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118
holder, living far away, himself the lessee of a ground landlord,
whose very name it is often impossible to ascertain. The Committee
much wish that landowners would at least make themselves
personally acquainted with the condition of their property if they
cannot reside on it for a portion of each year. But they desire
emphatically to record their conviction that much misery is
caused by the high rents paid by the very poor, and that those
rents are swollen by the fact that between the actual owner, and
the occupant of rooms in a tenement house, one, and sometimes
two, middlemen intervene.
All which the Committee beg to submit.
On the foregoing Report being presented to the
Vestry, it was, in April, 1888, referred to the
Sanitary Committee for consideration and report.
The Sanitary Committee received the following
communication from the Medical Officer of Health
upon the subject:—
To the Sanitary Committee,
Gentlemen,
In response to your request to me to consider the Report of
the Special Committee on Courts and Blind Alleys, I beg to
submit the following remarks:—
The two Acts under which, in certain cases, unhealthy or illconstructed
places can be removed or re-constructed, are the
Artizans' Dwellings Act, 1868 (Torrens' Act); and the Artizans'
Dwellings Improvement Act, 1875 (Cross's Act). I will quote the
portions of those Acts which give me power to proceed in these
cases.
In Sec. 5 of Torrens' Act, it is state 1 that "if in any place to
"which this Act applies, the Officer of Health find that any premises
"therein are in a condition or state dangerous-rous to health so as to be unfit
"for human habitation, he shall report the same in the manner
"hereafter provided to the Local Authority."
Sec. 3 of Cross's Act states that "where an Official Representation
as hereinafter mentioned, is made (by the Medical Officer
"of Health) to the local authority, that any houses, courts or alleys