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is made]n—and in three several places says "[naming the
person against whom the complaint is made']."
Whereupon the magistrate's clerk sent a polite message
by a constable to the Medical Officer of Health, asking him
to name the "owner," or if not this, at any rate to go and
point out the owner to the constable who was to serve the
order, or to authorize some one else to point him out; for,
as he reasonably enough said, it would not do for the officers
of the court to incur risk of actions and damages for serving
on the wrong person an order that might end in seizure of
goods or imprisonment. He said that it might be very well
to use the word "owner" only, if the proceedings were to
end in levying a distress on the premises concerned; but
when it came to fines, or to seizing the goods of a person who
lived a long way off, and still more to imprisonment, it was
very necessary to have the exact person specified and no other.
It needs scarcely be said, that the Medical Officer of
Health also declined to run this risk, and so the proceedings
dropped, with Mr. Capron's sanction, who said they had come
to a dead lock; for, as it happened, nobody knew who was
the real owner. The supposed owner was insolvent, and the
property seemed to be in the hands of persons for whom three
legal firms were concerned, each of whom had some fruitless
correspondence with us about this vexatious case. But now,
the insolvency of the owner brought us a remedy. The
woman who was supposed to be owner used to collect rents
from the poor people who still clung to this dirty house, but
she paid nobody. So that at last the water was cut off on
Oct. 19th. Then we took out a new summons for declaring
the place unfit for human habitation; but before it was
served, some one had taken possession of the property, and
turned all the tenants out; since which it has been repaired,
and seems to be in good hands.