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Home , City of London

The water supply industry and the

Leslie Tomory

McGill University

EHA 2014

Columbus, OH

1

From 1660 to 1800, a new water industry became established in London. This new industry consisted of a number of supply companies that sold water to consumers through a large network of mains connected directly to houses. The emergence of this new industry in this period predates and overlaps with the period 1760-1830, the years traditionally assigned to the

Industrial Revolution in Britain. Despite its emergence as a new industry at time, as well as the size it eventually achieved, the water industry is hardly mentioned within the historiography of the “leading sectors” of the Industrial Revolution (IR), which are typically parts of the textile, transportation, iron and coal, and chemical industries. The water industry’s emergence as a new sector, however, offers an interesting perspective on some aspects of the IR. This paper explores some of the ways in which London’s water industry in this period can offer fresh insights into sectors of the economy that experienced technological change in the Industrial Revolution. It shows a few of the ways that technological change was important in transforming the industry, as well discussing the important--although not indispensible--role that corporations played.

Overview of London’s water industry

London’s water industry was developed in the 18th century by a number of water companies, most of which had been founded in the 17th century. The most important of these was the New

River company, which had been created in 1616 by Sir Hugh Myddelton, a wealthy London businessman. The New River drew water from the River Lea and springs in to the north of London. The of London had originally won the rights to water from these springs in the early 17th century, but had not acted on them. It then delegated them to Myddelton. The New

2 River, when completed, was an open aqueduct around 42 miles in length, bringing water to reservoirs at , originally outside the city itself. From there, the water entered a number of mains under city streets. The water was distributed directly into houses, or into private courts where a number of dwellings could draw from a common reservoir. The water was low pressure, and supply was intermittent. Typically, water flowed into a basement reservoir two or three times a week for a couple of hours at a time. Servants would then draw water from this reservoir and distribute throughout the house as needed.

For the first century of its existence to around 1710, the New River was a gravity-fed system.

Most of the other water companies, however, used pumping mechanisms. Indeed, the first water company to be established in London was the London Waterworks, and it used a pumping mechanism installed on the medieval bridge to supply houses in the low-lying areas close to the

Thames. The mechanism was driven by a waterwheel. Other companies, such as the Chelsea, also used waterwheels or horse pumps, but towards by the 18th century, steam engine pumps were introduced, first by the Buildings Company situated on the Thames. The New River itself adopted pumping when it constructed higher reservoir after 1710, relying first on a wind- driven pump, before moving to horse, waterwheel, and then steam pumping late in the 18th century with a Boulton & Watt engine.

The importance of the London water industry in the 18th century for the Industrial Revolution stems in part from the scale it acquired, enabled by technological innovations. The New River

Company was particularly noteworthy, since it represented about 75% of the industry in the city from the point of view of customers served. Although there was a period of fairly intense competition among the companies between 1670 and 1710 when many new companies were

3 formed during a joint-stock company boom, the New River became increasingly dominant from

1700. It generated consistent healthy profits for its shareholders (figure 1), while the other companies barely survived. The New River achieved this dominance in part because it did not have to rely entirely on unreliable and intermittent pumping, meaning its supply was more reliable than that of other companies. Waterwheel pumps were at the mercy of the Thames tides, and stopped working altogether when they changed direction. Steam engines, while more constant, were the cause of aggressive complaints by neighbours resentful of the black smoke they belched.

The intensity and scale of the New River’s operations are made evident from a complete list of customers from a list made in 1769. These show that the company supplied about 28,000 customers at that time (figure 2). The metropolis of London had 90,000 houses in total, meaning that 30-40% of houses were connected to the centralized water supply provided by the New

River. The situation in London was in stark contrast with other European . While a few cities, such as Paris or Hamburg, had had pumping mechanism supplying water from the 16th or

17th century, none developed an integrated distribution network like London’s. These other cities typically relied on water bearers hauling water through the streets until the mid 19th century. The pumping mechanism usually only supplied some public fountains, or a few hundred taps. The cost of the water was also fairly low. At around 10-25s per year, the price well beyond what labourers could afford, it was still within the range of consumers with middling income, and hence the pervasiveness of water supply in an increasingly prosperous city.

