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vided, and new water-closets were erected in the yards. The roofs
received considerable attention. In fact, a very little larger outlay
would have rebuilt the houses altogether; whereas now it can only be
claimed that old houses still exist.
I can never hope to have a case more in accord with what I conceive
was the intention of the framers of the 1890 Act than the one I
have thus briefly described.
Recently, the result of the visits of Dr. Hamer to the Whitechapel
District was communicated to and considered by your Board. I
will not enter into detail concerning the Report and the reply
thereto, because the reply which I append notices the points of
importance in the Report.
Board of Works —Whitechapel District.
Reply to the Report by Dr. Hamer upon the Sanitary Condition of
the Whitechapel District.
December, 1894.
The preface to Dr. Hamer's Report, which bears date 15th October, 1894,
is written by Mr. Shirley Murphy, the Medical Officer to the London County
Council.
It recites the information that a complaint which was introduced into the
Annual Report for 1893, and published by the Sanitary Committee of the
Jewish Board of Guardians, was the origin of the instructions by the London
County Council to its Medical Staff to prepare Reports concerning the Sanitary
Condition of both Mile End Old Town Hamlet, and of the Whitechapel
District.
So far as regards the share which is allotted to Whitechapel in the Jewish
Board of Guardians' Sanitary Report, it may at once be stated that the chief
charge against the Whitechapel District has reference to blocks of buildings
known as Booth Street Buildings, situated in Booth Street, Spitalfields.
Upon page 75 of the Report it is stated that the difficulty of securing the
remedy of insanitary conditions "was in some cases so great, that our
"Inspector found it necessary in the course of 1893 to pay as many as 10
"separate visits to each of 19 houses, and to visit 40 different abodes on no
"less than 20 distinct occasions." In this way 800 visits are accounted for
because " each separate floor visited is counted as one house."
Now it is only necessary to remember the fact that these Dwellings are
inhabited almost entirely by Polish Jews, to be sure that the Inspector to
the Jewish Board of Guardians is in error if he supposes that the defects to
which he called attention from time to time remained unremedied so long as
the Report of his Committee would lead a reader to believe, Such defects as
choked drains are the outcome of foreign bodies being cast into the closets,
and are of a description which Inspectors, however numerous, are powerless
to prevent. The Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel has paid very
special attention to Booth Street Buildings, and he reported to Her Majesty's
Government upon their condition about two years since. He has further
pointed out that the influential members of the Jewish Community can to a