Water supply in Britain: the development of a public service.

Abstract

supply; by no means all communities did so. Not that it was always necessary. Most early dwellings were established near running water; while numbers remained small, supplies provided by Nature proved ample. In most localities in the eighteenth century, and in a few large towns (especially London) earlier, aggregation of human beings began to press upon supplies by requiring more water than natural sources could easily furnish and by polluting water with the refuse which human settlement creates. Growing communities faced this problem sooner or later; few were prepared for it. Parish pumps in the centre of many villages bear testimony to the method by which water-carts and vendors were obviated. Even in the thirteenth century London presented a larger problem, to be tackled by action on a different scale: Conduit, Lambs Conduit and White Conduit Streets are all named after channels conducting water to centres of settlement’. As new concentrations of population grew in the sixteenth century, additional conduits were made. This construction was undertaken by the City Corporation, which, by an Act of 15432, acquired both the right and the duty to provide an adequate water supply. The principle of collective responsibility was first breached in 1581. In that year Peter Morris, a Dutchman or German, obtained a licence to establish a waterwheel under one of the arches of London Bridge for the purpose of pumping water into supply pipes for sale to consumers. The London Bridge Waterworks existed till 18223, but a far more important private water supplier was the New River Company, which in 1613 completed an aqueduct from springs in Hertfordshire to a pond in Clerkenwell1. A few other companies were incorporated in eighteenth-century London, none on the scale of the New River Company; though all worked for profit, there was as yet no competition, each company being allocated an exclusive area. This changed in the early nineteenth century. Between 1806 and 1811 Parliament incorporated the West Middlesex, East London and Grand Junction Waterworks Companies in direct competition with the existing suppliers north of the River, namely, the New River and Chelsea Waterworks Companies. In 1834 the Southwark Waterworks Company was formed. By such &dquo; healthy competition,&dquo; Parliament hoped to benefit the consumer. The result was not quite what had been expected. Competition certainly ensued, but it is difficult to determine whose health benefited. Five companies in North London and four in South London established separate reservoirs and pumping works, tore up pavements and roads in order to lay and repair competing sets of mains and supply pipes, canvassed each other’s consumers and promised recklessly whatever would secure new customers. The main characteristic of public utilities is the heavy initial capital outlay, compared to running costs: once the apparatus of water supply and distribution had been laid down, companies were prepared to go to any length to maintain it in operation. Healthy competition quickly turned into cut-throat competition, and a few years of it showed the companies where their real advantage lay. By agreement they divided the town, each supplier withdrawing completely from districts allocated to other com-