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101
In connection with the Housing of the Working Classes
Act, the Vestry has adopted during 1899 an important
principle, laid down in a Special Report presented by the
Medical Officer of Health, on "Insanitary Areas and the
Housing of the Working Classes."* This principle is that,
as far as the Lambeth experience goes, condemnation
under Part I. is unnecessary, better results being obtained
from systematic house-to-house inspections of houses with
the carrying out of Notices, served (as may be found
necessary) under Part II. of the Housing Act, or under
the Public Health Act. It cannot be denied but that in
Lambeth Parish, more especially in the Inner Wards, a
marked improvement is noticeable in connection with the
small houses (courts, etc.) The work is slow, but sure, and
more than repays (financially and otherwise) the trouble
and extra work involved. Further, there is the additional
advantage that there is practically no displacement of
tenants, a most important consideration. Displacements
(wholesale) lead to great trouble for a Sanitary Authority,
the displaced tenants move into neighbouring houses,
which they consequently crowd and overcrowd, and so a
Sanitary Authority may create, by means of one Act of
Parliament (the Housing Act), serious nuisances, which it.
then becomes the duty of the same, or a neighbouring
Sanitary Authority, to abate by powers invested in them
under another Act (the Public Health Act). The neighbouring
houses become rookeries, and so the difficulty is
not overcome, but simply transferred from one district, or
part of a district, to another, and from one house to
another.
Action under Part I. is costly and dilatory, leading to
Inspectorial neglect. with the result that dilapidated and
* Vide Appendix.