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given. Weeks, nay months, may elapse before the appeal can be
heard, the nuisance continuing unabated. Prior to the hearing,
the work is done; the appeal is withdrawn and, causa jinita est !
This is no imaginary picture. I am describing an actual case
within my own experience.
As regards the Lodging-house Clauses of the Sanitary Acts,
it is to be regretted that they have not been more generally put
into operation; but, as I have intimated, inspection of such houses
as would be registered, is a matter of every day routine work in
all parts of London—though it is quite possible, as the Commissioners
more than hint, that the inspection varies widely in
quality and in extent. A principal advantage of the Acts is
that you have not to prove nuisance, but only breach of the
regulations, to bring the penalty clause into operation; but it must
be remembered, and it is an important fact which appears to
have been overlooked, that the infliction of penalties is a matter
entirely within the discretion of the Justices.
Little account has been taken of the fact that whatever
advantages in the way of improved house accommodation may
come to the working classes, through the operation of the Sanitary
and Nuisances Removal Acts, the expense of procuring them will, in
the long run, and at a heavy ratio of cost to improvement, have to be
borne by the classes benefitted. Poor people know this, and it is
the explanation of their silence in regard to sanitary defects.
The Inspector is not ubiquitous, and those who most need his
help are those who most dread his visit. If they are suspected
of complaining they are liable to be turned out of house and
home, and in any case they are, usually, made to pay heavily, by
way of increased rent, for whatever improvements, or work of
cleansing, &c., may be effected through the instrumentality of the
Sanitary Authority and its officers.
I have felt it my duty thus to show that the duty which devolves
on the Sanitary Authority is not so easy as at first sight it might
appear, and did time permit it would not be difficult to prove that
under circumstances not wholly favourable to sanitary administration,
much good work has been done—as indicated by the marvellous