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221
"registered house" would become a "common lodging-house,"
subject to police supervision, and be stigmatized in a manner
likely to diminish its letting value. It is hardly necessary to
say that these are purely imaginary evils. The register is a
quasi-private document: no intimation of registration is given,
excepting to the parties immediately interested; to wit the
"owner," the "keeper" (i.e., the occupier; but in the case of
a tenement-house, the "owner" is "keeper" also), and the
several lodgers. So far from registration injuring property, I
believe it will come to be regarded as a guarantee that the
house is in good sanitary condition, when time shall have permitted
the carrying out of your Vestry's "Instructions for the
guidance of the Sanitary Inspectors" in regard to the sanitary
arrangements of registered and other houses, which are set out
at page 180.
Report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of
the Working Classes.—In connection with the subject of
registration of houses let in lodgings, a full summary of the
Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners for enquiring into
the Housing of the Working Classes, was given in my Annual
Report for 1884-5 (page 184). The Report itself did scant
justice to the work of the Sanitary Authorities, which, though
carried on under pressure of many difficulties, has had the effect
of making London the cleanest, the best paved, the best drained,
the best lighted, the safest and the healthiest of great cities
The existing system of local government may not be perfect,
but under it much good work has been done work that is not
likely to be surpassed under any change in the form of local
government. The London County Council, by appointing a
Housing of the Working Classes Committee and in other
ways, e.g., by putting Cross's Acts into operation again, under
the form of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, has
shown its interest in this question. To what extent it will
be enabled to solve the tremendous difficulties by which the
question is encompassed, time only can determine. At page 140 a
full account has been given of their first great effort in this direction.