 With the population growing, the first scheme to provide a public water supply was by the Glasgow Company in 1806.A second company was formed in 1812, and the two merged in 1838, but there was some dissatisfaction with the quality of the water supplied.The Gorbals Gravitation Water Company began supplying water to residents living to the south of the River Clyde in 1846, obtained from reservoirs, which gave 75,000 people a constant water supply, but others were not so fortunate, and some 4,000 died in an outbreak of cholera in 1848/1849.