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27
The tenement house regulations drawn up and agreed to by the
Vestry have been sanctioned by the Local Government Board, and
are therefore in force in this district upon such houses as the Vestry
select for registration, but so far not a single house has been placed
upon this register, and, therefore, we have not had a chance to ascertain
whether these bye-laws are workable or not; personally I think
they are, but the Sanitary Committee thinks otherwise.
Some houses in Fuller Street caused repeated trouble to my
Department, and as this trouble was in a great measure owing to
the absence of proper control by a resident caretaker to each block
of dwellings, I strongly urged the Committee to recommend the
Vestry to register four of the worst of these houses, as an experiment;
very unwillingly the Sanitary Committee agreed to do this,
but on the discussion of the report at the full Board so much opposition
was manifested that it was agreed to refer the matter for
reconsideration. At the next meeting of the Committee it was
decided to proceed no further with the proposal to register the
houses, but to deal with the Fuller Street premises under the Public
Health Act.
Notices were directed to be served in the usual form to remove
the insanitary conditions, which were:—A generally dirty and dilapidated
condition of rooms, passages and staircases; yards filthy and
strewn with house refuse: closets often choked; soil-pans frequently
broken; and water-supply defective. The landlord did almost
nothing, and dangerous nuisances were permitted to exist month
after month, or to recur shortly after ineffectual repairs. Summonses
were of course taken out by order of the Committee and everything
your Chief Inspector could do was done, but the Magistrate at Worship
Street, before whom the cases were heard, seemed to have got
hold of the idea that we were acting vindictively and were persecuting
the landlord, so he permitted the summonses to be adjourned
time after time on the owner's promise to do the necessary work.
These proceedings were spread over a period of nearly six months
(from February to July), and I believe I attended at Worship Street
no fewer than seven times in support of the summonses, for we are
compelled to be in a position to prove the nuisance by medical