Transcript

Introduction to Boston’s water supply history

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to Hub History where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The hub of the universe.
This is episode 292. Water for Boston part one. Hi, I’m Jake.
This week is the first of what I hope will be a three part history of Boston’s water supply.
I’m not sure that all three episodes will air in a row, but I want to talk about Boston’s earliest sources of water.
Then the near miracle that introducing a public water supply from the Cochituate reservoir represented, and finally, the engineering marvel of our modern Quabbin reservoir.

[0:46] First up is the early history of water in Boston. From our reliance on natural springs to the construction of the first aqueduct.
We’ll compare today’s pure plentiful drinking water to the challenges that early Bostonians faced in obtaining clean water.
First, we’ll look at natural springs, hand dug wells and cisterns in early Boston.
But as the town grew into a city, these sources became increasingly scarce and polluted.
Then we’ll talk about some new technologies introduced at the turn of the 19th century, such as drilled artesian wells and the first Boston aqueduct which brought water from Jamaica Pond into the city.
However, these new technologies were controlled by private companies and only provided water to the wealthiest Bostonians leaving most residents desperate for a new public source of water in the mid 19th century.

[1:41] But before we talk about Boston’s first water supply, I just want to pause and say, thank you to everyone who supports hub history on Patreon.
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Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Boston’s current water supply and its accolades

 

[2:58] A couple of weekends ago, I was coming home from a trip and landed at Logan Airport.

[3:04] The first thing I always do when I land back in Boston is dump out the water bottle that I filled before departing and fill it up with a fresh bottle of Quabbin water.
Sometimes I like to joke that I’m a quab snob over the past couple of years.
I’ve been to Atlanta, both Portlands, Charleston, DC, Arizona, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Florida, and the Carolinas and probably more places.
And I’m always grateful to come home and taste the water.
We’ve come a long way since the Standells.
Boston has the best public water supply around and you don’t have to take my word for it.

[3:41] In September 2023 our MWR A water won the People’s Choice Award from the New England Waterworks Association after winning the American Waterworks Association’s best of the best water taste test in 2021, before that was the Deps Public Water System Award in 2019 and going back further, the platinum award for utility excellence from the Association of Municipal Water Agencies.
There are probably more awards I didn’t stumble across to the water flowing out of our taps, beats the stuff you buy in a bottle on taste and quality any day.
But Boston’s water wasn’t always this great before the Quabbin reservoir started providing nearly unlimited beautiful, almost untreated water to our homes.
The introduction of water from the Cochituate reservoir in 1848 was hailed as a near miracle.
But what was the water like before that? And why was Boston so desperate for a miracle of clean water?
I saw something recently that got me thinking.

[4:43] Back in late October, I was invited to the grand opening of the New City Archaeology Lab in West Roxbury one night after work, in retrospect, I don’t really think they expected the public to show up because everybody else there seemed to have been a city employee or maybe a current or former volunteer for the archaeology department.
I was just about to make my excuses and sneak out when city archaeologist Joe Bagley announced that he was about to lead a tour of the new facility and give us a peek at the highlights of the collection.
I decided not to leave just yet and I’m glad I stuck around for the tour.
One of the rooms is more or less dedicated to oversized wooden artifacts on one side of the room, wire racks held keels and ribs from old wooden ships.
While the wire racks on the other side held dozens of wooden water pipes that have been dug up in the city over the past century.
They almost took my breath away.
I’ll include some photos in the show notes this week so you can get excited too.

[5:43] Now, long time listeners will know that I’m a sucker for infrastructure.
So seeing a whole room full of old wooden water mains really got my motor running.
I’ve heard about wooden pipes like that being used to deliver water from Jamaica Pond to Boston.
And in an earlier episode, I mentioned water being piped to Long Wharf from a spring near the old statehouse.
But I never stopped to wonder what that water might have been like.
Seeing those racks of wooden pipes, got those gears turning.
So I went in search of Boston’s first water supply.

