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populous districts, in their courts and alleys, which are and
always have been, here, and elsewhere, unhealthy places. Unfortunately,
in our own district, such property, besides being
heavily encumbered, belongs mostly to persons of very scanty
means,—the collected rents barely paying the ground rents,
and the owners deriving from their possession little or no
advantage. They have really no money to spend on required
improvements. To charge such property with the costs of
thorough repair would leave the owners, in some instances, I
am fully aware, destitute; but life is more sacred, and possesses
higher rights, than property, and it cannot be just to inflict or
continue a public injury, while endeavouring to spare and
sympathize with the inconvenience of an individual.
COURTS, ALLEYS, AND MODEL LODGING-HOUSES.
The repair of courts, above all other places, requires to be
comprehensive and complete. The houses should be kept carefully
cleansed and limewashed, while the open space of the
court itself should be, except in a few instances where the
opening is spacious, well paved with York stone, set in cement,
so as to admit of its being flushed or washed, when required to
be done, almost as perfectly as if it were a vessel. By such
thorough purification alone can we expect to realise the advantages
offered to us by the Local Management Act. The state
of several of our courts has been much improved, and the
improvement has been felt by the extinction of disease in them,
as in White Horse Court,—John's Court,—Edgar Place,—and
others; but in no instance has a court been put, in sanitary
particulars, in perfect order.
So much of our mortality, I am confident, is dependant on
this cause, that I feel it my duty to urge the Vestry to adopt
some decisive and general plan for their purification. If it
should be found that the property is not worth the cost of
repair, it is worthy of consideration whether it would not be
advisable to remove the defective cottages altogether, and to
build, in their place, Lodging-houses for the poor. The Vestry
is empowered by the statute 14 and 15 Victoria, cap. 34, sec.