Soren Kierkegaard

of these creatures got stuck in the pump mechanism, one had to send for a
“water inspector,” the equivalent of the modern plumber. In the summer
the water was always close to lukewarm, and one had to get hold of a filter
apparatus and a water cooler in order to render “the famous lukewarm eel
soup” (as the water was called) even passably potable.
It is not surprising that people did their best to avoid using the water
from these conduits as drinking water, and instead made use of one of the
four or five hundred public well-pumps in the city. This water was not very
good either, though there were exceptions such as the pump at the corner of
Gothersgade and the ramparts, which had the reputation of being something
close to a health spa. This prompted an enterprising gentleman to apply to
the city government in 1846 for a monopoly on the pump, so that he could
deliver the water to the families of Copenhagen “for a very reasonable fee.”
And scarcely had the railroad to Roskilde been established before there
were proposals to use it to transport drinking water from the famous Mag-
lekilde spring into the capital in great casks, which were to be stored in
specially built ice cellars where the water would be bottled to be sold for a
shilling apiece at various points around town, such as the Round Tower
and (appropriately enough) the great Water Fountain.
In 1842, when the water quality was unusually poor, people complained
to the Water Commission, but the commission threw cold water on the
concerns of the terrified populace by proclaiming: “The nauseating charac-
teristics of the water serve as a warning against its use.” That same year a
typhoid epidemic raged in the neighborhood around Bredgade, but it was
not until two years later that the explanation for this localized plague was
found: After digging down to the old wooden conduits they discovered a
hole as big as man’s fist between the underlying water conduit and the sewer
line from the morgue at Frederik’s Hospital, which lay directly above.
Frederik’s Hospital was incidentally one of the relatively few places where
one could take a proper bath, but since it was not free of charge it was in
reality only the well-to-do who got washed. Dr. Hornemann spoke his
mind about “the inclination toward uncleanliness, or at least the lack of care
concerning cleanliness, that characterizes a large portion of the inhabitants
of the city.” A bathtub in one’s own apartment only made sense if one was
prepared to carry the water up the stairs, and most people were of course
unwilling to do so. The exception was the inventive Dominico Capozzi,
who in 1841 sought a license “to accommodate, through the use of portable
bathtubs, those who might desire baths in their homes, with well water,
seawater, also cold and hot water, plus sulfur and herbal baths.” The city
government gave the idea its blessing, and several years later the city also
granted approval to a petition from the hatmaker Feldberg, who had a fac-