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The London water supply industry and the Industrial Revolution
Leslie Tomory
McGill University
EHA 2014
Columbus, OHPreliminary draft. Please do not cite without contacting author.
Abstract
This paper explores some of the ways in which the history of London’s water supply
industry in the eighteenth century has relevance for the history of the Industrial
Revolution. Established around 1600, private companies were supplying drinking water
directly to tens of thousands of houses by 1700 and continued to grow thereafter. This
water supply was anomalous as compared to other cities in Europe which were much
smaller. The industry developed in Britain in part due London’s status as a commercial
hub and the existence of a large and wealthy market for water. Joint-stock fnancing was
also important for water companies. Finally, this history shows the existence of
technological inventiveness outside the traditional leading sectors of the Industrial
Revolution.
1
1. Introduction
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, mostly for domestic
consumption, 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). These sectors are typically parts of the textile,
transportation, iron and coal, and chemical industries.1 The water industry’s emergence as
a new sector, however, offers an interesting perspective on some aspects of the IR. This
paper how London’s water industry in this period experienced important technological
change that sustained the industry’s growth. In addition, the role of joint-stock fnancing
and incorporation is explored. These two themes, technological changes and business
organization, are also situated within the broader historiography of the Industrial
Revolution. It is argued that although joint-stock fnancing was crucial, incorporation
itself, while common, was not indispensible. In regard to technology, the water industry
shows the pan-European roots of technical change in the IR, while confrming the
divergence of England from the Continent over time. The presence of a large and wealthy
consumer market in London was very important in promoting the expansion in scale that
motivated technological change.
2. Overview of London’s water industry
London’s water industry in the 17th and 18th centuries consisted of a number of private
water companies. Before they arrived on the scene, London's water supply included the
pumps and wells that existed in European cities well into the nineteenth century, as well
as small, low pressure, gravity fow aqueducts that drew water from springs, lakes and
rivers. These stone and lead aqueducts typically brought the water to cisterns and public
fountains, as well as providing supply to some privileged buildings, such as palaces or
baths. Medieval aqueducts were usually erected and maintained by local institutions such
as the town corporation, or in some cases monasteries. The situation in London before the
advent of private water companies around the turn of the seventeenth century was typical
in this regard. The city, however, was becoming increasingly thirsty. It was growing
rapidly in the late sixteenth century, with its population increasing from around 120,000
in 1550 to 200,000 in 1600, before reaching 500,000 by 1700. The local authorities in
1� Landes, 2003. Mokyr, 2009.
2
London sought new supplies of water to meet this demand, particularly as many of the
smaller rivers, such as the Fleet, were becoming too polluted and in a number of cases
had been covered over. In the years before 1600, the City of London (the city corporation
governing the relatively small area of the medieval city north of the Thames) gained new
rights from the sovereign and Parliament to draw water from nearby sources, such as
from Hampstead in 1543 and the River Lea in 1570.
Technological change also offered possibilities for increased water supply. The late
sixteenth century was a time of growing interest in hydraulic engineering, with, for
example, the reconstruction of some of Rome’s ancient aqueducts. Another innovation
was the use of pumps instead of just gravity for water feeds, beginning frst in Germany,
and then spreading to other cities around 1600. These new forms of hydraulic engineering
came to London in 1582 with a German or Dutch immigrant named Peter Morris, who
proposed building a waterwheel driven mechanism to pump water from the Thames
(fgure 1). The City Corporation gave Morris a lease on the frst two arches of London
Bridge for 10 shillings per year. London Bridge, dating from the thirteenth century, was
at the time the only one crossing the Thames. The establishment of the London Bridge
Waterworks also gave an impulse to the model of direct domestic connections, an
important feature of modern networks. Originally, Morris supplied public fountains, as
the medieval conduits did, but he also began to supply individual buildings. Before
Morris’s arrival, individuals petitioned the City of London to be allowed direct
connections to their houses, but these were relatively few, were not always allowed, and
were cleared away in times of scarcity. With the arrival of water companies, the dynamic
shifted, and they sought to distribute water more widely, driving the extension of
London’s water network over the coming decades, albeit haltingly.2
2� On the history of water supply, particularly in London, see among others Tynan, 2002. Magnusson, 2001. Dickinson, 1954. Robins, 1946. Hansen, 2007. Jenner, 2000. Ward, 2003.