Business structure and organization

4 Within the context of the business organization in the Industrial Revolution, a remarkable feature of London’s water industry was that it was an infrastructure industry largely deployed by joint- stock companies. Most of London’s water companies, and all the large ones, were joint-stock firms, with individuals holding tradable shares. Moreover, the largest among them were corporations created by royal or parliamentary charter, giving them legal personality, with the ability to enter contract directly. The technological and industrial changes taking place during the

IR were, but contrast, usually concentrated in manufacturing and metallurgical industries, such as textiles, chemicals, and iron. The firms at the centre of these new industries were small, usually with a single owner or partnerships consisting of a few people. Although the capital required to develop and deployed new technologies, such as textile machines, could be considerable, it was nevertheless well within the resources of these small partnerships. Only in a very few cases did firms involved in classical IR industries become large, and even fewer were joint-stock. Large firms certainly existed during the 18th century, but they were concentrated finance, insurance, and mercantile trade, rather than in any of the leading sectors of the IR. Joint-stock firms were increasingly used in from the 1780s onwards. The water companies, by contrast, became joint-stock companies from the 1610s onwards, with most getting this status in the period

1680-1720. The reason they did so is their need to find capital to meet the vast expenditures incurred in building their infrastructure. When the New River Company was first being built, its founder Myddelton very soon found he could not bear the massive cost of building the and pipe network, forcing him to seek investors, including eventually the king. The total cost to build the works from 1609 to 1614 was £18,524 (about £1,800,000 today), and many more expenses were still to come. Its construction required about 1700 labourers. Other smaller companies,

5 which had lower initial capital costs, at first existed as partnerships, but most eventually became joint-stock companies as they sought to build their own competing networks. The

Waterworks was a case in point. When founded by Peter Morris in the 1580, it was his personal business. He could not meet the initial costs of building the company, and was helped by loans from the City of London. Only later when Morris descendants decided to exit the venture did it become an unincorporated joint-stock company. The manifestly large capital requirements of the water industry in the 18th century was evident to Adam Smith, who, when discussing the sorts of economic activity that should be allowed to operated as joint-stock companies because of their

“greater and more general utility” and the capital they required included water companies among the four he identified.

Technological innovation

The expansion of London’s water industry was clearly made possible by technological innovation that spanned most of the 17th and 18th century, albeit mostly in slow incremental steps, with long periods of stagnation. In the Industrial Revolution, technological innovation was largely seen to be especially concentrated in the second half of the eighteenth century, although some historical research has emphasized the deep, and even medieval roots of European technological dynamism. According this view, the Industrial Revolution was not truly a major break from the past, but was rather fed by pan-European streams of technological innovation that coalesced and matured most clearly in Britain, but were present throughout the continent. The history of the water industry very much supports a long term thesis of technological innovation in a couple of ways. Firstly, the technology was not exclusively English, but became increasingly

6 so over time. The non-English roots of London water industry’s origins in the late 16th century is evident from its origins. It was stimulated by new pumping technology introduced from

Germany, and brought to by continental engineers, Peter Morris in particular. The basic model of a pumping mechanism feeding a wooden network of mains supplying taps throughout the city had been implemented in some German cities in the late . Wood pipes were certainly in use from Roman times, but in England lead was the material of choice throughout the Middle Ages into the early modern period. When Morris brought his new waterwheel, he also implanted a more extensive reliance on wood for piping, a change necessary for scale given the cost of lead. The use of wood pipes was also enabled by new wood boring mechanism developed in Germany in the late Middle Ages.

Where a difference between the continental and the English model emerged over time was in scale and intensity of use (figure 3). Whereas the continental water supply networks supplied a couple hundred taps, and usually only public ones, the London model evolved into one where tens of thousands of houses were supplied directly. This transition marks the distinctively

English phase of the technological innovation, and can be seen in changes introduced to facilitate water distribution. For example, the New River Company’s growth in the late 17th century began to strain its ability to distribute water to the many houses spread throughout London that it was serving. Supply grew inadequate, and complaints more frequent. In order to address the problem, the company devised a host of means of controlling and preserving water pressure in its network.

The most important of these was segmenting its network so that customers did not draw water from the principle mains. Rather, the company installed secondary service pipes along these principle mains and connected houses to these instead, thereby preventing excessive water flow

7 from directly draining the mains. The service pipes were separated from the principle mains by valves, which were only opened at restricted times, and limited the effect from excessive water use. Another innovation was the introduction and mandatory installation of ball valve inside all houses. These valves rose with the water level in the receiving reservoir and automatically shut off the flow once the reservoir was filled. Although they could easily be tampered with, they at least prevent water running to waste in houses, a frequent problem since many people simply left their inflow valves open at all times.

