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62
one certainly finds the water taps stolen, the privies broken, the dust bin lids burnt,
and the Sanitary Inspector must be unremittingly at work to get remedies for the
causes of disease which are thus newly generated.
It would be very advisable to begin at the other end, if it were possible, and
try to diminish the crowded state of the houses.
To affect this object we have two clauses in existing statutes (the Metro. Local
Management Act, sec. 103; and Nuisances Removal Act, sec. 29) and the tendency
of legislation is to increase the powers of the local authority in this direction. Measures
have actually been taken in many districts to diminish the number of inmates of a house
in extreme instances. The same could be applied in the more flagrant cases of St.
Giles, with even greater certainty of success.
Although I believe that such measures could be successfully taken, and that they
ought to be taken in some prominent instances, I am not unmindful of the very very
serious difficulties which are in the way of any extended scheme of operations of this
sort. We might indeed turn some hundreds of persons from their houses, houses in
which they have sickened and died, but if there be no place ready for their reception, I
fear we shall have done as much harm as good. To empty the cellars, and to thin the
residents of the other rooms of Dudley Street alone, so as to allow each person the very
minimum of space required for moderate health, this single proceeding—which might be
done to-morrow if you so willed it—would turn out of doors some three or four hundred
persons to choose between the streets, the workhouse or some neighbouring region
which they would overcrowd to a double degree. The question is one of extreme complicity
and delicacy, but its importance demands that it shall be considered in spite of
its difficulties.
Something may be done by frequent inspection as to cleanliness, and by insisting
on the efficient ventilation of rooms, a point which has scarcely yet been thought of in
this district, but which had the attention of some Officers of Health, and which has been
enforced by Magistrates on their representations. Thus a large number of persons
might be accommodated without disease, who now suffer from the effects of the close
crowded atmosphere. Still under hardly any circumstances of ventilation should more
than two adults and three children occupy together a room of ordinary size ; each might
then get nearly what is permitted as a minimum in common lodging houses, or about
one-half the allowance of a criminal in our model prisons. Less than this, we should,
I think, try to prevent.
As this remedy, however, is at the best very partial, and does not touch several
important vices in the present system of overcrowding, I should like to raise the practical
issue whether or not it would be advisable to adopt the provisions of the " Labouring
classes lodging houses Act" in this district. I can see many theoretical and not a few
practical difficulties in the way of a scheme which shall make the parochial authorities the
landlords and supervisors of a large number of tenements ; but when I look what the
effect would be of erecting such institutions on a sufficient scale, adapted to the wants of
all classes, and becoming popular even among the lowest;—when I am convinced that
the houses might be made to pay well, and that disease and pauperism would decline