156
THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
but one also which the most enlightened critic of the present times
cannot condemn.
To choose the springs of wells capable of supplying distant
London, and then to bring the stream uncontaminated to the town,
was even a greater triumph of sanitation than of engineering.
To carry the water all the way in culverts or pipes would
probably now be considered a preferable arrangement ; but it is by
no means certain that such a method of conveyance gives a water
really purer and softer than that conveyed by an open stream,
especially when the air is free from smoke, as it was in Hugh
Myddelton's time. The pity is that so perfect a supply as that of the
river in his days is so insufficient for the needs of the vast population
that has grown up since—a need the vaster inasmuch as we now con-
sider no water fit to flush a drain that is not fit to go down our own
throats. Are we quite sure that this fastidiousness is progress in the
right direction in a matter of such vast importance to the future of
London ?
The water supply drawn by the East London Water Company
from the Lea Valley commenced under very different conditions
from those dealt with by Sir Hugh Myddelton. The intro-
duction of steam pumping machinery enabled the engineers
when the Company was founded to raise the water to the
required level of the reservoir on the top of the mound that
used to be so familiar an object at Old Ford from the river
below. I have a letter from my great-grandfather to my grandfather
describing the pumps then being erected as a triumph of engineer-
ing. It is difficult to realise that the Lea then, even so far down as
Old Ford, was a beautifully pure stream, far purer than the water
supply of most towns at that time. The inhabitants were few and
the drainage nil for a very long period; now, however, the increasing
pollution of the stream and increasing demands for purity in water
supply have necessitated separate channels for the Company's water
far above the pumping station at Lea Bridge. Those members of
the Club who joined in our Lea excursion in June last had an
opportunity of inspecting not only the comprehensive arrangements
for sand filtration of the river water, the results of which are to be
seen in the reports of the water examiners, but also some of the
great chalk-wells which increase to no small extent the resources
of the Company. No one who was present on that excursion will
forget the greatly-added interest derived from the explanations of