[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St James's, Westminster].

  • St. James, Westminster (London, England). Parish. Vestry.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St James's, Westminster]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: City of London, London Metropolitan Archives

    51/67 (page 52)
    52 the water as supplied from the companies is perfectly free from injurious contaminations, and any impurity must arise from the impurity of pipes, cisterns, or other reservoirs in which it may be kept. The wells in this Parish are gradually being abandoned, as the longer they stand the more liable they are to impurities from the leakage of drains through rat-holes and the percolation of street gutters and cesspools. There are now but seven remaining in the whole parish, and these I constantly examine, for the purpose of pre venting their use should any dangerous impurity arise. I have from time to time during the past year presented you with analyses of these waters. Some of them were carefully analysed by the late Dr. R. D. Thomson, in the laboratory of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Marylebone. The almost universal result of these examinations has been to shew that these waters present a greater amount of impurity than that supplied by the New River and Thames Water Companies. The few pumps remaining in London are almost entirely neglected for drinking purposes in favour of the fountains, which have been so generally erected in London by the Drinking Fountains Association. I would remind the Vestry that whilst the Parish of St. James's, Westminster, offers some of the finest sites for free drinking fountains in London, that there are fewer public fountains in its streets than in any parish in London.