3
Figure 1. The London Bridge Waterworks. H. Beighton. 1731.
The most important of the new water companies was the New River Company, which
was created in 1616 by Sir Hugh Myddelton, a wealthy London businessman. The New
River drew water from the River Lea and springs in Hertfordshire to the north of London.
The City 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
River, when completed, was an open aqueduct around 42 miles in length, bringing water
to reservoirs at Islington, originally outside the city itself (fgure 2). 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
fowed 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.
4
Figure 2. The New River Head. W. Hollar, 1664.
For the frst century of its existence to around 1710, the New River was a gravity-fed
system. Most of the other water companies, however, followed the London Bridge
Waterworks in using pumping mechanisms, with which they experimented over time.
Some companies, such as the Chelsea established in 1722, used tidal waterwheels or
horse pumps. In the early 18th century, steam engine pumps were introduced, frst by the
York Buildings Company situated on the Thames. The New River itself adopted pumping
when it constructed higher reservoir after 1710, relying frst on a wind-driven pump,
before moving to horse, waterwheel, and then steam pumping late in the 18th century
with a Boulton & Watt steam engine.
The London water industry in the 18th century is notable for the scale it acquired, and it
was this large scale that fnanced the industries expansion, and prompted experiments in
technological innovation. In terms of size, the New River Company was pre-eminent,
representing 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 formed during a joint-stock
boom, the New River became increasingly dominant from 1700. It generated consistently
healthy profts for its shareholders (fgure 3). It grew especially after the Great Fire of
5
London in 1666 when much of the city was rebuilt, presenting an opportunity for the
company to take on many new customers. The results of the New River’s growth became
evident in its dividends. From around £33 per share in 1640, they reached £64 in 1665,
the year before the fre. By 1670 it was at £70, £145 in 1680, and £222 in 1690. The rapid
growth, however, was too fast for the company’s own good and it proved unable to keep
up with the demand for water from all the new customers it was taking on. In 1682, John
Aubrey recorded that “London is growne so populous and big that the new river of
Middleton can serve the pipes to private houses but twice a weeke”.3 Competition from
new companies also slowed its proft growth until after 1710, when it expanded it
reservoir capacity, and introduced various technological changes, described below. The
company was able to stabilize its situation by 1730, providing more regular supply. From
that point, dividends increased regularly over the rest of the century, and especially after
1770.
Figure 3: New River Company dividends and share price
In contrast with the New River, the other London water companies experienced more
diffculties, and were less proftable. The London Bridge Company survived and paid
3� Aubrey, 1898
6
dividends for much of its history. It was, however, under constant pressure from direct
competition with the New River in its entire supply zone. Although it retained a frm
customer base around London Bridge, was not able to raise prices for fear of losing them.
As discussed below, this competition depressed water prices in that area. The Chelsea
company had the good fortune of being shielded from direct competition with the New
River and other companies in large parts of its supply zone because it was situated farther
up the Thames. Although it struggled for many years before becoming suffciently
proftable to pay dividends to its shareholder, it began to do so in 1737, and they were
paid consistently throughout the rest of the century, albeit with relatively increase (fgure
4).
Figure 4. Approximate zones of supply around 1770.
The New River achieved its dominance in large part because it did not have to depend
entirely on unreliable and intermittent pumping, meaning its supply was more consistent
than that of other companies. The waterwheel pumps used by the London Bridge
Waterworks were at the mercy of the Thames tides, and stopped working altogether twice
per day at the lowest points in the tidal cycle. Steam engines were also diffcult and
expensive to run, requiring constant care from worker and a ready supply of coal. They
were the cause of aggressive complaints from neighbours resentful of the black smoke
they belched. Horse engines, which were occasionally used, proved to be simply too
expensive to function on a large scale, and most were abandoned, or were used as
secondary pumps.
