Page:On the Pollution of the Rivers of the Kingdom.djvu/31

 The Commissioners on the pollution of rivers in their 1st Report, 1866 (the Thames), state:—

"That throughout the whole course of the river from Cricklade to the point where the Metropolitan sewage commences, fouling of the water by sewage from cities, towns, villages, and single houses, generally prevails. The refuse from paper mills, tanneries, &c., passes into the stream. There is no form of scavenging practised for the surface water of the Thames, but carcases of animals float down the stream until wasted by corruption. The river water receives unchecked the whole of the pollution, solid and fluid, of the district; and this same water, after it has been so polluted, is abstracted, sand-filtered, and pumped into the Metropolis for domestic uses."

Having described in much detail, pages 15 to 17, the enormous pollution of the Upper Thames by the sewage of Oxford, Reading, Windsor, Eton, Richmond, and Kingston, &c., &c., the report proceeds, page 17, thus:—

"The river basin at Hampton (the pumping station of the water companies) comprises an area of about 3,676 square miles, and a population in 1861 of nearly 900,000 persons. After a full allowance for retention in cesspools, and for villages, &c., removed from the banks of the river and its tributaries, there is no doubt that the number of persons, whose sewage daily finds its way into the water from which London draws its supply, amounts to hundreds of thousands, and this number is destined greatly to increase by the growth of population, and by the development of the sewerage system now only in very partial operation."

Page 18.—Sir B. Brodie's evidence is conclusive, that there is no sufficient guarantee for its (the Thames water) arriving at Hampton purged of injurious taint. The London drinker of it may be drinking with it some remnant of the filth of Oxford.

"It is the general opinion of medical men, that what causes the presence of organic matter in water to be poisonous, is not its quantity but quality, and this quality cannot as yet be detected by microscopic or chemical analysis, and is indeed known only by its occasionally noxious effects. The result seems to be,