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This place, likewise, provides for the necessities of the male
sex only. Section 88 of the Metropolis Management Act,
1855, enables the vestries and district boards to " provide and
maintain urinals, water-closets, and like conveniences for both
sexes, in situations where they deem such accommodation to be
required;" but your Vestry's efforts to provide this necessary
accommodation for the male sex, are very generally thwarted
by local opposition. Suitable sites exist, none better perhaps, or
where provision of the kind is more needed, than in Kensington
High Street; where, opposite the Church, an underground
retiring place for both sexes, after the model of those at
Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, and elsewhere in the central
parts of London, might be constructed without nuisance in
any sense of the word. Increased powers for the purpose of
such provision are given by the Public Health (London) Act,
1891, which, to facilitate the construction of underground
conveniences, vests the sub-soil of roadways in the Sanitary
Authority, who, moreover, have power to compensate
persons injured by the erection of these conveniences near
their houses, &c. Accommodation is provided at about 170
public-houses—not of a satisfactory sort in many instances,
but better than none at all, and much improved as the result
of proceedings taken by your Vestry in 1888.
The County Council, in May, 1889, signified to the
vestries and district boards their opinion as to the necessity for
Chalet accommodation for men and women; or for the construction
of places giving such accommodation below the level of
the ground, in the manner which has proved successful in
many parts of the metropolis, City and elsewhere; moved
thereto by the "many cases of physical injury coming to the
knowledge" of the medical profession, which are "traceable
to the want of proper accommodation of this nature in
London." Little, however, has been done hitherto, in this
parish, as we have seen, to give effect to the views of theCouncil.