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not present, the case could not he gone into. So a fresh
summons was forthwith taken out, to be heard on Monday,
September 7th. Meanwhile a special meeting of the Sanitary
Committee was held, on September 3rd, to consider the
matter, at which it was ordered that the opinion and assistance
of Mr. Capron, the solicitor, be had.
We may remind the Vestry that the ordinary course of
proceeding is as follows: A nuisance is believed or ascertained
to exist; notice of it is given to the "Local Authority,"
i.e., to the Sanitary Committee; the facts are
formally verified by the officers of the Local Authority, who
have power of entry, under the 11th Section of the Nuisances
Removal Act;—the Local Authority serves a notice
on the "owner" of the property where the nuisance exists,
requiring him to abate said nuisance;—if he refuses, a summons
is taken out; and if the case be proved to the satisfaction
of the magistrate, he may make an order requiring
the person on -whom it is made to do various things to abate
the nuisance; and if the nuisance be such as to render the
house unfit for human habitation, he may prohibit the using
thereof for that purpose. (Sect. 13.) Or, he may order the
Local Authority to do the work, and recover the costs from
the owner, (Sect. 14 and 17.) Moreover, it is provided
(Sect. 35) that it shall be quite sufficient to designate the
" owner" of any given premises as " owner," without name or
further description; consequently, all our proceedings are impersonal,
so to say; -we leave a notice on premises, directed to
the " owner," and never mention any name.
Thus much enables us clearly to state the various complications
which followed.
For instance, when we appeared before the magistrate on
September 1, we begged him, as the defendant disobeyed his
order, to grant another order, under the 13th Section of the