View report page

38
ants. Even where Owners were willing to co-operate, and I must say,
with very few exceptions, they manifested that they desired to do so,
the difficulties were great. Some of the houses were in the possession
of persons with little monetary means and their income was derived
from them; other Owners had very short leases, and such holders,
it seemed, would derive little or no advantage, but probably lose much
by the improvements; others altered their dwellings, but the improvements
were evidently more showy than lasting. The result was not
a determined effort to get rid of the disintegrating materials, but to
effect changes which rather concealed than removed the evil.
Your Vestry will realise that these expressions of mine are the
result of many efforts and failures—and one could not but see, with
disappointment and regret, that some Owners expended much money
on their premises, yet failed to remove the destructive conditions; the
walls were whitened and papered, whilst the plaster was cracked and
disintegrating; pieces of new wood filled up the holes in the floors,
but the old continued decaying and must fall away from the new.
The yards were coated with cement concrete, over the old decayed
bricks which continued softening, sank deeper and the cement consequently
cracked and shelled off; and some Owners persisted with such
proceedings, regardless of the consequences and repeated explanations
of the Sanitary Officers. '
Year by year the Sanitary Authorities have been more and more
convinced that the changes ordered even in Sanitary Notices, have
been insufficient and even mischievous, because the alterations lasted
but a short time; much money was expended, but the houses soon
lapsed into a similar injurious condition. This increasing experience
showed that it was wasteful to attempt to improve many of these old
defective houses, because their basis materials were disintegrating and
there was little hold for new substances. Some Owners, having had
these facts pointed out to them by the Sanitary Committee, have
pulled down and others are about to pull down the old dwellings and
rebuild.
ARTIZANS' DWELLINGS IMPROVEMENT ACT, 1875.—A.
number.of houses, known as Cotton's Gardens and-Hudson