View report page

153
owner appealed against the Order, and before the appeal could be
heard he sold the house, and then claimed that by the terms of
the sale-contract he was exempt from the obligation to reconstruct
the drain, which had been left open for many weeks. We insisted
that it was his duty to do the work, and just before Quarter
Sessions he arranged with the purchaser of the house; the work
was done, the notice of appeal was withdrawn, and no punishment
could be dealt out to the person who had thus trifled, for a period
of nearly three months, with your Vestry as Sanitary Authority,
and had gravely endangered the health of the inmates of the house.
I felt strongly that proceedings should have been taken to recover
the penalties accruing for disobedience of the Magistrate's Order
(at the rate of ten shillings per diem), from the date of the service
of the Order to the day when—the work having been executed-—
the notice of appeal was withdrawn. The proceedings were, of course,
taken under the Nuisances Removal Act. Had the machinery of the
Metropolis Management Act been put in operation, the work might
have been executed by your Vestry at an earlier date, at the cost
of the person on whom the notice was served, and by whose
default the delay arose. But it is not the practice to proceed
under this Act on account of the supposed difficulty of recovering
the cost of works executed by the Sanitary Authority. The Act,
however, gives the Sanitary Authority a choice of procedure, and
instead of doing the work the Authority may sue the defaulter for
a penalty not exceeding five pounds. But the Justices have
absolute discretion as to enforcing the penalty, and, as a matter of
fact, they are usually disposed to take a lenient view of the laches of
owners, so that, placed on the horns of a dilemma, the Sanitary
Authority may well feel a difficulty in deciding on the best course
to adopt. Sanitary Law, although good enough in theory, is
undoubtedly very defective in practical application.
Water Supply: the Cutting-off Powers of the Companies.—In
dealing with the question of water supply in my
Annual Report for 1882 (pp. 117-126), I recited the powers of
the Companies, referring especially to the power to cut off water
for nonpayment of water rents, and I urged that the Companies