Although by the middle of the nineteenth century there was no portion of the metropolis into which the mains and pipes of some of the companies had not been carried, yet, as the companies were under no compulsion to supply it to all houses, large numbers of houses, and particularly those of the poorer classes, received no supply. Indeed, in many parts of London there were whole streets in which not a single house had water laid on to the premises. In the district supplied by the New River Company, containing about 900,000 persons, about one-third of the population were unsupplied; and in the very much smaller area of the Southwark Company's district about 30,000 persons had no supply. Even in 1850 it was computed that 80,000 houses in London, inhabited by 640,000 persons, were unsupplied with water. A very large proportion of the people could only obtain water from stand-pipes erected in the courts or places, and that only at intermittent periods, and for a very short time in the day; sometimes, indeed, only on alternate days, and not at all on Sunday. "To these pipes," wrote a contemporary, "the inhabitants have to run, leaving their occupation, and collecting their share of this indispensable commodity in vessels of whatever kind might be at hand. The water is then kept in the close, ill-ventilated tenements they occupy until it is required for use."[12] The quality of the water which was supplied by the companies left much to be desired. That supplied by the New River Company was, as a rule, fairly good in quality; but that supplied by the other companies was very much the reverse. Financial profit being their first and principal consideration, they got it from where it was obtainable at least capital outlay or cost, regardless of purity or impurity; and almost without exception took it from the Thames--"the great sewer of London"--took it, too, from precisely the places where the river was foulest and most contaminated by sewage and other filth; and as there were no filtering beds in which it could have been to some extent purified before its distribution to householders, its composition can best be imagined. Looking at the great river even now in its purified state, as it sweeps under Westminster Bridge, any one would shudder at the idea of being compelled to drink its water in its muddy and unfiltered state, and of one's health and life being dependent on the supply from such a source. How infinitely more repugnant it must have been when the river was "the great sewer" of the metropolis. The great shortage of company-supplied water compelled large numbers of people to have recourse to the pumps which still existed in considerable numbers in many parts of London, the water from which was drawn from shallow wells. The water of these "slaughter wells," as they have been termed, appears to have combined all the worst features of water, and to have contained all the ingredients most dangerous to health.