The arrival of the Puritan settlers and the search for water

 

[6:18] If you go back, far enough water is actually what brought the first Puritan settlers to Boston, in the spring of 1630 John Winthrop and the Arbella led a fleet of 11 ships on the months long voyage from England to the rocky shores of North America, along the curve of Cape Cod Sound where their charter granted them ancestral Massachusett lands.
The Pilgrim separatists had already laid claim to the remains of the Wampanoag Village, Patuxet and named it Plymouth.
While to the north, the new capital of the Massachusetts Bay colony was laid out on the Naumkeag Peninsula and named Salem.

[6:56] The fleet landed in Salem in June, but they didn’t think there would be enough resources for all the colonists that they expected to follow them.
By the end of that month, most of the new arrivals had relocated to Charlestown conveniently located at the head of a protected harbor and at the mouth of a powerful river, before long, though people were getting sick and even dying and they blamed the poor water in Charlestown wells, one of their neighbors thought he had a solution across the mouth of the Charles River.
William Blackstone had been living alone for at least five years on the narrow peninsula. The Massachusetts called Shame.

[7:37] One of the earliest histories of Charlestown records how Blaxton invited his new puritan neighbors to join him on this small peninsula.
Mr Blackstone dwelling on the other side of Charles River at a place called Shawmut where he had a cottage not far from a place called Black’s Point K and acquainted the governor of an excellent spring there with all inviting him and soliciting him thither.
Whereupon, after the death of Mr Johnson and diverse others, the governor with Mister Wilson in the greater part of the church removed thither and the place was called Boston.

The Mysterious Springs of Sharis Peninsula

 

[8:14] While Blackton invited the Winthrop Puritans to Sharis Peninsula, a paper presented at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1907 explains why they may not have shared a spring.
Mr Blackton was living in his cottage on the south slope of Beacon Hill near Spruce Street close by at what’s now Louisburg Square was one of the three peaks of Tri Mount 80 ft above high water.
And from the top of it flowed a copious spring with three outlets.
About 1830 this peak was dumped into the river.
This could not have been the excellent spring for there were scarcely any dwellings in that vicinity for over 100 and 50 years.
And as Mr Blackton was no lover of puritans, he would hardly have invited them to his own spring provided there were others. It would answer this purpose as well.
He would never join any of our churches giving this reason for it.
I came from England because I did not like the Lord bishops, but I can’t join with you because I would not be under the Lord brethren.

[9:20] A few years ago, I took the survival 1630 tour from our friends at the partnership of the historic Boston, which discussed how John Winthrop and the rest of the Puritan colonists survived their first year.
As part of the tour, we traced the contours of Boston’s 1630 landscape.
In search of the Shame Peninsula’s three original natural springs.
At one point, we could even hear the water rushing through a storm drain on a dry day.
Nearly pinpointing Blackton sprang on a quiet Beacon Hill Street, In our pioneering 1920 history, the crooked and narrow streets of the town of Boston, 1630 to 1822 any haven thwing locates the site of Winthrop Spring at or near today’s Spring Lane.
Just steps from old South meeting house and the old corner bookstore she wrote, Spring Lane was the Spring Gate of early times.
Here was the famous spring which induced Winthrop and his companions at the instigation of Blackton to come to the peninsula and make it their capital.
It only makes sense that the first meeting house, the townhouse and Governor Winthrop’s house were all clustered around the spring gate, creating the very heart of the new town of Boston.

Boston’s Natural Springs and Water Supply

 

[10:37] For the earliest years of the Puritan settlement, these natural springs met most of Boston’s need for water along with Spring Street and Louisburg Square.
The likely locations of these early springs were described in more detail.
In that same 1907 paper presented at the Colonial Society.
There were several good springs at the West end one was on Mister Lin’s estate which covered Howard Street, reaching up the hill.
Mr Lynn built a spring house there, but that region was pasture land for years after the settlement of Boston, there was another great spring at Cotton Hill.
About 1835 this summit was cut down the earth was used to fill the mill pond and Pemberton Square took its place, when the Pemberton building and Barristers Hall were erected a few years ago, the contractors were not troubled by water but a large spring broke forth when they were digging the cellar for Henry W Savage’s real estate office.
This appears to have been the old cotton spring.

