View report page

226
by the Sanitary Inspectors, and to such action by the Vestry as
the circumstances of each case may seem to warrant."But no
action was taken.
In March, 1890, the London County Council requested your
Vestry's attention to certain "underground "rooms" occupied as
dwellings, contrary to law," on which I specially reported (25th
March). Nearly all of the houses referred to had been built prior
to August, 1855, so that most of the rooms were not " underground"
rooms within the meaning of the Act; "a distinction
being made between rooms occupied separately as dwellings at or
before the time of the passing of the Act, and rooms not so let or
occupied at or before the passing of the Act." After shewing " in
what particulars each of the several rooms failed to conform to the
requirements of the Act," I observed that "the list furnished by
the District Surveyor was not exhaustive." In one street named,
only two rooms in two houses, built since 1855, were reported,
there being in that street alone "scores of houses in which the
conditions as to the level and the drainage of the area were the
same as in the houses mentioned" These houses, I added, had
been "erected under the supervision of the District Surveyor, a
remark applicable to all of the houses in the parish built since 1885."
It was not alleged that any of the rooms referred to in the District
Surveyor's Report were unfit for human habitation, although some
of them, undoubtedly, were "occupied as dwellings contrary to
law." A copy of my Report was forwarded to the County Council,
together with a communication intimating that your Vestry were
taking—
"'The necessary action to cause remedial defects in connection with
the (specified) underground rooms to be removed,' but that it was
thought' undesirable to take proceedings to close rooms on account of
technical defects, which cannot be removed, in the case of rooms which
are otherwise fit for human habitation. The effect of forbidding the
occupation of such rooms would be to raise the rent of the other rooms
in the several houses, and if the same course were adopted in regard to
all underground rooms, the accommodation available for the poorer
classes, who occupy such rooms, would be materially curtailed. The
Vestry, it is hardly necessary to observe, could not act partially in the
matter, and should they take proceedings upon technical grounds, it