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The Lodging-house Act, 1851. 63. The labouring classes "Lodging-house
Act, 1851," has failed, partly because its powers were confined to parishes
which were generally too small to incur the great expenditure involved, and
partly because it required that the authorities shall contract for the purchase
of property necessary for the purposes of the Act. The difficulties in the way
of coming to an agreement with the various persons who may be interested
in the property of even a single house, are enough to deter Local Boards
from embarking in such an enterprise; but when these difficulties are
multiplied by the number of houses necessary to be taken, in order to carry
out any large improvement, it is obvious that they become practically
insuperable.
The Artizans' and Labours' Dwellings Act, 1868. 64. The "Artizans'
and Labourers' Dwellings Act, 1868," (Torrens' Act), has had but little
success on account of its complication, and also, because the intention
of the Act being that houses might be demolished on sanitary grounds,
the authority of the sanitary officer is simply inchoate, and is arrested after
the grant of his certificate. This defect might be corrected, by enabling the
local authorities to transmit the certificate of the medical officer to the Privy
Council, Home Office, or other superior Board, who should be empowered to
send one or more medical referees, with a surveyor, to examine the premises.
The conjoint certificate of these officers should be final.
65. Strengthen this Act, however, as we may, it is vain to expect that
our worst districts (the neighbourhoods of Wild Street, Short's Gardens,
Little Coram Street, for example) can ever be improved so that the sickness
and mortality shall be abated in an important degree, by dealing with
separate houses. Whole blocks must be demolished, large spaces cleared,
the old soil removed, and new dwellings adapted for the habitation of
numerous families built upon the sites. This is a great task, but it will
have to be done, and the time perhaps is not distant. When railway companies
are empowered to seize property to enable them to accomplish schemes
which may prove to be, by their results, both unnecessary and unprofitable,
it seems a strange anomaly, that no public board should be charged with
similar power for a purpose manifestly good and humane—a purpose that
would improve the health and morality, and enhance the industrial energies
of the large mass of our population.
66. That houses, erected on a large scale, for occupation by working
men, might render a fair return for the capital expended, has been proved by
the experience of the Corporation of London, and the Company presided over
by Alderman Waterlow. A Sanitary Board would probably enjoy the
advantage of advances made to it out of the Consolidated Fund as provided
for, in a similar case, in the "Lodging-houses Act, 1851."
67. I will now direct your attention to certain defects in the various
Acts of Parliament, which your Board is empowered to administer.
Water Supply. In considering this subject, I shall confine myself to its bearings
on the health and comfort of the working classes. The supply is at present
intermittent, which necessitates the use of cisterns for the preservation of
the water. These cisterns are constantly getting out of order. They are
frequently without covers, and when covers are provided at the instance of
the inspectors, they are rarely made to fit close, and are soon lost. The
cisterns often leak, the ball-cocks and taps get loose or are broken, and permit
leakage or overflow. Hence, the water is, not uncommonly, dirty and unwholesome
; or the cistern is left empty for many days together, the
inhabitants meanwhile, helping themselves from the nearest pump, or from
their neighbour's tank.
A Constant Supply at High-Pressure. 68. These evils would be
corrected by the Parliamentary requirement of a constant supply at highpressure.
This would do away with cisterns and their attendant