7
3. Business structure and organization
From the point of view of business organization, one of the salient features of the London
water industry is that almost all the companies operating within it were joint-stock
companies. Moreover, most of the largest among them were corporations created by royal
or parliamentary charter, giving them legal personality, with the ability to enter contracts
and hold property in their own names. They may also have had limited liability, although
whether corporations enjoyed at this privilege at this time has been a point of
disagreement among historians.4 Within the context of the business organization in the
Industrial Revolution, the water industry stands in contrast to the sectors that have
traditionally been identifed as leading in technological and industrial changes, such as
manufacturing and metallurgical industries, textiles, chemicals, and iron. Historians have
usually argued that the frms at the centre of these industries were small, usually with a
single owner or partnerships consisting of a few people.5 They fnanced their growth
largely from capital generated through internal channels. Although it could be quite
expensive to develop and deployed new technologies, such as textile machines, the
capital needed was nevertheless well within the resources of these small partnerships.
Only in a very few cases did frms involved in classic IR industries become large, and
even fewer were joint-stock. Large joint-stock frms certainly existed during the 18th
century, but they were concentrated in the fnance, insurance, and mercantile trade, rather
than in any of the leading sectors of the IR. The joint-stock form was also increasingly
used in canals, especially from the 1780s onwards. The water companies, however,
became joint-stock companies from the 1610s onwards, with most getting this status in
the period 1680 –1720. The reason they did so was their need to fnd capital to meet the
vast expenditures incurred in building their infrastructure.
The frst water company, the London Bridge Waterworks, was originally the personal
business of its founder, Peter Morris. After his death around 1600, the company seems to
have become a partnership between Morris’ family and a friend, George Digby. It
continued in this form with some modifcations until around 1700 when a major
reorganization took place. Under pressure from the New River Company, the Morris
family was no longer inclined or perhaps capable of continuing in the business in its
current form. It entered into what was a complex sale and expansion that resulted in the
company leasing another arch of London Bridge from the City Corporation to add more
4� Freeman et al, 2012. Harris, 2000.
5� Wilson, 2006. Hudson, 1992. Deane, 1979.
8
pumping capacity through new waterwheels. In addition, it was reorganized into an
unincorporated joint-stock company with 500 shares, a form it continued to hold until it
was fnally purchased by the New River Company in 1822. The reorganization into a
joint-stock company was an important step because it allowed the London Bridge
Waterworks to gain access to capital it needed to expand. The new shareholders invested
thousands of pounds rebuilding all the existing waterwheels, adding new ones, and
expanding the company’s pipe network. From occupying two small arches in the bridge,
the company had waterwheels in six arches by 1767, and was supplying south of the
Thames as well.
As described above, the New River Company was the largest among London companies.
It was frst formed in the earliest era of the corporation, which was dominated by
mercantile companies, most famously the East India Company. The New River became a
corporation by a two-step process. At frst, the company’s founder, Hugh Myddelton,
tried to build the infrastructure relying largely on his own funds and that of a few
partners. Building the aqueduct through the countryside north of London proved to be
costly, however. There were other troubles as well, with signifcant opposition emerging
from landowners losing land to the project. Facing these diffculties, Myddelton and his
fellow proprietors decided they could not prevail alone, and recruited the king James I
himself to become involved with the company as an investor in an agreement formalized
in May 1612. Myddelton and his ‘adventurers’, as the shareholders were known, kept half
the shares, and the king got the other half, agreeing to pay half of all costs. The
agreement placed the full weight of the king’s authority behind the venture, helpful in
dealing with the reluctant landowners and other opponents. After James I became a
proprietor, work on the channel progressed rapidly, fnishing in September 1613. Its
construction required about 1700 labourers, and total construction costs from 1609 to
1614 ran to £18,524 (about £1,800,000 today), with many more expenses still to come.
The second step towards incorporation came in 1619. James had been unsatisfed with the
profts that company was generating and decided to grant the New River a charter of
incorporation because “it had not hitherto yeilded such proftt as was hoped for partly by
reason of the expences dailie arisinge farr greater and heavier than by the said
adventurers was expected and partly for want of power in them to settle the carriage”.
