Parched City (9 page)

On 5
^th
February 1859,
The Morning Post
announced that a highly influential association was being formed around the public drinking water agenda.

A Sobering Mission

That spring, The Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountains Association was inaugurated with a ceremony in the Willis’ Rooms in the heart of political and gentlemanly clubland on St James Street; the prime social centre for Liberal politics and the place where the Liberal Party was founded just months later.
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The Earl of Carlisle took the helm as Chairman and addressed the gathering of Liberal-leaning politicians; Gurney, Cowper and the press, with evident enthusiasm for the project. He was shortly to become the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, so the endorsement of this particular social reforming mission by someone of his status reflected the group’s level of influence. Carlisle pointed out that, despite the vigour of London’s many social reform groups, ‘this was certainly the first meeting that has been held in London in connection with public drinking fountains’.
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Charles Melly attended as an honorary guest. The Chair praised his inspirational work, lamenting London’s slow response to his example. Carlisle then announced with great
gusto that the first metropolitan fountain, funded by Samuel Gurney, would soon be unveiled. It is likely that he was aware of the public scrutiny that would follow the meeting, so he diplomatically explained how the Association’s ambitions might be gradually realised. Parishes could not be assumed to take a proactive lead on the project; however he suggested that larger organisations, such as the City of London Corporation and the Crown’s Woods and Parks might be willing partners.

Temperance was on his agenda but, like Wakefield, he admitted that the fountains might not immediately dispel the proletariat’s fondness for ale, or gin. The Earl of Albermarle was more optimistic. He had incredible hopes that the fountains might ‘check those habits of intemperance which caused nine-tenths of the pauperism, three-fourths of the crime, one half of the disease, one third of the insanity, one-third of the suicide, three-fourths of the general depravity and one-third of the shipwrecks that annually occurred’.
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Returning to practical considerations, Carlisle revealed that the fountain designs would be led by functional concerns: ’…no prudent person would dream of throwing away money unnecessarily upon embellishment and ornament.’
³³
He did concede that an inscription or two might not be considered excessive. This was an important selling point for would-be donors listening in the audience, who may have been wondering how a gift to this organisation might reflect on their social standing.

Lord Ashley took to the podium too. His participation, as one of the architects of the Metropolis Water Supply Act 1852, lent public health gravitas to the occasion. Ashley’s participation reassured donors, and the public, about the intended water supply. His description of the water from existing street pumps as slow poison generated a sense of urgency about why this alternative water source was needed on the street. Underground water could not be trusted. These future fountains would issue water from private company sources (now regulated to a degree),
drawn beyond the reach of the polluted metropolitan environment. John Snow’s findings had not caused a closure of all parish-pumps, and, as we know, London’s underground sewage system was yet to be constructed. Contaminated or not, it is clear that the fountains were not primarily intended for the Association’s own members or prospective donors’ use but for the benefit of those who might be dissuaded on the street from squandering their wages on alcoholic refreshments.

Alongside this patrician moral stance for temperance, a more humane sense of social justice in providing free, safe drinking water was also present. This was apparent in statements, though they were typically overloaded with sentiment, such as this: ‘The streets of London are continually crowded with human beings who amid the heat and dust and excitement, are peculiarly subject to the sensation of thirst…porters toiling under heavy burdens, messengers hastening on their errands, mechanics going to and fro from their work, cabmen, carmen, itinerant vendors of fruit and vegetables, flower girls, and multitudes of others whose occupation lies almost entirely out of doors.’
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These depictions of daily life’s physical strain backed up Melly’s thesis that the labouring class needed water outdoors because, for many of them, that was their primary place of work.

Fountain Fever

Following the rousing speeches and publicity generated during its first meeting, enquiries to the Association’s small administration came flooding in. Just two weeks after the Association’s inaugural meeting, Gurney’s own fountain was due to be unveiled in the wall of St Sepulchre’s Church in the City of London. The location was resonant for him, as it lay opposite Newgate Prison where his Aunt, Elizabeth Fry (née Gurney), had carried out radical penal reform.

On 20
^th
April 1859, the fountain’s ceremonial opening took place. The
Illustrated London News
depicted, with a likely dash of
artistic licence, a raucous crowd surrounding the dignitaries who presided over the blessing.

Drinking-Fountains. Illustrated London News
, Saturday 30th April 1859,
p. 432, Issue 971. City of London, London Metropolitan Archives.

The structure itself was modest, apart from the detail of a scallop shell fanned coquettishly above the waterspout. A wide granite bowl was set into the railings of the church with the inscription ‘The Gift of Sam Gurney M.P.’ and written below, the polite request, to ‘Replace the Cup’. Metal cups were permanently attached to the fountain by chains. This feature was a reminder that germ theory was yet to be discovered.

Though the Association appointed Dr Lankester as its Medical Referee to attest to the quality of the water supply and filtration, the possibility of people passing diseases to each other either orally or via unwashed hands was not considered. Lankester’s letter of support for the Association stated his hope that fountains would displace the need for people to use wells but, as an enthusiastic
microscopist, he advocated the use of filters inside the plumbing to strain off impurities.
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St Sepulchre’s fountain was inscribed ‘Filtered water from the New River Company’. Drawn from its rural Hertfordshire spring, distinguishing this supply from the brew in public wells was a unique selling point of the new fountain.

