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122
The Sanitation of House Property.
The sanitary supervision of existing houses is one of the
most important duties of sanitary authorities, intimately
bound up as it is, with the housing question. The difficulties
associated with the housing question in London to-day are
largely due to the imperfect sanitary supervision which in the
past appears to have been exercised in this direction. A good
deal of attention has in recent years been devoted to this
important subject in Battersea, and while it has not been
possible to repair the evil due to neglect of effective supervision
in the earlier years of its history, much good work has
been done owing to the activity displayed, especially during
the past five or six years. Systematic house-to-house
inspection is the only satisfactory way to carry out this
sanitary supervision, and it is a duty put upon sanitary
authorities by Section I. of the Public Health (London) Act,
1891, and by Section 30 of the Housing of the Working
Classes Act, 1890.
Sanitary supervision of existing houses to be effective
should be two-fold in its application, that is, it must deal with
house structure and sanitary maintenance, including the
absence of overcrowding. The past year's work in this
direction has shown a distinct improvement on that of 1006,
and will bear favourable comparison with previous years
The total number of houses inspected in house-to-house
inspection during 1907 was 4,101. This is a considerable
increase over the figures for 1906, and has only been exceeded
in one year, viz., 1905, when the highest number of houseto-house
inspections in any one year, since the formation of