This new corporation was unique among the charter companies of the period because of
the crown’s direct ownership stake in the company. This stake did last long after the
incorporation. Charles I succeeded his father and sold his shares in 1630, also unhappy
with the meager profts the company produced. The New River remained a corporation
for its entire existence into the 20th century. It retained it original structure defned in its
9
charter during this entire time, with 72 shares. Unlike the London Bridge Waterworks, it
did not require outside investment after its early years. The enormous profts it began to
generate especially after 1660 were enough to meet the capital required to build and
maintain its infrastructure. There seems never to have been a capital call, and it issued no
debt. For the shareholders, New River stock was a dependable source of dividends.
The third largest water company was the Chelsea. It was one the few London water
companies north of the river created in the 18th century. The company was last of a furry
of companies formed in a joint-stock boom beginning around 1670 and ending with the
South Sea bubble in the 1710–20s, with a pause in between. The Chelsea was created to
serve Westminster and especially the rapidly growing suburbs to the west of the City.
Originally formed in 1721, the company’s original investors successfully won an act of
incorporation in the following year. The company had enormous capital needs as it built
its pumping facilities on the Thames, reservoirs in Hyde Park and St James Park, and a
network of pipes throughout the city. It soon exhausted the funds raised by selling the
original shares, and was forced to go ever deeper into debt. It even faced a period of crisis
around 1730 when it lost many customers due to dissatisfaction with its service. It
survived, however, by buying a steam engine for more pumping capacity. This gave it
suffcient supply to quell unhappiness, and it soon resumed growing, giving its frst
dividend in 1737. Like the New River, its need for external capital existed only when it
was frst being built. After its early years, it generated suffcient profts that it did not have
to go back to its shareholder, or even borrow, in the eighteenth century.
Even some of the minor water companies in London were joint-stock companies, and
some were incorporated. The Shadwell company, serving the east end of the city, was
formed in 1669, became a joint-stock company by royal patent in 1680, and fnally was
incorporated by Parliament in 1692. The York Buildings Company was formed in 1675 to
serve areas around Charing Cross. It was incorporated by Parliament in 1691, and
subsequently had a colorful history because its proprietors decided in the 18th century to
use its status as corporation to venture in other felds, notably real estate in Scotland,
leaving water supply as an afterthought. It was eventually sued for pursuing an activity
other than that specifed by its charter. Other London joint-stock water companies
included the Hampstead Waterworks (1692) and Marchant’s waterworks (1694), both
serving the west end of the city.
The London water industry was, therefore, built almost exclusively by joint-stock
companies, most of which were corporations. The joint-stock form clearly enabled the
investment of capital needed to build the infrastructure in the early years of almost all the
water companies. The manifestly large capital requirements of the water industry in the
10
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 identifed. After their early years, however, the water
companies required no further capital from their shareholders, being suffciently
proftable to meet these needs internally. The only exception to this was the London
Bridge Waterworks when it expanded and rebuilt all its works after 1700. It is less clear,
however, that incorporation brought indispensible benefts to the companies. The second
largest, the London Bridge seemed not to suffer any disadvantage from being
unincorporated. This was also true of smaller companies.
This analysis of the importance of the joint-stock form agrees with a number of recent
studies that have argued that in fact joint-stock frms were far more common than
previously supposed.6 The restriction the Bubble Act imposed in 1718 that all new joint-
stock companies be formed by act of Parliament proved not to be a great hindrance, as
many companies succeeded in getting such acts. Furthermore, many joint-stock
companies were formed regardless of the act, which was left in effect unenforced until
the early nineteenth century. The water industry was a clear example of this.
4. 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 in the leading sector has largely been 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, and was present throughout the
Continent.7 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 so over time. The non-English roots of London water
industry’s origins in the late 16th century is evident from its origins in three technological
6� Freeman et al, 2012, Harris, 2000.
7� E.g. Macleod, 2004.