The Lady Newspaper
announced plans for the forthcoming fountains and, in its view, the positive addition they would make to London by ‘providing an alternative to the public house and the low company found in those establishments’.
³⁶
The publi-cation’s editors approved of Gurney’s association with plans of social progress and reform such as ‘reclamation of the criminal, freedom for the slave, instruction for the ignorant, [and] homes for the outcast’.
³⁶
Observing the opening day’s proceedings, the
Lady’s
reporter claimed that a drinking fountain was an ‘unmis-takably feminine’ device, and therefore fitting that female lips should quaff the first draught.
³⁷

Mrs Wilson, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s daughter, was the one who quaffed. Before she did so, she was assured that fountain trials in other English cities had proved to be safe for health. After Mrs Wilson’s first suspenseful sip, the
Illustrated London News
reported that she it to taste excellent.
³⁸
A final announcement declared that the fountain was for the special use of the working classes and was committed to their care.

After St Sepulchre, the Association pushed to get as many fountains installed as possible in London’s busiest thoroughfares.
³⁹
A slew of adverts were placed in newspapers to generate further support. At £25 for a mural (wall) fountain and £50 for a standard (free-standing) fountain, these price tags needed to be explained before donors reached for their chequebooks (the figures translate approximately into contemporary currency as £1,000 and £2,000 respectively).

Edward Wakefield defended the high cost of the fountains for several critical reasons in
The Times
.
⁴⁰
Medical advisers had
stipulated that despite the overhaul of London’s water supply, additional filtration was needed at the point of consumption. Carbon, in the form of loose animal charcoal, would be fitted inside each fountain. And granite was needed to keep supplies cool. Iron was cheaper, but it conducted heat and would therefore produce tepid water. Wakefield also pointed out that London’s lack of available walls for mural fountains meant more freestanding installations would be inevitable. They simply cost more to manufacture. As the Association intended for these objects to appear across London’s busiest thoroughfares, aesthetic considerations were also paramount to the fountains relationship to existing buildings and street furniture. They needed to be of a high architectural quality. Wakefield reassured prospective donors that all of these stipulations could be compatible with judicious economy. The Association’s architect Robert Keirle, who came up with the design templates, was working in the popular Gothic Revival style. His involvement ensured that a good dose of Christian morality would be encased in the proposed structures. Gender-wise, the fountains were tinged with a male sensibility. Though
The Lady’s Newspaper
had described the fountains as innately feminine, it was common for the objects to be referred to as ‘handsome’ by members of the Association.
⁴¹
Apart from the fleeting figure of Mrs Wilson, its cast was all male. At the outset, the ‘masculine’ standard fountains were rolled out around the city. One anomaly was a Water Lily design for the daughter of the famous British tea and coffee merchant, Thomas Twining who was another high profile member of the group.
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The Art of Persuasion, and Persistence

A major challenge the Association faced was the carved-up management and ownership of London’s public spaces. Bureaucratic barriers came in the form of parish vestry committees, the Corporation of London and the Metropolitan
Board of Works. The fundamental change the latter wrought was bringing together representatives from the City and the vestries to co-operatively work towards improving drainage, paving and lighting in their respective areas. One would think that all plumbing matters would fall under this collective command but, somewhat ludicrously and inconveniently, the vestries remained in charge of decisions about altering any mains supplies or pipes in their parishes. Given that there were fifty-four parishes, communicating with them all and reaching consensus with any, let alone all of them, was some task.

On top of this challenge, engineers from each private water company had to be consulted about every installation. Translating fountains from the drawing board to locations and, finally, functioning objects was complex. The process revealed much about the workings of the Victorian city. Some of the issues were petty and painfully parochial. Concerns ranged from the possibility of the fountains becoming a gathering place for unsavoury characters, to parishioners having their Sunday Best splashed by overflows.
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Certain vestries saw the scheme as an opportunity for generating some cash and charged the Association to use their ground.
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Where there was benevolence, there was also business.

The fountains also fell outside the official state mandate for London’s sanitary overhaul, so members of the Association had to convince officials, probably already harangued by their public duties, time and time again of their value. Unless these individuals were evangelically waving temperance flags, or avowed campaigners for equitable drinking water access, cooperation was unlikely. At least in the Square Mile Gurney’s status as a banker appeared to ease negotiations at least with its management.

In summer 1865, after six years of work, the Association measured its impact during a twenty-four hour survey. Conducted in July, the figures certainly testified to the popular
use of the fountains. At St Sepulchre‘s, 2647 drinkers were recorded; at London Bridge there were more than 3,000 people quaffing that day and in Bishopsgate, 6,666 people were chalked up as they rehydrated.
⁴⁵
Either temperance had been taken to with amazing zeal, or these amenities proved that there had been a gaping chasm in public water sources, at least those deemed to be safe.

Free Water?

The notion of the private, corporate water flowing freely outdoors was novel. At that point, people could still be prosecuted for giving away, or selling domestic water, such was the value of having a safe supply on tap. For the Association, the problem was that the fountain water was not free. Who was going to pay for a continuous, daily supply of water to hundreds of fountains in perpetuity? Individual donors had signed up to purchase a tangible object but to pay for the liquid was a more abstract gift. Representing donors in water was rather more challenging than in stone and possibly less appealing to potential supporters.