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the intended purpose. The ordinary water supply apparatus
for closets frequently gets out of order, and when that is the case, it
causes a most disgusting and dangerous nuisance, and is, therefore,
an ineligible form of closet for those who are unlikely to take proper
care of it, or are, from poverty, unable to afford the expense of
properly repairing it. While on this subject it may not be out of
place to allude to the position of the water-closets in the large buildings
which are now in the course of erection on a large scale for the
artizan class; these conveniences ought never to be placed where
they cannot have two outside windows, opposite each other, for the
purposes of light and ventilation. "They ought, if possible, to stand
as projections from the body of the house, and with windowed lobbies
dividing them from it."
Reports of the Sanitary Inspectors on the Registered Common
Lodging Houses in Spitalfields, and on the Houses let out in
Tenements in Flower-and-Dean Street, and Upper and Lower
Keate Street.
Board of Works,
whitechapel District,
Inspector's Department.
To the Committee of Works.
Gentlemen,—At the Meeting of the Committee of Works, held
on Thursday, the 15th day of July last, it was resolved, that your
Inspectors should make an inspection of all the Registered Common
Lodging Houses situated within the Parish of Spitalfields. In accordance
with such resolution we respectfully present to your Committee
the following Report:—
The number of Registered Common Lodging Houses in the
Parish of Spitalfields, is 109, containing 454 rooms; such rooms being
registered to accommodate 3,992 lodgers. We discovered no case of
overcrowding. The bedding was clean; the yards and closets were
in a good sanitary condition; there was a good water supply, and the
walls and ceilings of the houses were clean.
Each room, with the exception of two or three, had a ticket
hung on the walls, showing the number of the room, and the number
of lodgers such room is registered to accommodate.
In 1876, we made a special inspection of the whole of the Registered
Common Lodging Houses in the District—167 in all; a large
number of which were then found to be overcrowded, that is to say,
there was less than 300 cubic feet of space for each lodger. This
fact was brought under the notice of the Commissioners of
Police by your Medical Officer ; and the Commissioners directed