[11:43] As Boston began to grow, families built homes farther and farther from the town’s handful of natural springs.
In the book City Water City Life. Carl Smith describes how hard it could be for a family to meet its needs for cooking, washing and firefighting, even with water close at hand, getting it to where it would be used was still a challenging and sometimes costly proposition.
Water is heavy. A single gallon weighs just over £8 and transporting it even a short distance is an awkward and burdensome chore.
Before water systems were built a person with no other way to obtain water conveniently might purchase it from an itinerant waterman who dispensed it from a large barrel mounted on wheels.

[12:31] Boston constructed its first reservoir in the middle of the 17th century called the Conduit.
This was a shallow basin about 12 ft on a side to which water was piped from nearby wells and springs to be used both for fighting fire and for domestic purposes in the crooked and narrow streets. Annie Haven.
Thwing also describes the origin of the city’s first water supply.
The Conduit, a large reservoir 12 ft square and covered with planks was erected in 1649 at the corner of Union and North Streets and William Ting gave the company leave to find a springer well in his pasture and to lay pipes.
It was built to supply fresh water to the families in the neighborhood and to be used in case of fire.
For the first three years, this private waterworks operated on a handshake basis with the neighbors pooling resources to deliver the water from Ting’s Field to the neighborhood around what we now call the Blackstone block.

[13:33] In 1652 they made the agreement formal creating the first corporation in the American colonies.
And it’s a good thing too because William Ting died not long after.
But the neighborhood continued to enjoy water from his field.
Thanks to this indenture dated June 1st and entered into the records of the governor of the Mass Bay colony in answer to the petition of the inhabitants of the Conduit Street in Boston, the court doth grant their request.
That whereas and then it names about 15 resident abutters took into serious consideration their own necessities for the daily use of fresh water for their several families and especially the imminent danger.
If any scathe fire should happen amongst them, which God forbid having no water and readiness at all times to behead them in such extreme danger.
And duly weighing that the procuring of water into said street, not only to be a burden, too heavy for any one to bear, but the privilege to be too great for any one solely to endure.
It is therefore ordered and enacted by this court and the authority thereof that from henceforth, the set inhabitants above mentioned shall be a corporation, and incorporated into one body or company.

[14:50] The spring fed wooden Conduit was one way. Bostonians got their water.
The entire Shame Peninsula is a glacial deposit of sandy soils which used to be about 30 ft taller until the top of Beacon Hill got cut down to fill in the flats along today’s Charles Street.
The sandy soil made it easy for people with hand tools to dig down to the water table and create a well.
Cisterns would also augment springs and hand dug wells, channeling water off the roof of a building into a nearby reservoir, natural springs, hand dug wells and cisterns delivered Boston’s water for well over a century and a half, but it was never quite enough or good enough.
In the book, Eden on the Charles Michael Rawson talks about the challenges that Boston faced, the residents of most American cities including Boston still drew the water they used for drinking, cooking and cleaning from wells and cisterns.
Most of them privately owned water was most commonly obtained through strenuous labor at an outdoor pump.
And even the well off were more likely to bathe in cold seawater at public baths than in fresh water at home.
Already, a scarce resource water was also becoming an increasingly degraded one as leaky privy polluted groundwater and coal smoke contaminated cisterns.

[16:16] As the groundwater in Boston became scarcer and more polluted.
Another method of accessing water started to find favor as Boston approached its 2/100 birthday.
By the turn of the 19th century, new technology would allow Boston’s to access water that had been buried much deeper below the surface than hand tools would reach.
The 1914 inaugural edition of the Journal of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers quotes a report from the proprietors of Long Wharf that describes this new technique for reaching Boston’s deep veins of groundwater.

