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27
Six others were issued for non-compliance with the orders of
the Justices, five of which had been made in relation to summonses,
which were heard prior to the 25th March 1872. In two of these
cases the penalties enforced amounted in each to £1 18s.
The nineteen remaining summonses were in connection with a
swampy strip of land lying between the backs of the houses on the
south side of the Camden Road, and the backs of the houses on the
north side of the Hungerford Road, with an entrance under a gateway
in York Terrace, York Road. These summonses were taken
out under the Nuisances Removal Acts, against the Trustees of the
freeholders, jointly with each lessee of the houses in the Camden Road
(to whom portions of the passage had also been demised), as the
parties by whose act, default, permission, or sufferance the nuisance
had arisen and continued. The passage had been often complained
of as a nuisance, and your then Medical Officer of Health, Dr.
Corfield, gave evidence of the fact that in his opinion the condition
of the ground was a nuisance, likely to prove dangerous to health :
but the Justices holding that no nuisance had been proved, dismissed
the summonses, and awarded twenty guineas costs to the defendants,
ten to the solicitors of the trustees, and ten to the solicitor
engaged by some of the lessees, one of whom only had consented to
an order.
The decision that swampy land in proximity to inhabited
houses, with offensive refuse mixed with its mud, and having holes
and deep ruts containing stagnant water is not a " nuisance," may be
understood, although our opinions may be in direct opposition to it,
especially when we consider that evidence was called by the
defendants in favor of that view; and the adjudication may also be
useful in relieving your officers from some of the responsibility
attaching to similar matters when complaints are made. But the
process of reasoning by which it was deemed right to virtually
punish a body like the Vestry for taking proceedings in the interest
of the public health, by inflicting in the form of costs a penalty of
£21, would seem to be perfectly inexplicable, and such awards are
much to be regretted, as they can only tend to make public bodies
and their Committees less willing than they are to take up cases of
nuisance in which there may be the slightest possibility of defeat,