are let as separate tenements, the supply of water should extend to each inhabited floor.

2. That every privy should have a supply of water, applicable as often as it may be required, and sufficient in volume to effect, at each application, a thorough flushing and purification of the discharge-pipe of the privy.

3. That in every court, at the point remotest from the sewer-grating, there should be a standcock for the cleansing of the court; and

4. That at all these points there should always and uninterruptedly be a sufficiency of water to fulfil all reasonable requirements of the population.

Now, if my statements are accurate with regard to the imperfect manner in which thousands participate in the distribution of water, even for their personal necessities; if my statements are again accurate with respect to house-drainage, and to the immense increase of water distribution which must accompany any improvement in this respect—and I am quite prepared, if necessary, to adduce ample evidence on these subjects; if, again, it be considered that the appreciation of water by the multitude, who have so long suffered from lack of it, will lead to a vast augmentation of its domestic use; then, I apprehend, it cannot be doubted that the subject of water-supply to the City is one that requires now to be looked at almost as though it were to-day broached for the first time.

Those important conditions, which I just enumerated as urgently requiring fulfilment, may certainly be accomplished, so far as mechanical construction is concerned, in more than one way. It may be possible, no doubt, in further compliance with the principle of intermittent supply, to furnish every tenement in the City with a cistern of proper dimensions, and with its usual appurtenances of ballcock, waste-pipe, &c.; but this, I need hardly say, would be a process involving a vast expenditure of money, and hardly to be recommended on the mere ground of conformity with what has hitherto been done in the matter. It may be possible, on the other hand, to convert the whole water-supply of the City into a system of uninterrupted supply, and to construct all new works in conformity with this system.

I beg to suggest that the choice between these alternatives is one of immense and very urgent importance to the sanitary welfare of the City; and I would earnestly commend it to the best consideration of your Hon. Court.

The system of a constant supply is now no longer a novelty. In Philadelphia, in New York, in Nottingham, in Preston, in Glasgow, in Newcastle, in Bristol, and in various other places, this system has been adopted; its practicability and its advantages have been amply demonstrated.[18] Five years ago, when evidence on the subject was given before the House of Commons, it appeared that in the city and suburbs of Philadelphia 25,816 houses were supplied at an average rate of five dollars per house; that in Preston more than 5,000 houses were supplied continually at high-pressure, and that the company was increasing its tenants at the rate of 400 annually; that in Nottingham about 8,000 houses, containing a population of 35,000 persons, were supplied in the same manner; and in respect of many other towns, public experience has been equally extensive and satisfactory. About a month ago, the Sanitary Committee of the last-mentioned town published what I may call a report of congratulation on their freedom from cholera, which had visited the town with great severity in 1832. They detail the measures by which Nottingham has been rendered a healthy town, and the first item in that enumeration stands thus:—‘An unlimited supply of wholesome filtered water, forced, by day and night, at high pressure, through all the streets to the tops of almost all the houses, at a cost, for the dwellings of the poor, of about five shillings per week.’