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carrying out such a scheme; but if a Railway Company could not obtain permission
to demolish houses where the poor are lodged, unless they provided
other houses for them, means would soon be devised to accomplish this object.
The fragmentary manner in which the important subject of providing
better house accommodation for the working classes has hitherto been dealt with
has done but little toward its accomplishment; neither will the existing Freehold
Land Societies be able to do much in this matter, nor will the extension
of any of the Philanthropic Societies be of much avail. The undertaking is
gigantic, and it can only be properly carried out by one or more Chartered
Public Companies with large capital as above mentioned. Before, however,
any further steps are taken to improve the habitations of the poor, a new
Building Act must be obtained, so as to prevent the erection of houses on
improper sites.
In many districts in London there are numerous houses, built back to
back, with no open space in the rear, so that they cannot be ventilated, and
which stand on a narrow slip of ground in a confined alley, where the privy,
water-closet, and dust-bin are in close proximity in the cellar, which is always
damp, and from which foul emanations ascend to every room in the house.
As it cannot be expected that any Public Company, with a view to profit,
will buy such houses, they should be purchased by the Local Boards, and
pulled down, and the ground thrown open to the public. The demolition of
all such houses that admit of no sanitary improvement, and where fever is
of frequent occurrence, will benefit not only the particular district where they
are situated, but the whole Metropolis will reap the advantage of such a proceeding
; for it is well known that fever and other contagious diseases do not
confine their ravages to the district where they originate, but they prove
more or less destructive to the public health in all parts of the Metropolis.
Under these circumstances, the Metropolitan Board of "Works might with
fairness be called upon to contribute a certain portion of the expense. I
believe that, under the provisions of the 14th and 15th Vict., c. 34, (an Act to
which I drew your attention in the first report that I submitted to you,) Local
Boards can purchase, under compulsory powers, such pestilential places as I
have mentioned.
A great deal might be done to mitigate the evils of overcrowding, if it were
enacted that all houses let out in separate tenements, below a certain annual
value, should be required to be registered as lodging houses; and the number of
persons who should be permitted by the local authority to occupy any given
room should be legibly affixed to one or more places in such room; and if this
regulation were found to be transgressed, by permitting a larger number of
persons to occupy it, then the person so letting the room should incur a pecuniary
penalty; and any person letting an underground room for habitation,
contrary to the statute, should, on conviction before a magistrate, be fined.
The drinking of impure water is another source of ill-health to the community;
but as this subject has been so frequently mentioned in my reports, I need not
now further allude to it. I may however state, that as very impure water is
drawn from the public pumps, in consequence of their being connected with
shallow wells, which receive the surface drainage of the streets, and into which
other abominations find their way, they should be removed.
Another cause of fever and of other epidemic diseases is the prolonged retention
of the dead in rooms occupied by families as day and sleeping rooms. This
fruitful source of the spread of epidemic and contagious diseases has more than
once been brought to your notice ; and upon one occasion, viz. so far back as
July 1859, a letter, under your direction, was written by Mr. Turner, the Clerk
to your Board, and forwarded to the late Sir G. Lewis, the then Secretary of