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dwellings for the poor are erected, those glorious anticipations of reducing the rate
of mortality in large towns to 15 or 17 in 1000, the at present estimated healthy
standard will not be realized. As much has already been done with so much
success to improve the health of the people, surely more may be accomplished.
Our present state of knowledge may not enable us to remove all the causes of ill
health, suffering, and premature death, but the subject of the excessive mortality
in towns, must be kept constantly in view, and the most healthy slandard of
comparison brought prominently before us, so that we may not act upon the supposition
that the sanitary evils we see before us tending to shorten life are inevitable;
it being now proved to demonstration that they are not so, as is shown by the
diminution in the rate of mortality during the last few years, and we know, from
experience, that what is, at one time, considered as insurmountable in the promotion
of sanitary improvement is, at another, easily overcome.
The wretched condition of many of the bouses in your district, is the subject to
which I would more particularly direct your attention at the present time. Some of
the houses are so totally unfitted for human habitation, that if diseases of the epidemic
class be found to be frequent or fatal in them, I shall consider it to be my duty to call
for your authority to apply to the police magistrate to order them to be shut up.
No house, in my opinion, is fit for human habitation, if it be not properly ventilated,
that is, having a current of air through it, and having a space either at the back or
front, large enough to admit the rays of the sun. Light, and especially solar light,
is so essential to the well-being of man, that unless he have it in sufficient quantity,
he will fall into a state of disease, and his children become puny and imperfectly developed.
A house, in any confined district, is also unfit for human habitation, if it
have not a water-closet attached to it, and a proper covered receptacle for house
refuse ; the common privies, which in many courts, are a most disgusting and offensive
nuisance, occasioned, perhaps, not so much by the inhabitants living in the cours
as by persons of the lowest class, prowling about the streets during the night. It
would be very desirable, and I hope it will not be long before it is made compulsory
upon every landlord to fit up, in each house, a properly constructed water-closet, and
to abolish, by law, the existing public abominations, so detrimental to the health and
morality of the inhabitants.
Hitherto, our public improvements by the opening of new thoroughfares for
the convenience of traffic, have not at all benefited the working classes, but in
many respects have made their condition worse. Splendid shops and large houses,
having a showy appearance have been built, which really do not appear to be wanted,
while better houses for the working classes, which are needed, have not been provided.
Docks, railways, warehouses, &c., must be constructed for the increase of the
trade of this vast metropolis, but our constructing of them ought not to prevent us
from providing better habitations for the working classes, whose labours effect these
improvements; more especially as it is in the power of parishes, by virtue of an Act
of Parliament, to encourage the establishment of improved lodging-houses for the
labouring classes.*
* Sec. 24 & 25 Vict. c. xxxii, 1851, An Act to encourage the establishment of Lodginghouses
lor the labouring classes.