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WATER-SUPPLY.
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 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
standcock; 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