11
innovations imported from the Continent. The frst was waterwheels and pumping
technologies. These mechanisms gave access to a quantity of water that surpassed what
existing wells and hand-carried buckets could provide. Although waterwheels had been
used in the ancient world, they were employed prolifcally during the Middle Ages to
drive mills. In the later Middle Ages in particular, waterwheels were being put to an ever
increasing range of uses such as slitting mills and fulling mills. In terms of water supply,
the wealthy Hanseatic city of Lübeck in northern Germany was recorded as having a
bucket wheel providing drinking water in 1294. The wheel supplied less than 200 houses
through wooden pipes made from hollowed-out logs. A number of other German cities
similarly introduced bucket pumps with waterwheels to supply drinking water, such as
Hannover (1352), Breslau (1386), Bremen (1396), Bautzen in Saxony (1496), among
others. Many of these bucket waterwheels, such as the ones in Lübeck and Hannover,
were replaced over the course of the sixteenth century with piston pumping mechanisms
to provide greater quantities of water. Although it is not clear when piston pumps were
invented in Europe, they frst appear in manuscripts in Italy in the ffteenth century.
Besides for use in urban water supply, these piston pumps were employed in eastern
European mines, as described by Agricola. In mining as well, the earliest mechanisms
from the late fourteenth century were of the chain-of-bucket type, but by the early
sixteenth century, piston pumps were fnding greater use. These waterwheel-driven piston
pumping mechanisms, with their greater capacity, spread from Germany and arrived in
England at the end of the sixteenth century (fgure 5).
12
Figure 5. A suction piston pipe, form Agricola, De Re Metallica (1561)
A second hydraulic technology that came to be used much more extensively in London at
this time was wooden pipes. The innovation lay not with pipe itself, but in the scale of
their use to connect directly to points of consumption. Wooden pipes, like waterwheels,
had a long history going back to Antiquity. Although the evidence is not conclusive, they
were not much used in Britain during the Middle Ages. Rather, lead and stone were the
preferred materials, as they were in France. Wood was much more common in Germany,
where it was used for urban water supply. One of the earliest cities for which evidence
exists with such pipes was Grosal in Saxony. It had wooden pipes supplying bronze
fountains in the city centre around 1200. From the end of the thirteenth century, more
cities had such water supply networks. Some inhabitants in Bremen founded a
13
waterworks cooperative in 1396, which, once functioning, served a network of pipes that
in some parts of the city connected directly to buildings. People paid to join the society,
and it cost an additional ½ mark for a water connection. However, the high cost of these
connections meant that this network was not used as a source of drinking water supplied
to houses, but rather by brewers and bakers for their needs. A few hundred years later, in
1790, the network still only had about 450 connections.
The third technology which created new possibilities in how water was supplied in the
sixteenth century was pipe boring machines (fgure 6). Pipe boring had long been done by
hand, but new machines meant that the wooden pipes could be produced more rapidly, in
increasing quantities and at lesser expense than had been previously the case. They
thereby opened the door to the construction of larger networks of wooden pipes. Better
pipe boring machines, like piston pumps, seemed to have originated in Italy and Germany
in the ffteenth century. Mariano Taccola described such a machine around 1470. In the
sixteenth century, however, these machines were being used in new ways. For example,
artillery came be manufactured with boring mechanisms, as described Vannoccio
Biringucci in De la pirotechnia (1540). These were driven either by water or horse
power. All these technologies came to England in the sixteenth century.
Figure 6. A pipe boring machine, Les raisons des forces mouvantes (1625), Salomon de
Caus
The new London water industry was therefore stimulated by continental technology
brought to England by foreign engineers, Peter Morris in particular. Where a difference
14
between the continental and the English model emerged over time was in scale and
intensity of use. 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. Most notably, the New River Company’s growth in the late
17th century began to strain its ability to distribute water to the many houses that it was
serving spread throughout London. Supply grew inadequate, and complaints more
frequent. The New River had to cut back the frequency of its service from three to two
days per week, and it lost customers to its newly emerging rivals. Furthermore, it found
itself unable to supply the wealthy and rapidly growing West End. In order to address
these problems, the company devised a host of means of controlling and preserving water
pressure in its network.
