"Mr. Joseph Quick's Testimony"

(1844)

Joseph Quick, an engineer at the Southwark Water Company, gave extensive testimony before the Health of Towns Commission, the common name given to the Parliamentary Committee for Inquiring into the State of Large Towns and Populous Places. In the First Report, volume 2, issued in 1844, Quick's testimony extends from pp. 114-36. One may learn a great deal about the provision of what passed for potable water to Greater London residents who resided in the districts south of the Thames. Commissioners asked Quick many questions about living conditions and sewage/drainage, as well as water supply.

On pp. 133-34, Quick describes the competition between two different companies, sometimes among three, in some areas south of the Thames. This is the testimony Snow may have had in mind when he wrote that "I had learnt from the evidence of Mr. Quick in the Health of Towns Reports, that the division of the houses, between the Lambeth Company on the one hand, and the Southwark and Vauxhall Company on the other, was not such as obtains in the north districts of London" (October 1856, 241).]