[16:52] A crew started digging at Long War using hand tools to dig a large pit at about 30 ft below the surface.
They hit a dense layer of clay.
A hand dug shaft about 4 ft in diameter was sunk in the clay and lined with a stone curb to protect the well shaft much like the wells you would see in a movie.
Then they began to bore.
We first made a hole in the bottom of the curve 10.5 inches in diameter.
Then board into the clay 8 ft with an auger 10 inches in diameter.
We then took a log 15 ft long and 10 inches in diameter with a hole through it of five inches in diameter which we put into the hole at the bottom of the curb, and drove it with a large iron weight 13 ft leaving 2 ft above the bottom of the curb.
Then with an auger five inches in diameter board through the hollow log, 35 ft from the bottom of the well, through pure clay, we then came to sand from which we had a small quantity of fresh water through the sand, we board about 23 ft and then came to pure clay.
We board through this clay about 7 ft and came to a hard pan of slate.
And on taking up the augur found the water to rise fast.

Digging for Water: The Start of Boston’s Water Woes

 

[18:14] We then put a tube 4.5 inches in diameter into the hole.
We had bored which hollow tube extends from the bottom of the well to the hard pan of slate.
We then fixed a drill on the shank of the Auger and let it down through the hollow tube and drilled into the hard pan bottom about 3 ft.
We found we had struck a spring, affording an abundant supply of water at almost 100 ft below the surface of Long Wharf. They hit fresh water.
Massive Augers gave a few entrepreneurs the ability to reach Artesian waters deep below the surface, but it still wasn’t enough to meet the needs of a growing city in Eden on the Charles Rawson continues.
Boston’s water was as scarce and polluted as that of any other city, if not more so.
But the geography of the city’s water resources was complicated and presented no obvious solution.
Although some of the city’s wells produce better water than others.
Virtually, all of them gave only hard water which contains naturally occurring minerals like calcium and magnesium that enter the water from dissolved geological sources.
These minerals make hard water less effective for washing than soft water which some residents captured by directing the rain that fell on their roofs into privately owned cisterns.
But the quality of cistern water depended on the cleanliness of the roof.
And the technology did not lend itself to a citywide solution.

[19:41] Harvesting rainwater from rooftops and ancient groundwater from Artesian wells saw Boston through the turn of the 19th century.
But by that time, it was clear that the city needed a water source beyond the bounds of the Shame Peninsula.
At first, this was a prospect for the very wealthy as investors found a way to deliver water to families who could afford it.

[20:04] First outside water came from a neighborhood in the independent town of Roxbury that’s now known as Jamaica. Plain.
Carl Smith describes the private water supply in city water city life.

[20:17] By the end of the 18th century, residents of means might take their water from the Boston Aqueduct Company established in 1795 which delivered it through wooden pipes from Jamaica Pond in West Roxbury about five miles southwest of the statehouse to certain portions of the city.
Finally, some confirmed wooden water mains.
I don’t know for a fact that these are the same pipes that I saw in a back room at the city archaeology lab.
But I like to imagine that they were the Boston Aqueduct company should not be confused with the public utility as it was definitely not set up for the general public.

Boston Aqueduct Company: A Profit-Driven Solution for Fresh Water

 

[20:57] It was a profit driven private company though the city and the Commonwealth recognized that it provided a public good to those who can afford it because the city had such a pressing need for fresh water.
The legislature granted the company an early active incorporation and gave them broad rights to dig up the public streets to lay their wooden water mains passing in 1794, an act for incorporating Luther Eames and others into a society for the purpose of bringing fresh water into the town of Boston by Subterranean pipes.
Whereas Luther Eames, Nathan Bond and William Page have petitioned the General Court setting forth that they have the privilege of certain fresh waters in Roxbury, which they can bring into the town of Boston for the use of the inhabitants thereof and praying that they and their associates may be vested with corporate powers for the management and direction of that business.

[21:53] Be it therefore enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled and by the authority of the same that the said Luther Eames, Nathan Bond and William Page and all such persons as are or shall be associated and interested with them in the purpose of bringing freshwater into Boston as aforesaid and their successors.
B and hereby are incorporated into and made a body politic for the purpose of bringing fresh water into Boston by subterranean pipes.
And as such shall have full power and lawful authority to bring from any part of the town of Roxbury into the town of Boston and into any street in the same town, all such fresh water as they the said Luther Ames, Nathan Bond and William Page and their associates in their private and natural capacities now have or hereafter shall have a right to dispose of, or to convey from the springs or sources thereof.
And the said corporation shall have full power and lawful authority to open the ground in any parts of the streets and highways in the towns of Roxbury and Boston for the purpose of sinking and repairing such pipes and conductors as may be necessary to sink for the purpose.
Aforesaid provided that the same highways and streets shall not be opened by the said corporation in such manner as to obstruct or hinder the citizens of the commonwealth from passing there in with their teams and carriages with convenience.