One of the frst was to expand its supply capacity by building a higher reservoir, called
the upper pond, supplied by a pumping mechanism driven by horses, water, and later a
steam engine. This new reservoir increased the pressure in the company’s network
serving the West End. Beyond the upper pond, the New River company’s engineers
worked at fnd ways of stabilizing and making the water supply more reliable. The
company began to use a double pipe network, whereby larger pipes, called mains, were
used to transport water from the New River reservoirs to various districts of the city.
Smaller pipes, called service pipes or simply services, were either attached to these
mains, and ran through the street to distribute water to homes or public courts. The
connections to buildings were through lead ferrils that linked into the wooden services.
As the eighteenth century progressed, the company tried to differentiate between the
mains and services more clearly. This meant that it avoided having ferrils drawing water
from the mains. To further isolate the mains, the company began using another set of
pipes called riders that ran beside the mains to provide water service to the buildings on
those streets, thereby removing the need to connect them directly to the mains. This
system ensured that water fow in the mains remained relatively constant, even as it was
distributed across various zones through service pipes. It also served as a means of
isolating service areas into zones of approximately equal elevation.
15
Figure 7. An eighteenth century water pipe.
The shift to a double arrangement of pipes was quite a slow, perhaps a refection of the
chaos in the pipe network and the diffculty in reforming such a widespread system.
Although some distinctions between mains and service pipes can be found in the
company’s records from the early eighteenth century, the court of governors ran a couple
of concerted campaigns to move all customers off the mains and onto service pipes in the
1770s and 1780s. References abound in the company’s minutes from this period, ordering
the installation of new service pipes in streets so as to move any customers in those
streets from the mains to service pipes. Customers, however, were not so keen to see this
change implemented. For them, being connected to main meant a much better water
supply because it was at higher pressure with regular fow. Nevertheless, the company by
the 1770s maintained a strict rule that no customer should have any connection to the
mains, with the exception of a few cases where no service pipes existed.
Other parts of the system also evolved over the course of the eighteenth century,
including ways to make the load on the system more predictable. Originally, the ferrils
into homes had no valves, and water would fow into the reservoir when the street valves
were opened by the turncocks. Even if there were some sort of valve in the house, some
people would leave them open all the time, allowing water to overfow. Over time, the
company thought that some of its customers were drawing far too much water and
abusing their supply. This problem of drawing too much water was not, however, limited
to paying customers. Sometime people paid plumbers to attach ferrils to the company’s
pipes and mains without the company’s knowledge. Ways of addressing this included
legal and technical means. On one hand, the company petitioned the crown for special
16
powers and edicts against such meddling. The powers granted were to search houses in
the presence of a constable if there was suspicion of abuse. On the other, the company
relied on new technological innovations. One new such measure came around the 1720s
with the introduction of ball-cocks. These were valves regulated with foats that shut the
water intake pipe once the water level in the in-house reservoir reached a certain level,
taking the regulation of water fow out of the hands of the buildings’ occupants. In 1724,
the company’s Court of directors ordered that all tenants must have such ball-cocks or
face being cut off.
By the late eighteenth century, the New River Company’s network of pipes and mains
had grown to approximately 400 miles (640 km). Although the period of its most rapid
growth occurred earlier in the eighteenth century, it continued to lay pipes and take on
new customers over time. Maintaining this massive network required a variety of
operations. This included several crews of pipe borers. The company would buy
thousands of loads of elm trees a year, and bored out the interiors of trunks to serve as
pipes. Most of the pipes were three to fve inches in diameter, with the mains being
constructed of six to eight inch diameter pieces. The sections of pipes were narrowed at
one end, with the other made larger, so that they could ft together snugly (fgure 7). Later
on in the eighteenth century, the company began using metal hoop to bind the nose of the
pipe to the butt of its neighbour. The wood would rot over time, and fnding and fxing
leaking pipes became a constant job for the company. By 1751, the company was
employing 20 borers at its pipe yard. The pipes they churned out added up to over 20,000
yards (over 11 miles, or 17.6 km) per year in the last decades of the eighteenth century,
meaning that the entire 400 miles of pipes would be replaced every 20 to 40 years. The
company employed 12 teams of labourers constantly laying pipes, headed by foremen.
