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12
The Secretary of State to the Vestry Clerk.
Local Government Act Office,
8, Richmond Terrace,
Whitehall, S.W.
November 13th, 1866.
Sir,
I am directed by Mr. Secretary Walpole, to acknowledge,
with thanks, the receipt of your letter of the 9th inst., with the
reply of the Sanitary Committee of the Vestry of the Parish of St.
James and St. John, Clerkenwell, to the communication from this
office, on the subject of the Memorial of which a copy was sent to
the Vestry.
The Secretary of State is fully aware of the great difficulty
which the habits of those who inhabit the courts and alleys referred
to by the Deputation from Clerkenwell, and in this answer of the
Vestry, interpose in the way of Sanitary improvement.
The Memorial [moaning the communication from the Vestry]
shews that the Vestry have not been sparing of their efforts to
remedy the indecent and unwholesome state of filth in which the
privies of this district are kept by the recklessness of the occupiers of
the houses, and to enforce the periodical removal of refuse.
The Secretary of State is disposed to agree with the Vestry,
that if the landlords of these houses do not take more stringent
measures for enforcing on the tenants a stricter observance of the
obvious requirements of decency and cleanliness, and do not them
selves provide what is necessary for this purpose in the way of
privies, ash-bins, water-cisterns, and sowers, the best course for the
Vestry would be to apply for orders for shutting the houses up as
unfit for human habitation.
The Secretary of State will be glad to learn what effect the
threat of the Vestry to take this course has had. In the meantime,
there are some specific allegations in the Memorial of the Deputation
to which the attention of the Vestry may, it would seem, be usefully
directed. "There is only one really efficient dust-bin for the whole
of the alleys," and the allegations that "the water supply is not as
it should be. It is turned on for half an hour daily, and is conveyed
to the houses through small pipes, but there are no receptacles in the
houses or alloys to keep a reserve ; an evil we think requires to be
remedied."