5.3. Matching Sentence Endings

The first free drinking fountains in British towns were not built for people out walking. They were installed in the 1850s and 1860s by charities and temperance societies, who wanted a free alternative to beer and to water sold from carts of uncertain quality. Most were placed outside markets, stations and churches, where crowds already gathered. A typical fountain was a granite basin with a bronze cup on a chain, and the cup was shared by everyone who stopped. The shared cup was the first thing to go. Medical officers in the 1920s linked it to the spread of throat infections, and councils replaced cups with a small upward jet that a drinker did not need to touch. The fountains themselves went next. As piped water reached most homes between the wars, a public basin came to look like a cost rather than a service, and hundreds were removed or left dry. The few that stayed were usually the ones already listed as monuments. In the last decade several councils have put new fountains back, this time to cut the sale of bottled water. Some fit a meter that counts each refill. A 2021 count across 24 fountains in one city found that three quarters of refills came from the four fountains beside park entrances, while fountains on side streets were used only a few times a day. The team does not claim that the fountains reduced bottle sales. They measured refills, not shopping, and a refill is not proof that a bottle went unbought.