The principle had been conceded by Parliament so far as England was concerned—the large cities and even small towns having been authorised to undertake the supply of water; but London, the capital, was denied the power to do so—the duty was given to private companies, and the population of London was left to undergo untold sufferings.
The quality of the water supplied by most of the Water Companies after the intakes had been removed to above Teddington Lock, and the filtration thereof before distribution for domestic use had been made compulsory, was considerably improved.
But the filthy and dangerous character of the receptacles provided in many houses for it undid much of the good which would have come from the improvement in quality.
The description given by one of the Medical Officers of Health was in the main true:—
“There is disease and death in the tanks, wells, and water-butts.”
Thus, in the great primary necessities of the public health—efficient sewerage and drainage, decent houses, good ventilation, pure air, a pure and ample water supply—the general conditions were almost inconceivably bad.
These evil conditions, however, were far from constituting the whole of those under which the people of London suffered.
Over and above them all was one which compelled the attention of the Medical Officers of Health the moment they had entered on their duties—“the gigantic evil,” “the monster evil” of overcrowding. Not the mere crowding of houses together, evil though that was, but the overcrowding of people in those houses, and still worse, the overcrowding of the rooms of those houses by human beings. In every part of the metropolis there was overcrowding; worst in the centre, and the parts nearest the centre of London, but existing in the outer districts where houses still were comparatively few and population small. Centre, East, North, West, South, there was overcrowding, differing only in extent and acuteness of form.
“Soon after I was appointed as Sanitary Adviser to your Board,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Holborn (1856–7), “I found, dwelling in houses which were undrained, waterless, and unventilated, whole hordes of persons who struggled so little in self-defence that they seemed to be indifferent to the sanitary evils by which they were surrounded.
“It is too true that among these classes there were swarms of men and women who had yet to learn that human beings should dwell differently from cattle, swarms to whom personal cleanliness was utterly unknown, swarms by whom delicacy and decency in their social relations were quite unconceived….”