"A comparison of the mortality with that of former cholera years," wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles', "demonstrates that sanitary work--imperfect as it is--has deprived the disease of much of its power." "The power," wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Fulham, "of sanitary arrangements to check the progress of such a formidable disease was clearly evidenced." The Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth wrote:-- "I believe the great sanitary improvements effected in the parish in providing proper drainage, abolishing many miles of open stinking ditches, and the removal of other nuisances, rendered an outbreak of cholera, such as experienced in former years, very improbable.... Moreover, by the employment of sanitary arrangements for treating the sick, Lambeth and other parts of the metropolis were saved from the ravages of the pestilence experienced on former occasions." That the epidemic had been as disastrous as it was, was, however, attributed to "an illegal and most culpable act of the East London Water Company. In contravention of the 4th Section of the Metropolis Water Act of 1852 that company distributed for public use a water (and a most improper water) which had not passed through its filter beds; and strong evidence was adduced to show that the outbreak was occasioned by this illegal and most culpable act." One result of this epidemic was to demonstrate, at the cost of thousands of lives, that the system of private water companies supplying the community with this necessity of life was absolutely opposed to the interests of the community. Dr. Simon, in summing up his report (1869) on the water supply to the metropolis, wrote:-- "I have been anxious to show what enormous risks to the public are implied in any slovenly administration of water supplies: yet as regards the London supply, what imperfect obedience to the law, and in some cases what flagrant and systematic disobedience was exhibited (at the time of the cholera outbreak in East London in 1866); and above all what criminal indifference to the public safety was illustrated by the proceedings of the Southwark and Vauxhall Company." As regarded this latter company:-- "Not only had there been the long-standing gross inefficiency of the apparatus of subsidence and filtration, but the administrators of the supply had from time to time dispensed to a great extent with even a pretence of filtration, and during some time had, worst of all, either negligently or wilfully distributed as part of their supply the interdicted tidal water of Battersea Beach.