Construction Begins: Building the Boston Aqueduct

 

[23:20] And that the said corporation after the opening of the ground in any of the said streets or ways shall be held to put the same again in repair under the penalty of being prosecuted for a nuisance.
And provided also that nothing in this act shall be construed to give the said corporation a right to enter upon the corporate or private estate of any person, whatever, unless it be done by free and voluntary contractor, the proprietor of such a state.
With this active incorporation in hand construction began in 1795 seeing the company buy up large supplies of pine logs, there were 12 to 15 inches in diameter.
One of their subcontractors had a system that bored the Mao using a fixed auger bit and turning the logs against it.
One end of the new pipe section, we whittled down to fit tightly into the next section.
They could be fitted end to end or take advantage of natural features in the wood to create T and Y connections.
The aqueduct slowly took shape following the slope of the ground from Jamaica Pond roughly following muddy river around the back of Mission Hill and then down Tremont Street and Washington Street into Boston proper.

Jamaica Pond: Boston’s Valuable Water Resource

 

[24:36] Jamaica Pond wouldn’t meet Boston’s water needs today. But for the smaller city that existed at the turn of the 19th century, it was a valuable resource as a glacial kettle pond.
It was relatively deep and situated in sandy glacial soils which but it didn’t have marshland around the edges to give the water off flavors even better.
There was little development around the pond. So residents weren’t dumping raw sewage into it unlike most bodies of water around Boston.
At that time, the proprietors of the Aqueduct Corporation were quick to tout the benefits of this new water source as with this article in the November 19th 1796 edition of the Colombian Sentinel under the headline improvements in Boston.

Aqueduct Corporation Promotes Benefits of Jamaica Pond

 

[25:25] The aqueduct now constructing to supply the houses and shipping in this metropolis with pure water will be a great advantage to the citizen.
It may save half the expense in soap and half the labor in washing and the ease with which the linen is washed may make another savings and aware of it during this operation, nearly equal to both the above.
The additional security from fire is another circumstance of great importance.
But the most interesting consideration and important benefit is its tendency to increase the means to preserve health.
Everyone who knows how essential pure water is to the preservation of hell will consider it estimable in this view and it enters into all our food and drink.

[26:11] All philosophers and physicians agree in the opinion that health depends most essentially on the purity of this element.
It is also observed that well, water continually grows worse in cities by the constant accumulation of matter which soaks into the earth.
Hence it is that all well water in old cities becomes extremely unwholesome and thereby greatly increases the bills of mortality.
This important fact has long been notorious in Europe and Asia and hence it is that every effort has been made at an immense expense to supply their cities with water from distant fountains to have it pure and plenty in great cities.
By every way, increasing the means of cleanliness as well as by rendering the system of nutrition more wholesome must be the highest consequence to prevent putrid and pestilential fevers and other fatal diseases.

Water Supply in Europe and Benefits for Seamen

 

[27:04] It is observed in Europe that as they increase their attention to this object, their cities are less afflicted with fatal sickness and the health of seamen is equally benefited by the best water during their voyages, Boston will be the first large city in the United States. Thus accommodated.

Limitations of Clean Water Supply in Boston

 

[27:23] This clean water benefited Boston but only up to a point, Jamaica Pond is only about 50 or 60 ft above sea level.
So before the invention of massive steam pumps, like the ones at the Waterworks Museum in Chestnut Hill, there were some limits on who could enjoy this new water supply.

