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waterclosets situated in the basement, immediately under inhabited
rooms, or such as have their waterclosets, dustbins and water taps
accessible only through the cellars, which thus become receptacles of
filth. It appears to us that you as the Local Authority might wisely
exercise your powers, under the Nuisances Removal Act, sect. 13 by
procuring Magistrates' Orders for closing such houses, as being unfit
for human habitation. These houses may fairly be regarded as putrid
and pestilential dwellings, and we submit that they should be
prohibited to be let just as putrid meat is prohibited to be sold.
You possess the statutory power of setting the law in action for
the prohibition of such dwellings, and whatever hardships such a
course may entail on the owners (who after all have no real grievance,
seeing that they have fully exhausted all reasonable use of these
worn out houses), we feel sure that you as the Health Authority will
in dealing with these dwellings regard solely the safety and welfare
of those for whose lives and health you are legally and morally
responsible.
The compulsory closing of pestilential dwellings here suggested
will involve no cost to the Ratepayers, and the method is therefore not
open to the objection of expense that would be involved by condensing
the houses under Torren's (Amended) Act.
The houses when closed, being unproductive of rent, would
certainly be promptly pulled down by the owners, and their sites
covered by improved dwellings. In this manner, whole areas might
little by little be improved, and the buildings thereon removed
without the costly processes involved by the Artizans' Dwellings
Acts.
The displacement of the poor from such prohibited dwellings
would now, happily, involve no inconvenience, there being a much
larger number of tenements than would have to be vacated, just
ready for the reception of the displaced tenants in the admirable
model dwellings erected by the City Commissioners of Sewers in
Middlesex St., and in several other blocks of similar dwellings
approaching completion in Goulston St. & its vicinity.
For obvious reasons we have refrained from giving herein a list
of the houses which seem to us proper to be closed, as unfit for
human habitation, but we shall be prepared, if you desire it, to
supplement this letter with further particulars.
We desire to state in conclusion that though the efforts of this
Board are directed, as its name implies, to the amelioration of the
condition of the poor of the Jewish Community, a condition, like that
of all poor, most difficult to improve, when the majority of their
homes are in the state herein described, yet it must be obvious that
in the course of the enquiries instituted, the general condition of the