View report page

197
[1903
Therefore, I come to the conclusion that the bye-law in both these cases is bad,
because it does not provide for the person who is going to be made subject to the charge,
receiving notice in cases in which, under many circumstances, he may not, so to speak,
have what I may call the ordinary means of knowing whether or not the law has been
fulfilled.
Now, with regard to the second case, Mr. Courthope-Munroe raised the point which,
if he could have made good, would have differentiated his case from the decision which
I am now giving. He said that under the bye-law the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, the
definition of "landlord" is narrower and corresponds with the definition of a "keeper"
in the Stepney case, and to a certain extent I agree with him, but I still think, even if
you take the definition of " landlord" in the St. Mary, Islington, case, it is not sufficiently
precise to exclude the case to which I have already referred. It seems to me
that it does still render it possible that the bye-law might be constructed, without being
unreasonable, to include the person who gets the profit, that is to say, receives the
ultimate money, though he may not be in fact, in touch with the lodging house in the
same way as the ordinary keeper is, I certainly think it is not possible to hold, as Mr.
Courthope-Munroe contended, that there is no liability until the house is registered,
because I think that certainly bye-law 2 brings the bye-law in force as soon as he has
been required to give the particulars, and the subsequent particulars about that continuance
of the liability do not in any way confer an exemption or removal of the liability.
I think that these bye-laws no doubt designed with the very best intentions, and which
ought to be supported, unless they are shown to give rise to a serious objection, require
re-modelling from the point of view, not of preventing the landlord from being responsible
if he does not see that the work is done, but of giving him reasonable and proper
notice before he can be charged with the breach, as he was in this case, simply because
the house had not been cleansed, or had not been cleansed by the given day.
I now come to that part of the case which has given us more difficulty—or at any
rate given me more difficulty—and upon which I am not quite sure that we are all agreed.
Speaking for myself, and myself only, I should not have been disposed to interfere with
this finding on the ground that the period taken was die end ol the first week in April.
The statute says that they are to make bye-laws for cleansing and limewashing at stated
times the premises. Undoubtedly, I think, that does mean fixed dates when about it
should be done, or by which day it should be done. I trust that if the bye-laws come to
be reconsidered, the objections, which seems to me to be very strong objections, to the
taking of this particular period, which llrother Wills has pointed out in the course of the
argument, will be considered. I can well imagine that a week at the end of April, or a
fortnight at the end of April, or a fortnight at the beginning of May, or anything of that
kind, would remove all these objections; but why I should not have been disposed to
interfere on that ground is that that does seem to me exactly one of the things in which
the knowledge and experience of the Local Authority, who have to fix a started time,
ought to prevail, unless some what I may call grave objection, so serious as to amount
to an objection in law, or some strong unreasonableness in fact prevail. While I have
been very much impressed by the suggestion that the end of the first week in April will
very often be a difficult time for it to be done, there may be other considerations in connection
with the class of lodging house or the class of people who inhabit these lodging
houses, of which 1 do not know, which may be counterbalanced by those considerations.
Had it rested with me, I should not have been disposed to hold, and I do not hold, that
the bye-law is bad because of that particular week being taken, but, for the reasons which
I have stated, which are, in my opinion, more substantial with regard to the question of