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HOUSES PERMANENTLY UNFIT FOR
HABITATION.
V. Under the last heads of my Report I have
touched on matters, which (in so far as they cannot
be adjusted without Parliamentary interference)
may be considered to lie beyond the present jurisdiction
of the Commissioners of Sewers; and the
topic which I now approach may, perhaps, be considered
equally foreign to the scope of your
ordinary functions.
I have to report that there are houses and
localities within the City which are irremediably
bad;—places, which the uninterrupted presence of
epidemic disease has stamped as absolutely unfit
for human habitation; places, where drainage and
water-supply, indeed, are defective, but where the
perfection of these necessaries might exist, in all
probability, without giving healthiness to the inhabitants.
The predominant evil in the localities
referred to is their thorough impossibility of
ventilation.
While treating of the manner in which noxious