[27:44] Anyone on Beacon Hill was right out of luck because water didn’t run up hill.
And by the time the aqueduct reached the waterfront, there was hardly any water left in the pipes between the massive leakage from wooden pipes that were sealed together with pine pitch and the usage of upstream families.
This limited distribution and the significant expense to subscribe to Jamaica Pond.
Water still left many families with few options.
Michael Rawson describes how the lack of clean water disproportionately impacted the poor and Eden on the Charles, some areas had no potable water at all and people had to walk as far as a third of a mile to find a well and then carry the water all the way back home.
Desperate immigrants in the broad street neighborhood near the city’s wharve sometimes paid as much as $6 a year.
More than a week’s pay to gain access to a private well or smaller amounts.
If they simply wanted to fill a pail, the drilled well that I described a few minutes ago was one attempt to deliver clean fresh water to the waterfront.
And those same investors tried another approach just about the same time that the Jamaica Pond aqueduct was nearing completion.

Boston’s Public-Private Partnership for Fresh Water Access

 

[29:03] In January 1797 the proprietors of Long Wharf appeared at a meeting at the town selectman and requested permission to open the streets for the purpose of carrying water from some spring near water street to the war.

[29:18] After hearing from a subcomittee and considering the options, the Selectmen made their response.
On April 28th, the proprietors of Boston Pier are Long Wharf in Boston, having applied to the Selectmen for liberty to break up the streets in said town.
In order to lay pipes for the purpose of conducting fresh water from some spring in water street to the said wharf, the selectman took this aim into consideration and conceiving it may be of advantage to the interest of the town in general in case of fire, voted that the said proprietors have liberty as they request to open the streets provided that previous to their undertaking it, they enter into an agreement in writing.
So to conduct the opening as to be least obstructive to the business of the town, to put the streets which they shall so open in good repair to the satisfaction of the Selectmen.
And from time to time hereafter to make all repairs to the same which shall become necessary to be made in consequence of such opening, that the pumper pumps to be placed on said wharfs shall at all times in the daytime, be free for the use of all the inhabitants of the town, improving stores or laboring on the said war.
And further that if in any future period, the town or any of the inhabitants thereof for the general benefit of the town shall think proper to place one or more pumps in State Street.
They shall have the privilege of receiving water from or through the said pipes.

[30:45] Today, we’d call that a public private partnership. The private company that owned the wharf was allowed to tap into the common property of the town’s water, tear up the town’s streets and as long as they fixed things up when they were done, they were allowed to profit from sales of the water that resulted.
All the city asked for was maintenance, access to the water in case of fire and for dock workers to be able to take a drink when they were thirsty with that, the investors were free to sell spring water to the highest bidder.
A few months later, the aqueduct was completed bringing Roxbury water also to the Boston waterfront on August 4th, 1798 the Colombian Sentinel reported on the opening of the aqueduct and on the price of water.
In Boston, the water from the aqueduct is now selling by Solomon Monroe in the fish market.
Kilby Street. At the following prices.
Hogg said 30 cents, barrel eight cents pale one cent, the superior quality of the water for shipping and for washing will be known by trial?

The Steep Price of Improved Water Quality

 

[31:56] The price was steep for a working man and his family. But the quality was greatly improved over the well, water that was otherwise available for the average person.
The cost of a private water system was too high and the quality of the water they could afford was too low and getting worse.
The more Boston grew the worse, the water problem got more people meant more leaky privies packed closer together and more wells dug right next to them.
More wells meant that the water table dropped and rainwater couldn’t replenish the supply of groundwater as fast as natural minerals and human waste spoiled it.
Rawson Eden on the Charles describes how Boston’s water problems compounded in the early decades of the 19th century, just as the tower was incorporated into a city in 1822.

[32:49] In the early 19th century, most Bostonians, especially poorer residents of the city took their daily supply of domestic water from wells, some used public pumps.
Although the city maintained only a few for firefighting purposes, like most other American cities, Boston assumed no responsibility for providing its citizens with drinking water.
Many other residents relied on private wells that had assumed a public character over ta the Waltham Company, for example, allowed unlimited access to its water.
And some wealthy residents intentionally left their wells unlocked for certain parts of the day or when leaving the city for the summer.

