This is the 23rd in the series of caches placed close to
or
associated with drinking fountains or animal troughs. The cache
is
located in East Croydon, close to an example of a
Metropolitan
Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough.
The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough
Association
was an association set up in London by Samuel Gurney an MP
and
philanthropist and Edward Thomas Wakefield, a barrister in 1859
to
provide free drinking water. Originally called the
Metropolitan
Free Drinking Fountain Association it changed its name to
include
cattle troughs in 1867, to also support animal welfare.
Water provision in the nineteenth century was from nine
private
water companies each with a geographic monopoly, which
provided
inadequate quantities of water which was often contaminated, as
was
famously discovered by John Snow during the 1854 cholera
epidemic.
Population growth in London had been very rapid (more than
doubling
between 1800 and 1850) without an increase in infrastructure
investment. Legislation in the mid nineteenth century
gradually
improved the situation; the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers
was
informed, water filtration was made compulsory, and water
intakes
on the Thames were forced to be moved above the sewage
outlets.
In this environment the public drinking fountain movement
began,
initially in Liverpool where the local government was granted
the
ability to buy out the private water companies in 1847. It
built
the first public baths and then encouraged philanthropic
public
drinking water fountains.
The cache is a magnetic nano, a short distance from the trough,
and contains a log only. Bring a pen/pencil
If any body
would
like to expand to this series, as I have, please do, I would
just
ask that you could let Merstham Mafia know first so that they
can
keep track of the cache numbers and names to avoid
duplication