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open space to be required at the rear of each house, so as to afford a
thorough ventilation of all the rooms therein. The best plan for the sanitary
officers to adopt under existing circumstances will be to inspect the ground
plans of all bouses in course of construction, and where the Medical
Officer of Health shall be of opinion that the proposed new bouses will
not be sufficiently ventilated, or that the conveniences of the houses are
improperly placed or arranged, to give notice in writing to the builder or
owner so to alter his plans as to insure a proper ventilation of the house or
houses, and a freedom from nuisance. If it should then happen that such
house or houses when completed is or are not fit for habitation, they should
be brought under the notice of the sanitary authority, and if by them the
Medical Officer's report be approved, the house or houses should be condemned,
and proceedings taken to have such house or houses closed.
The Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act, 1875.
This Act has now been in existence nearly four years, and although'
twelve schemes have been prepared by the Metropolitan Board and approved
by the Secretary of State, the sites for building new houses for the working
classes in this District have only been very recently, and this to a limited
extent only, cleared for the purpose. Under the restrictive provisions of
the Act it is very doubtful whether public companies will be induced to
purchase the land, as the expense of purchasing the ground and of erecting
thereon suitable dwellings for the accommodation of at least as many
persons of the working class as may be displaced in the same area will not
only be very great, but it will be extremely difficult to provide for proper
sanitary arrangements.
The fifth section of this Act appears to me to be very objectionable from
a sanitary point of view, for in the first place it is rendered compulsory on
the purchasers of the land to provide house accommodation for the same
number of the class of persons who shall have been displaced by the
pulling-down of their habitations. Now, it so happens that in the official
representations respecting the unhealthy localities, great stress has been
laid upon the overcrowding, whilst the unhealthiness of the locality has been
largely ascribed to that cause, and yet it is rendered imperative on the local
authority to adapt their plans for the accommodation of the same number of
persons as may have been displaced from an overcrowded area. Then, in
order to comply with this provision of the Act, very high houses must necessarily
be built. If this be enforced, I do not see how "proper sanitary
arrangements" can, in accordance with this section of the Act, be provided.
Some of the new streets to be formed on the site will be much too narrow