By achieving a new level of development in this way, the water industry followed the model of many other IR technologies: from roots in continental European technologies, a new innovation was adopted in Britain, and through incremental innovation became the germ of a new industry.

This therefore represents the second way in which the history of water supply affirms the view of deep roots for technological innovation in the IR, but taking on specifically an English character over time. The process of divergence in the English model of water supply from the continental one was slow and incremental, but was evident by the late 17th century. By that time, the ever increasing numbers of customers being supplied water forced the water companies to confront a series of problems associated with scale. As described above, the New River in particular was having difficulties maintaining an even supply, and from 1690 onwards implemented a series of changes to stabilize its ever expanding networks.

Why did London diverge from its Continental peers in water supply technology? The causes are not immediately evident, but rather being driven by greater technological innovativeness in

Britain, they seem to be rooted in points: demand for water; wealth; and business model. The contrast with a city like Hamburg is instructive. Although Hamburg had a number of pumping

8 mechanisms supply a network of mains for the entire time that London’s water industry was developing, the network there never grew to the same size. The reasons for this began with potential demand: Hamburg was nowhere near the size of London, which was rapidly becoming the largest city in Europe in the 18th century, passing Naples and Paris. Moreover, London was also becoming wealthier, with more of its residents adopting consumerist attitudes as wide networks of overseas trade brought more goods into the city as England’s commerce grew. Urban historians have described changes in English cities the late 17th century as the English urban , when many wealthier people, particularly the landed gentry, began to acquire houses in London in particular. They brought with them an eagerness to consume the goods, amenities, and entertainment that the city had to offer. The influx of wealthy consuming denizens spurred demand for water in the upscale West End where many of them settled. Although the consumer revolution, which some historians have identified as a key motivator of the IR was an 18th century phenomenon, the late 17th century was already witness to changing consumer patterns, particularly of more common household goods. Water was then among these household goods that consumers were more willing to acquire in greater quantities. The consumer revolution which has figured prominently in the historiography of the Industrial Revolution was, therefore, also driving the demand for water, with a key difference in timing. Rather than beginning in the

18th century, demand for water was clearly growing in the 17th.

Conclusions

London’s water supply developed from the late 17th through the 18th century into a large industry consisting of a number of joint-stock companies, the largest of which were corporations.

9 These companies functioned as utilities, providing what was at first a luxury service to the wealthy, but increasingly became a commonplace convenience for a fair portion of London’s population. Within the context of the IR, this new industry offers some interesting features. In terms of timing, the technological innovation within the industry, especially that which allowed it to expand in scale, was evident in the late 17th century, earlier than the IR. In recent years, the causes of the Great Divergence between the West and the rest of the world has received renewed interest in the context of global history. The California school in particular has situated the causes of the divergence in a number of specific historical circumstances of the late 19th century, and eschewed longer terms explanations. The ’s water industry suggests, however, that this industry, and the industrial model of urban utilities, had much deeper roots than 17th century, and was based on many contemporary trends.

10 Figure 1: New River Company Dividend and Share Price!

£500# £18,000#

£450# £16,000#

£400# £14,000#

£350# £12,000#

£300#

£10,000#

Dividend'£250# Dividend'

£8,000#

£200#

£6,000# Share#price# £150# Dividend#

£4,000# £100#

£2,000# £50#

£0# £0# 1630# 1650# 1670# 1690# 1710# 1730# 1750# 1770# 1790# !Figure 2! ! ! ! Number'of'houses'served' ! !70,000!! ! ! ! ! !60,000!! ! ! ! ! !50,000!! ! ! ! ! !40,000!! ! Other! ! Chelsea! ! LBWW! ! !30,000!! New!River! ! ! ! ! !20,000!! ! ! ! ! ! !10,000!! ! ! ! !"!!!! ! 1615! 1627! 1638! 1670! 1680! 1683! 1691! 1708! 1725! 1732! 1739! 1750! 1769! 1775! 1782! 1800! 1810! ! Figure 3: Water usage in London (1770)! !