View report page

20
molluscs. No sincere attempt to remedy the nuisance appears to havebeen
made before the service of notice under the Housing of the
Working Classes Act, and even the measures adopted since have not
yet proved entirely successful.
In January, I made the following report, which was accepted by
the Council and forwarded to the Local Government Board.
Extract from Reports, pp. 150, 151, 152.
A letter having been received from the Local Government Board,
enclosing a communication from the Mansion House Council on the
Dwellings of the Poor, and asking for the observations of the
Council thereon, I beg to submit the following facts for your consideration:—
On the 6th April, 1894, a report was received from the Mansion
House Council on the Dwellings of the Poor, containing a list of some
2,223 defects alleged to exist in 596 houses in certain streets in the
Borough. As stated in my report, dated 2nd May, 1894, the list of
2,223 defects required to be largely discounted for various rea sonssuch
as 460 houses without dust-bins, 300 defects which the Inspectorsreported
could not be discovered at all, and several houses mentioned
in the report which had either disappeared or else had never existed,
besides a number of other matters which were of a trivial character, or
which did not come under the nuisance definitions contained in
sec. 91 of the Public Health Act, 1875.
On the 18th July, 1895, a further report was received giving a
second list of defects alleged to exist in the same houses previously
reported on. The numbers of defects mentioned in the second report
(1,350) are considerably less than those given in the first report, and
are also dissimilar in character. In no single case does the description
given of any house agree with that given of the same house in the first
report, thus proving conclusively that the information given by the
Mansion House Council in their first report had been thoroughly
investigated, and such defects as constituted a nuisance had been
effectually dealt with, and that the defects enumerated in the second
report were such as had arisen in the interval. The fact that the