LATEST FISH STORY

Evening Star, Issue 20993, 6 January 1932, Page 9

LATEST FISH STORY

SPECIAL RATE FOR WATER FOUR ORDINARY GOLDFISH. Four goldfish—just ordinary goldfish, despite the fact that they live in Park Lane—have created almost a stampede in the offices of the London Metropolitan Water Board. And all because for many years they have been swimming in the Metropolitan Board’s water—and their owner has not paid a special rate for it! Park Lane’s four goldfish are the pride of that street’s only public house. But one day two water board officials, investigating a leaking main, saw them floating about placidly in their small glass bowl. One of the officials swooped on Mr Will Bishop, the landlord, and asked; “ Do you pay special water rates for your goldfish?” Mr Bishop said “No!”—and that started all the trouble.

“The next day,” Mrs Bishop said to a ‘ Sunday Express ’ representative, “ two more officials called on me with a tape measure and sounding apparatus for testing the flow of water through the pipes. Each fish was taken from the tank and solemnly measured. The largest proved to be 2in long. “ Then the officials sat down and worked out how much water my four goldfish had consumed during the past two years! They informed me that lin of live fish consumes or pollutes one gallen of water a week. I laughed, but they explained that it was a serious matter, and that I should hear more about it.

“ I thought that as this was so they had better begin at the beginning, and I told the officials that I had kept goldfish in the tank for thirty years. They started to work out the consumption of water during the period, but gave it up.

“I had a letter from the Metropolitan Water Board informing me that they were prepared to let me have five million gallons of water at the rate of eight and one-eighth pence per thousand gallons each quarter. “My goldfish only use two gallons of water a fortnight. They asked me to prove this, and now they have agreed to call the matter quits on payment of 5s a year,”