“I believe the great sanitary improvements effected in the parish in providing proper drainage, abolishing many miles of open stinking ditches, and the removal of other nuisances, rendered an outbreak of cholera, such as experienced in former years, very improbable…. Moreover, by the employment of sanitary arrangements for treating the sick, Lambeth and other parts of the metropolis were saved from the ravages of the pestilence experienced on former occasions.”
That the epidemic had been as disastrous as it was, was, however, attributed to “an illegal and most culpable act of the East London Water Company. In contravention of the 4th Section of the Metropolis Water Act of 1852 that company distributed for public use a water (and a most improper water) which had not passed through its filter beds; and strong evidence was adduced to show that the outbreak was occasioned by this illegal and most culpable act.”
One result of this epidemic was to demonstrate, at the cost of thousands of lives, that the system of private water companies supplying the community with this necessity of life was absolutely opposed to the interests of the community.
Dr. Simon, in summing up his report (1869) on the water supply to the metropolis, wrote:—
“I have been anxious to show what enormous risks to the public are implied in any slovenly administration of water supplies: yet as regards the London supply, what imperfect obedience to the law, and in some cases what flagrant and systematic disobedience was exhibited (at the time of the cholera outbreak in East London in 1866); and above all what criminal indifference to the public safety was illustrated by the proceedings of the Southwark and Vauxhall Company.”
As regarded this latter company:—
“Not only had there been the long-standing gross inefficiency of the apparatus of subsidence and filtration, but the administrators of the supply had from time to time dispensed to a great extent with even a pretence of filtration, and during some time had, worst of all, either negligently or wilfully distributed as part of their supply the interdicted tidal water of Battersea Beach.
“It seems to me that the public is hitherto very imperfectly protected against certain extreme dangers which the malfeasance of a water company may suddenly bring upon great masses of population. Its colossal power of life and death is something for which till recently there has been no precedent in the history of the world; and such a power, in whatever hands it is vested, ought most sedulously to be guarded against abuse.”
Cholera was once more a blessing in disguise, though it seems hard that the sacrifice of thousands of lives should have been required to move Government and Parliament to fresh measures for the protection of the people from it and the other deadly diseases which unceasingly worked such deadly havoc among them. But the proof given by it was so overwhelming and decisive as to the insufficiency of the existing sanitary law, and the inefficiency of the local authorities, that Parliament felt forced to take action. The measures taken were of such increased comprehensiveness and stringency, that the passing of the Sanitary Act of 1866[107] marked another great step in the sanitary evolution of London.