13 Tabernacle petition 1889

At a meeting of the Legislative Council of the 3 April 1889 a petition was read.  It came the residents of Tabernacle who were requesting a supply of water.  They were not asking for water to be made available to every household but merely to the village.  Users would then have to transport buckets of it to their homes.  Their petition with all its signatures was copied into the Minutes of the Council.

They based their claim on the following:

That this village contains twelve hundred and is the only one on island of any importance that is not supplied with water either by natural or artificial means

That we are entirely dependent on the charity of the neighboring planters for a supply of water for the supply of water and it  often happens in times of drought and during the reaping season that we are unable to obtain a supply and at such times the suffering of ourselves and our children is intense.  That an adequate supply of water can be obtained from a source in the vicinity and works constructed at a comparatively small cost for which we are quite willing to pay in the same manner as the neighboring districts.

On the 22 April 1890 the vote for the project was approved. At the meeting of the 13 December 1890, the Governor again raised the issue and asked for a solution.  In 1893 water was supplied to the windward side of St. Kitts, which included Tabernacle.