[33:33] Although some well owners guarded their water supplies more closely.
An entire neighborhood might patronize a single well, many better off residents also used wells, most of them privately owned, but their greater financial resources also gave them easier access to soft water.
Some obtained it by constructing private cisterns that collected roof runoff as Harrison Gray Otis did for his Beacon Street Home.
Others purchased it from entrepreneurs who collected soft water from country lakes and sold it door to door by the bucket.

[34:06] These were expensive solutions however, available to only a minority of Bostonians, most residents met their daily needs as best they could with hard water secured from whatever well was close by and open to the public.
After 1822 the new city government wouldn’t be able to ignore the water problem forever.
Part of the point of incorporation was to solve problems collectively.
And in city water city life, Smith emphasizes what a huge problem.
Water had become included in the wealth of information that pioneering statistician and sanitary expert Lemuel Shattuck packed into his 1845 city census was a survey of how the population of 114,366 was supplied with water that indispensable element of health and comfort.
Shattuck who had addressed the issue of city water many times over the next few years found that while 5287 of Boston’s 10,370 houses had wells.
Only 214 of these wells furnished water soft enough to be acceptable for washing.
And 1000 52 were effectively dry.

The problem of Boston’s contaminated groundwater

 

[35:21] Shattuck’s 1845 census reflected data collected by the city a decade before, the groundwater was bad and only getting worse as Rawson describes in his book, in 1834 faced with growing public dissatisfaction over the quality of the groundwater.
The city council commissioned a study of Boston’s wells based on interviews of people who used the wells.
The survey showed that only seven of the city’s 2767 wells produced water that was sufficiently soft or free from minerals to be used for washing.
A full 30% gave water that nearby residents considered undrinkable.
Many of them giving off offensive odors that suggested they had suffered from contamination from privy vaults.
Cistern water had begun to deteriorate as well, especially since the recent introduction of coal.
As a household fuel roofs collected the ash discharged by neighborhood chimneys as well as leaves from nearby trees and dust from the streets.
Rain then washed the material directly into cisterns, water contaminated with coal ash, discolored clothes washed in it and had a smoky taste.

[36:38] A few years after being incorporated into a city, Boston turned 200 years old in 1830 by the 18 forties, city government was consumed with the question of what to do about the water.
Everyone knew that the town needed fresh water, but they couldn’t agree on where it should come from.
The Boston Aqueduct Corporation and other private groups believe that for profit waterworks should fill the gap.
Some politicians and many members of the public believe that a public benefit should be delivered in a way that, you know, benefit of the public.

Mayor Josiah Quincy Jr.’s vision for a public water supply

 

[37:15] One of the proponents of a truly public waterworks was Mayor Josiah Quincy Jr.
He believed that the city needed a public water supply for fire suppression, but also as Smith Notes for private use, Quincy saw the city’s need for water as going well beyond fighting fire.
He declared it an article of the first necessity to construct a system that would provide a sufficient and never failing supply for our city of pure river or pond water that in addition to dousing flames would also serve all culinary and other domestic purposes.
This meant that the water must be capable of being introduced into every house in the city and acceptably soft that is low enough in mineral content to dissolve soap and to cook vegetables, satisfactorily.
This excluded the city’s well water. Bostonian’s main current source, which was generally harsh owing to its being impregnated with various saline substances.

[38:17] In an upcoming episode, we’ll learn more about the debate about whether Boston’s water supply should be delivered publicly or privately, as well as the technical hurdles that had to be overcome in order to deliver constituent water to Boston in 1848 to learn more about the springs and wells that quenched early Boston’s thirst.
Check out this week’s show notes at hubor.com/two 92.
I’ll have links to purchase Eden on the Charles City water city life and any haven th wings, crooked and narrow streets of Boston.

[38:53] This week, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Maurice Pearce of the University of Rochester, who’s collected an excellent database of primary sources related to early American water works and whose research made compiling this week’s episode possible.
I’ll link to his documentary history of American water works site as well as the Canavan paper presented at the Colonial Society.
The text of the act incorporating the Boston Aqueduct Corporation and the Corporation’s records and records of the town Selectmen regarding providing water to a long wharf.
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The best place to follow me is probably still Twitter, but be patient with me, for a more timely response.
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Music

Jake:
[40:11] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.