Loch Katrine

The relative richness of these waters in dissolved solids is easily recognised when it is realised that a lake water of high purity such as that of Loch Katrine may total only 3 parts of solid matter per 100,000. 

Lead in Drinking Water. The naturally soft, slightly acidic, plumbosolvent water of the Loch Katrine water supply for the Glasgow area was recognized many years ago to release lead from the lead pipes and tanks in the domestic plumbing of the Victorian and subsequent (even post-World War II) eras. ... 

Rankine and Thomson created a joint-stock company in an effort to raise the capital necessary to build the Loch Katrine aqueduct and the associated distribution system, but in light of the competition from two incumbent firms, few people were willing to invest in such a large and risky venture. Unable to raise the money in private capital markets, the two visionaries wrote a lengthy letter to the Glasgow Town Council recommending that the council take stock in the company and operate it as a municipal enterprise. Although Rankine and Thomson were... 

Perhaps an even clearer example of this lack of balance is a short book by the Glasgow politician John S. Clarke. Published in 1928 and titled An Epic of Municipalisation The Story of Glasgow s Loch Katrine Water Supply, Clarke s book was reprinted from articles that had originally appeared in the Forward, the self-proclaimed great socialist weekly. Here is how Clarke summarized the history of the Loch Katrine water supply ... 

Let us then feel proud of the singular privilege we enjoy, and honour the memory of those who first conceived the scheme, battled so tenaciously for it, and finally triumphed. Beside their achievement, a romance of selfless devotion to duty and great purpose nobly accomplished, the other romance of Loch Katrine withers into insignificance. 

Of course, those who favored municipal ownership hired their own experts and chemists to challenge the work of Professor Penny. Building a model that was designed to mimic the ultimate Loch Katrine aqueduct, these chemists examined the lead solvency of the water after it passed through the model aqueduct and distribution pipes. This approach was taken because many observers believed that the lead solvency of water was altered by contact with other metals and stones. The upshot of the... 

The promoters of the Loch Katrine plan also used a misleading standard with regard to what constituted a safe level of lead in the water. In particular, the promoters stated that one grain of lead per gallon... 

With regard to the lead question, the people who did the most to spread the legend of Loch Katrine were not the residents of Glasgow, the politicians and entrepreneurs who first promoted the Loch Katrine scheme, or even the bureaucrats who later ran the Loch Katrine waterworks. Rather, the people who perpetuated the myth the most were those who lived outside Scotland and had no connection with the Glasgow water system. 

In a public health textbook published in 1901, Louis Parkes and Henry Kenwood wrote The Loch Katrine water acts most powerfully on lead, and yet no symptoms of lead poisoning have ever been observed amongst the population of Glasgow. In a paper presented before the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland in December 1920, James Reade argued that soft water supplied to Manchester and Glasgow produced no evil effect on the health of the consumers. In an article published in Chemical News in 1882, a French expert wrote of the Loch Katrine water supply In consequence of the purity of this water, contamination... 

Similarly, in his journal The Asclepiad, Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson maintained that Glasgow s investigation of Loch Katrine water in 1854 and 1855 clearly demonstrated the safety of the water. Under certain circumstances, he wrote, pure or soft waters [did] not act up... 

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