Given the relatively slower growth of the network in the late eighteenth century, most of
this work was in repairing smaller sections of existing pipe. At times blowouts occurred
and caused water to food into basements, leading to at times severe water damage, for
which the company paid compensation. At other times, however, there were drops in
pressure without the location of the leak being evident. These would be particularly
diffcult to fnd if the water ran out of the pipes into sewers, since that no subterranean
fooding would be evident from the surface. When pipes ran besides sewers, the
company’s labourers would descend into them, searching for the leaks. This job was so
distasteful that the company paid extra compensation to labourers who went more than
100 yards in sewers in search of leaks.
17
By achieving a new level of technological sophistication 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. It took on a specifcally 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 when
the ever-increasing numbers of customers being supplied water forced the water
companies to confront a series of problems associated with scale.
Why did London diverge from its Continental peers in water supply technology? The
causes are not immediately evident. Rather being impelled by greater technological
innovativeness in Britain, they seem to be rooted in three points: demand for water;
wealth; and business model. The contrast with a city like Hamburg is instructive.
Although Hamburg had a number of pumping mechanisms supplying 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. The
Restoration of the monarchy and peace in 1660 heralded a pattern of change in cities that
Peter Borsay has described as an ‘urban renaissance’ in England.8 Inspired by Continental
cities, the landed gentry began acquiring urban properties, leading to the development of
the West End, the affuent suburb growing west of the City. This infux of wealth to the
metropolis spurred demand for domestic goods, luxuries, services, and entertainment.
Water proved to be among the goods these new consumption-oriented town dwellers
sought. A further impetus came with the Great Fire of London of 1666. It engulfed a
sizable portion of the City, especially near the Thames, but spared the north end of the
city, including the New River Company. Many reconstructed buildings took on a water
connection that they had not had previously.
The expansion of water supply into homes ft with changing patterns of consumption. In
the past decades, historians have described how the consumption of goods expanded in
the West, both in volume and across social strata. Neil McKendrick and others described
the birth of a commercialized consumer society in the mid-eighteenth century,
encompassing not only the access to more goods, but also the growth of channels of
8� Borsay, 1989.
18
distribution, production, and marketing. Consumption was commercialized on a large
scale, shifting away from predominantly domestically produced goods towards remotely
manufactured and traded ones. The dating of this revolution has, however, been
challenged by historians who draw attention to the domestic consumption of non-luxury
goods in late seventeenth century households. Examples of these new domestic goods
include coal, metalware dishes, tobacco pipes, and thimbles. Water can also be added to
this list. The intensifcation of network-supplied water to homes in London moved the
most mundane of consumer goods—water—into a commercial market run by companies
and made possible by technological innovation. This was an increasingly mass-market
phenomenon, whereby more households were served water directly by a few companies
in their homes. To be sure, ubiquity and constant reliability that later water supply
networks afforded was still some way off. The New River was, for example, willing to
decline supply to houses that requested it if the directors judged the house to be
unproftable. Nevertheless, how water was being consumed was slowly being
transformed by, and acting as an encouragement to, the elaboration of London’s network
water supply. The consumer revolution which has fgured 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.
By the 18th century, demand for water was brisk in London, as many commentators
observed. John Strype in 1720 wrote that “there is not a street in London but one or other
of these waters runs through it in pipes conveyed underground and from these pipes there
is scarce a house whose rent is 15 or 20 £. per annum but hath the convenience of water
brought into it by small leaden pipes laid into the great ones and for the smaller
tenements such as are in courts and alleys there is generally a cock or pump common to
the inhabitants so that I may boldly say that there is never a city in the world that is so
well served with water.”9 The water companies by 1700 were no longer only serving a
wealthy elite as in its early years. Water supply reached well into the middle class of the
metropolis. In terms of number of houses served directly with water, the New River
expanded from around 10,000 tenants in 1670 to 17,000 in 1683 (fgure 8). The New
River’s growth persisted after the turn of the eighteenth century as London’s population
continued to increase, reaching 700,000 around 1750, and over 1,000,000 in 1800. In
1769, the New River Company did a full audit of all its customers following a fre at its
9� Stow and Strype, 1720. Richards, Payne, and Soper, 1899. The Travels Of Tom Thumb over England and Wales, 1746.
