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cause great inconvenience, and would prejudice the public health, i.e.,
the health of the occupiers of neighbouring houses and districts,
which would become more crowded and overcrowded, with the
accompanying serious consequential nuisances and dangers to
health. What the Borough should do is to deal officially and
systematically with these houses, individually or in small collections
(i.e., courts and alleys and cul-de-sacs), with a view to stimulating
Private Owners and Private Enterprise. Owners have a
responsibility to the State, and the Borough Council has stringent
legal powers for dealing with Owners in respect of insanitary or
semi-insanitary property. Private Owners ought not to be relieved
of their responsibility. Systematic house-to-house inspections
offer a remedy, with the serving of the necessary subsequent and
consequential sanitary notices, supplemented, as required, by
closing orders, followed by demolition orders, or the rebuilding of
the houses condemned, or their re-planning, in the case of larger
houses, into tenements. Sections 15 and 17 of the Housing, Town
Planning, etc., Act, 1909, give, respectively, the necessary powers
over dwelling-houses (1) that are not reasonably fit in all respects
for human habitation, and (2) that are, on the representation of the
Medical Officer of Health, unfit for human habitation, i.e., in such
a state as to be dangerous and injurious to health. The latter
powers (under section 17) could not, in my opinion, be put into
force in the case of dwelling-houses which are simply dilapidated
and worn out through age. Insanitary conditions must also exist,
due to defective sites, construction, drainage and sanitary fittings,
etc., unsuitably plated sanitary conveniences and the want of proper
light and ventilation (through ventilation). Dampness, too, of the
walls of living-rooms also tends to render houses unfit for human
habitation ; and this dampness may be due to faulty construction
originally (absence of damp-proof courses and concreted sites,
unpaved or improperly paved yards, etc.) or to defective roofs and
gutterings and rain-water pipes. The former powers (under section
15) would include, inter alia, defective brickwork, broken floors,
dilapidated staircases and banisters, decayed sashes and frames of
windows, broken grates, unhinged doors, broken locks and fastenings,
etc. —conditions that do not come strictly within the powers of the
Public Health Act or of section 17 of the Housing, Town Planning,
etc., Act, 1909, but do make, or tend to make, dwelling-houses " not
reasonably fit in all respects for human habitation " (the words used