View report page

UNDERGROUND ROOMS. 25
(c) As to rooms so let on or before 5th August, 1891, the
law also applies—unless the Sanitary Authority exercise its
dispensing power.
(b) As to rooms not so let on or befcre 14th August, 1855,
the dispensing power is limited by the Act of 1855.
(a) As to rooms so let on or before 14th August, 1855
the dispensing power is so extreme that it ought never now
to be used.
In enforcing this penal statute or in considering the range of
exemption that could be granted by the Sanitary Authority it
might be needful to give evidence that the " underground room or
rooms" had not been "let or occupied separately as a dwelling"
at or before the date assigned. In an old district like St. James's
it would often be extremely difficult to get such evidence. Neither
in the Act of 1855, nor in that of 1891, do the limits apply only
to rooms actually so " let or occupied separately " at the time of
the passing of the Act. The words are "at or before," and
"before the passing of this Act." It therefore follows that a
room or rooms which had been so let at any time before the passing
of the respective Acts would be entitled to claim exemption from
the Sanitary Authority.
Then again, sub-section (7) of Section 96 of the Public Health
(London) Act, 1891, reads as follows :—
"(7). Every underground room in which a person passes
the night shall be deemed to be occupied as a dwelling within
the meaning of this section; and evidence giving rise to a probable
presumption that some person passes the night in an
underground room shall be evidence, until the contrary is
proved, that such has been the case."
The object of sub-section 7 is clearly to facilitate conviction
by rendering it easy to prove the alleged occupation as an under
ground dwelling. But this sub-section cuts both ways by the
breadth of its inclusion, and makes it correspondingly difficult
to prove that a particular room had never been let nor occupied
separately at, nor before, the time at which the Acts of 1855 or of
1891 had been passed.
Foreign workmen are often shipped to St. James's in large
numbers. These people cannot speak the English language, and
their ideas of sanitation are primitive in the extreme. They pack
themselves away in underground or other rooms. They
regard a water closet as a receptacle for ashes, as they have
been used to regard a foreign privy; and all sorts of difficulties
arise among them from surreptitious overcrowding, and from
the stopping up of water closets, drains, etc.