19
main offce. This revealed that it then had 28,000 customers. Although the majority of
these were houses, other buildings, such as brewers, taverns, and stables, also received
water.
The New River’s 1770 audit of customers listed them all of them by address and fees
paid. This has been used to reconstruct a map of water use in London at that time (fgure
9). Water usage has been calculate by frst reconstructing the company’s entire pipe
network. Individual users were then maps along the pipes corresponding to their street
addresses. Finally, the concentration of water usage was calculated by dividing London
into a grid of 5700 squares and water usage summed within each square. The results were
then plotted as a contour map. A second contour map (fgure 10) represents the water
price paid by consumers. This contour plot was created by mapping the fees paid by
individual consumers, and ftting a curve onto this prices paid.
Figure 8. Number of houses with connections to water networks
20
Figure 9: Price paid to the New River Company for a water connection in London in 1770. The contour lines are drawn at 10sper year fee for water.
21
Figure 10: Water usage intensity in London in 1770, as supplied by the New River Company, assuming fees paid correspond tousage.
22
A number of observation can made from the maps. The price map shows a number of
spikes in the relatively poor east end of the city. This indicates that industrial water use
dominated that area. The large users were typically brewers, distillers, sugar bakers, and
fshmongers. Areas to the north of the City, and especially the wealthy West End, which
was the primary area of growth for water companies in the eighteenth century, had
generally higher average prices. Furthermore, the area where competition was present
had lower prices in some places. The large area of overlap between the London Bridge
Waterworks and the New River, and between the York Buildings and the New River,
show lower average prices. In the wealthiest West End areas closer to Hyde Park do not
show this drop, despite the New River and the Chelsea competing there.
The usage map reveals more details of how water was consumed in London. There was
little total use in the east end, indicating that apart from the commercial clients who paid
very high prices for water, the New River Company had few domestic customers in that
area of London. The area of the City of London around London Bridge used very little
New River water, but not because it was poor. Rather, the London Bridge Waterworks
completely dominated that area. The areas around St Paul’s, however, were different.
There, the New River was pre-eminent over the London Bridge Waterworks, likely
because the water pressure it was able to supply in that zone was higher. Water use was
highest in the area around the Fleet market in the west of the City, perhaps because inns,
coffeehouses, and vendors used more, combined with denser housing. The Smithfeld
Market area to the northwest of St. Paul’s also consumed much water. In the West End,
usage was very high as well, spread over a large area. There was, however, a very large
drop off in use towards Hyde Park. This indicates that although competition with the
Chelsea in that area did not depress prices, the Chelsea was better able to serve
customers. This zone was at the edge of what the New River could supply due to the
elevation of the land.
In terms of market penetration, defnite fgures for the number of buildings in London
have been diffcult to calculate,10 but estimates can be made for the years 1737, 1757,
1777 and 1801. Richard Price, a nonconformist preacher interested in demography,
reported the number of houses in the metropolitan area derived from window tax
assessments and bills of mortality for those years (85,805, 87,614, 90,570 and 110,669).
Based on these fgures, the New River Company was reaching around 30–40% of
buildings, with the rest of the companies adding another 10–13%. The cost of the water
10� Landers, 1993
23
varied, but for most of the time before 1800, it was typically around 20–40s per year, or
around 10% the yearly wage of a labourer. Pipes water supply was, therefore, no longer a
luxury by 1770, although it was by no means ubiquitous.
6. 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. Most of the largest were
corporations. These companies functioned as utilities, providing what was at frst 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 specifc historical circumstances of the late 19th century, and eschewed longer
terms explanations. The history of London’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.
24
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