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8
made under various powers by Health Authorities in respect
of:—
1. Sanitary appliances and fittings.
2. The provision of Sanitary conveniences.
3. In respect of the annual cleansing and white-washing of
tenement houses.
The very essence and intention of these codes of Bye-laws
was to provide a speedy means of enforcing proper sanitary
conditions, without the slow and tedious procedure entailed by
serving of Notices, waiting for their expiry before taking action,
and of further having to prove an actual nuisance. Although
the appeals arose under different sets of Bye-laws, and were taken
at the instigation of different Authorities, the whole tone and
tenour of the judgements is that Notice must precede legal action.
The result apparently will be that the benefit of summary procedure
is largely destroyed, and it is doubtful if the Bye-laws
now left will afford any advantage they were intended to convey
over the Statute.
Apart from this, there is the farcical absurdity of attempting to
deal with overcrowding and indecent occupation by Notice. I
suppose your officers will have to visit first to discover the overcrowding,
then serve a Notice on the person liable to abate same,
and after the Notice has expired he must make another visit to
see what has happened. He will then find that the first offender
(say Brown), has left and another party installed. As the Notice
served on Brown would not be a good Notice on Smith, I suppose
he would then serve a fresh Notice on Smith and procede to hunt
for Brown who no doubt will be found in a more overcrowded
hole than the one he had just left. The Notice on Brown in
respect of his late residence would propably not be good in respect
of his present domicile, consequently the Notice serving process
will be repeated ad. lib., and the Inspector kept running to and
fro and probably effecting very little useful work.