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The Vestry would have been glad to see any evidence given in favour
of Clerkenwell noticed in the Report, as well as any against.
With regard to the regulations referred to above, I stated that I did
not regard their non-adoption recently as a refusal to adopt any
regulations, but that, like so many other vestries, they felt chary of
trenching unduly upon the liberty of the subject, and that it was not
impossible the Vestry might yet formulate a code of rules for the
purpose.
The postponement of the adoption of these regulations is about the
only occasion withiu my memory when the Vestry has hesitated to
adopt the recommendations of their Sanitary Committee, beyond a
little wholesome criticism, notwithstanding any allegations to the
contrary, the rule being rather to accept them unquestioned, even at
the risk sometimes of overstepping the law.
It is only due to the Vestry, as the responsible Local Sanitary
Authority, and their sanitary committees, in answer to charges of supineuess,
to point to the precautionary measures they have always
taken on the threatened approach of any epidemic disease, under the
advice of the Medical Officer of Health, and the extraordinary energy
and zeal displayed in presence of the cholera visitation in 1806-7, to
which there has been no parallel since the formation of the Vestry.
With regard to overcrowding and consequent high rents, I should
like to add the remarkable fact, that, although the parish is thickly
populated—there being about one hundred and eighty persons per
acre—we have always on our rate-books about two hundred empty houses,
many of them being in the immediate neighbourhood of the more
crowded and " tenemented " parts of the parish.
I would add that the Report of the Royal Commission would have
been all the more complete and interesting had one or two of the
"house farmers" referred to been called as witnesses to give their
version of what is laid to their charge, as some think they could have
rendered it a much less ex parte statement as to their alleged receipts
and profits from their holdings.
I regret having to trespass so much upon your space, which I would
not, and need not, have done had the Evidence been available at the
same time as the Report.
I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,
ROBERT PAGrET, Vestry Clerk.
The Vestry Clerk's evidence is added to this Report as
an Appendix by direction of the Vestry.