How should one drink from a fountain? The question was troubling arbiters of etiquette yesterday as they prepared for a new era of public drinking.

The rules that pertain to the table cannot be transferred easily to a nozzle in the street. A degree of slurping is permitted, much as one might be permitted to wear jeans to the theatre, but gargling is a point of contention. As for spitting: don’t.

Jo Bryant, of Debrett, points out that the number of people wanting to use a particular fountain has an important bearing on the conduct required. “You have the etiquette of the queue. When you get to the front you shouldn’t take too much time there.”

Ten seconds? Twenty seconds? “It’s difficult to say precisely how long,” she said. “You need to make sure you’re not taking much longer than everyone else.”

The problem for Ms Bryant is that public fountain drinking, so much a part of life in the Victorian era, has largely disappeared. Questions of etiquette have duly become a matter for historians.

Stephen Halliday, author of The Great Filth: The War Against Disease in Victorian England, said: “There used to be conduits that were only open at certain times. At closing time you would sometimes have a queue and there would be punch-ups.”

Free drinking fountains went some way to ending such behaviour. In 1862 The Times reported the opening of a fountain in Islington by William Gladstone. He filled a cup and said it was “a great honour to be the first person to drink the water that proceeds from it”.

In the intervening years it has been the patrons of gymnasiums who have continued to use common water fountains. Keva Silverman, 36, of Washington, who keeps a blog on etiquette in gymnasiums, has compiled a list of "Things Not To Do At A Gym Water Fountain". He was concerned about spitting, nose-blowing, and general fountain “hogging.” He said yesterday: “Gyms are like the wild west of social etiquette. It’s a total free for all.”

Patrons of public fountains are advised to follow Gladstone, rather than the gym bunnies, although Ms Bryant believes that it may be impractical always to carry a cup.

Robert Laughton, whose company, Drinking Water Fountains, supplies fountains to schools and local authorities, says it was Victorian etiquette “that you should hold your hands underneath and drink from your hands”.

Clamping one’s mouth around the nozzle is also generally prohibited. Those who do so in schools “are likely to have their heads rammed against the taps by people behind them, as a practical joke,” Mr Laughton said. His company even designs plastic taps to minimise the risk of injury from such manoeuvres.

There is only so much that designers can do to prevent indecency at fountains, however. The journal Pool and Spa News has reported with horror on the practice, among parents at Disneyland, of changing babies nappies and then washing their hands in drinking fountains “adding unexpected bacteria and organics into the water”.

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