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penalty for letting unwholesome houses. Many of the landlords of small
house property fully uuderstand and practise the rights of ownership, but
fail to carry out the duties which are enjoined upon them as owners.
One of the errors of the existing laws, in relation to unhealthy houses,
is the placing of the power of determining as to the unfitness of a house for
habitation upon a single Medical Officer of Health; and so long as such
power is intrusted to one man, the law will not be satisfactorily carried out;
and there will always be great difficulty in inducing magistrates to order
houses to be closed on the evidence of one witness; but if evidence were
adduced, and supported by two or three competent Medical Officers,
appointed by the government, as to the unfitness of houses for habitation,
orders for the closing of such houses would more readily be made.
A great deal of the worst class of house property is now in the hands
of poor people; the richer class of owners, finding that property of this
description occasioned them so much trouble and expense, have sold it, and
the result has been that a poor class of persons have purchased it who
are not able to fulfil the duties of ownership; who, when pressed to do
the necessary work to render their property fit for habitation, plead their
poverty, and so excite the sympathy of the public. But the plea of poverty
is not allowed to prevail in mitigating the penalty incurred by persons selling
or exposing for sale unwholesome food, although the injury to public health,
arising from the eating of such food, is not nearly so great as the letting of
houses unfit for habitation. In the one case, the injury is confined to the
persons who eat the unwholesome food; but in the other, the injury to
health by the propagation of fever, which is engendered in unhealthy
houses, may extend over a large area, and attack a numerous population.
In the latter case, the owner of the unhealthy house is liable to no penalty,
while, in the former, the seller of unwholesome meat is liable, and very
justly so, not only to a severe penalty, but to a term of imprisonment. Both
parties are, in my opinion, equally guilty of a serious offence against the
public health, and they ought to be made liable to similar punishments.
As a proof that the existing laws relating to the closing or the pulling
down of houses unfit for habitation require some amendment, in order that
they may be better carried into effect, we find that, in London, where there
are so many houses unfit for habitation, very few have either been closed or
demolished ; and it is only in two or three Districts that the Artizans and
Labourers Dwellings Act has been successfully, but only on a very limited
scale, put in force.
I am, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
JOHN LIDDLE.
15, Great Alie Street.