View report page

6
The former involved obtaining detailed information concerning insanitary areas
in London needing reconstruction, a work which has never ceased to make demands
on the energies of the Council's Public Health Department from that day to this;
the great Boundary Street scheme was already in 1890 under way and this was
followed in succeeding years by a large number of further improvement schemes.
The Public Health London Act (1891) brought with it new powers of bye-law
making, of licensing, and (specially important, as now appears in retrospect) of
acting in default of sanitary authorities. These duties occupied very fully the time
of the then small staff of the newly created department. The overcrowding and
insanitary conditions existing in London in the " nineties " were steadily exposed to
view in a number of sanitary surveys of certain of the administrative areas under
the control (at that period) of Vestries and District Boards. These reports led
straightway to much needed strengthening of local sanitary staffs; indeed,
between 1889 and the end of the century the number of sanitary inspectors in London
was more than doubled. The surveys referred to showed, moreover, the clamant
need for amendment of administration relating to houses occupied by members
of more than one family ; the problems here presented were, however, so great
that a comprehensive settlement of them is only now, at length, in sight.
The Council had approved, in 1894, a code of bye-laws regulating house-drainage
and disposal of offensive refuse generally ; under these carefully thought out new
powers sanitary authorities were enabled with comparatively little difficulty to
institute, at quite an early date, a thorough overhauling of house-drainage ; while,
accumulations of manure, etc., and innumerable collections and tips of house-refuse,
were, after the institution of proceedings in a number of instances, practically
banished from the county area before the end of the nineteenth century, to the
lasting benefit of the health of the modern Londoner.
In 1894, too, a new Building Act was passed which contained far-sighted provisions,
aimed at preventing the erection of insanitary houses and blocks of dwellings ;
these sections have operated most beneficially in regulating the new housing provision
of the last 30 years.
Offensive trades, slaughterhouses, cowsheds and dairies came under the
Council's close scrutiny, and, as the result of control, by licensing or by new byelaws
and regulations, many unsatisfactory premises ceased to exist, and London
has since enjoyed almost complete freedom from the particular kinds of mischief
which it was thus sought to remedy.
During these early years there was a threat of cholera and a considerable prevalence
of smallpox. The Council was, largely on account of the extent to which
it was found that this latter disease was spread by vagrants, entrusted, in 1894,
under a Provisional Order of the Secretary of State, with the inspection of, and later
(under the General Powers Act of 1902) became the annual licensing authority for
common lodging houses. Up to that time the "doss houses" of London were
largely frequented by persons "known to the Police" and needing their supervision
; on the change of control the premises were found to present many conditions
urgently needing improvement from a health and, indeed, from other points
of view. Houses accommodating single men, single women and "doubles " commonly
existed side by side with one another; there was overcrowding, the standard
of cubic space being then only 250 cubic feet, and beds and bedding were, as a rule,
in the absence of facilities for cleansing, verminous. The removal of bugs from
woodwork and bedsteads, and of fleas, bugs and lice from bedding and clothing
seemed at first an impossible task ; but steady work— aided by keepers and deputies
of "the doss houses " and later (on the inclusion of Salvation Army shelters as
"common lodging houses ") by the officers of "the Army," and further, with the
help of special disinfecting appliances (and particularly of the painter's blow lamp
and the disinfecting apparatus of the health authorities)—in the course of a few