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While in the following instances an improvement to meet the letter of the law did
not appear at all adequate to meet the sanitary requirements of the underground
rooms, and could not be undertaken without injuriously interfering with the streetpaving,
which is the property of the Board. In these cases, therefore, the
underground rooms were simply disused as dwelling places, no alternative of alteration
being allowed by the order of the Board. They were—
(C) Colonnade, Nos. 35 and 36.
(C) Chapel-place, Nos, 22 and 23.
(E) Maynard-street, Nos. 3 and 4.
(F) Dudley-street, Nos. 29 and 31.
(F) High-street, No. 52.
(G) Lascelles-place, No. 9.
(G) Short's Gardens, Nos. 18 and 19.
(H) Coal Yard, Nos. 19 and 20.
(H) Smart's-buildings, Nos. 4,5, 6.
(H) Newton-street, Nos. 22 and 26.
(K) Little Wild-street, Nos. 8 and 9.
In the prosecution of these measures a not unexpected difficulty has arisen. The
profit derived from letting the basement of these houses as dwelling-rooms was too
strong a temptation for their owners, and many of the kitchens were let again
almost as soon as the inspector had reported them emptied. In Dudley-street
particularly, many of the cellars that were reported empty in my last return, speedily
became again occupied. Much time and pains have been unnecessarily consumed in
preventing the infringement of the law. The heavier fine attendant on second convictions
will operate, it is hoped, to keep these cellars empty.*
While speaking of the resistance met with in enforcing sanitary requirements, it
may here be mentioned that the extreme step of imprisoning the owner of a certain
house has been had recourse to, for his obstinate refusal to comply with a magistrates
order. Though the Board exercises its functions so tenderly that 500
houses have been improved with only seven applications to the magistrate, it is well
that recusants should know that it has an authority which cannot safely be set at
defiance.
In the coprse of the year a multitude of most instructive instances have arisen,
illustrating the connexion between zymotic disease and bad local arrangements. Two
or three may be cited with profit.—In a house in Tottenham-court-road three persons
died from scarlatina. Two cesspools were found, with an old defective drain. Into
the untrapped pan of the closet opened the waste-pipe of the water butt, so that
the effluvia of the cesspool were directly guided upwards to befoul the only drinking
fluid of the household.— In a house in Duke-street, Lincoln's-inn-fields, a young
woman died of typhoid fever; other inmates had lately suffered from the same disease.
I was shown 9. large airy room on the first floor, with the unusual advantage
of windows back and front, yet in which never a year passed without seriousillness,
often of the character that had lately prevailed. Cholera was here in the epidemic
of 1849. The cause of this illness did not appear in the drainage of the basement,
nor until we had mounted to the top of the house. Immediately under the roof
was a room let out to some very poor people at a trifling rent; into this room
entered one of the heads of the waterspout, and this ended below by an open channel,
without any incline, under the sill of the first floor window. What matters
were thrown down this pipe to stagnate under the careless nostrils of the dwellers
below, need not be specified to those who know the customs of our ignorant poor.—
These are every-day sort of cases. Another that I shall adduce is exceptional, but
very illustrative of the need of an intelligent watchfulness. The Endell-street
Lying-in Hospital, which has usually such an excellent character for salubrity, lost,
*Since tbe time to which this report refers, Lady-day, 1860, the owners of eight houses in
Dudley-street have been summoned, and convicted of letting cellars illegally. The example
has operated so well that at the present time (June, 1860), not a single cellar iu the street is
occupied at night.