Part 26

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9. You have certain powers, to which I adverted in my former Report, as likely to come into activity whenever the injurious practice of intramural burial might cease; powers, namely, relating to the disposal of dead bodies in certain specified cases: and under your new Act, you have acquired some further authority (likewise only to be exercised after that cessation, and with the consent of the Bishop of London) to appropriate the disused burial-grounds for purposes of improvement. At the time of my last Report I looked ‘forward to the complete discontinuance of burial within your territory as a matter for warm congratulation among all who are interested in the cause of sanitary improvement;’ and it is with proportionate disappointment and regret, that I have now to report to you that the Order in Council, which was to have closed all metropolitan burial grounds, has never yet been issued; and that negociations, conducted by the General Board of Health for the purchase of a sufficient extramural cemetery, were suddenly arrested at the close of the last session of Parliament. Your powers in relation to these matters remain of course meanwhile inoperative.

In the Parliamentary Session of 1852, the Interments Act of 1850, which had remained inoperative, was repealed under a new ‘Act to amend the Laws concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis,’ which became law July 1st, 1852. Under this Act, the powers, alluded to in a later part of this volume, were given to the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London as a Burial Board for the City.--J. S., 1854.

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10. The most important additions made to your power relate to the dwellings of the poor, and are embodied chiefly in the tenth section of your new Act. The definition of ‘lodging-house’ given in this clause is so extensive, and the power of regulation conceded to you is so unconditional (where once the necessity for your interference is shown) that your Hon. Court can now exert your authority for every legitimate object, in respect of all the poorer houses in the City. The definition is, that ‘the expression common lodging-house shall, for the purposes of this Act, mean any house, not being a licensed victualling house, let, or any part of which is let, at a daily or weekly rent not exceeding the rate of three shillings and sixpence per week; or in which persons are harboured or lodged for hire for a single night, or for less than a week at one time; or in which any room let for hire is occupied by more than one family at one time.’ And your powers are to the following effect:--Wherever over-crowding has taken place unwholesomely or indecently--wherever undue illness has prevailed--wherever from any one of several causes the house is unfit for occupation, you can require its immediate registration; you can then make such rules as you think fit for the maintenance of decency and health; and you can enforce conformity to those regulations with appropriate penalties.

Circumstances, which need not here be detailed, have led to disappointment in the working of this clause, and have shown, to my great regret, that I over-estimated the benefits it was capable of conferring.--J. S., 1854.

The terms of the clause throw on your Medical Officer the responsibility of initiating these proceedings; and his task in the matter will be one of anxiety and arduousness. In most other clauses of your Acts of Parliament, an alternative is allowed as to your taking the opinion ‘of the Officer of Health, or of any two duly qualified Medical Practitioners:’ but in this clause you are expressly restricted to the certificate of your Officer of Health.

In my two former Reports, I have addressed you at length on those conditions relative to the dwellings and social habits of the poor which made the enactments of this clause indispensable; and I look forward to its operation with a sanguine belief that it may be rendered one of the most important boons ever conferred on the labouring classes of the community.

I subjoin to my Report the schedule which I would suggest for the registration of lodging-houses, and which (as you will observe) requires detailed information as to every sanitary particular of the dwelling. I would recommend that in every case, where registration is made, the owner’s specification of these particulars should be accompanied by a written certificate from your Inspector; testifying (in some such form as that annexed to the schedule in my Appendix) first, to the accuracy of the statement, and, secondly, to the general condition of the house.

Vide page 210.

With respect to the rules, which, under authority of this clause, you may find it requisite to lay down for better regulating the residences of the poor,--the conditions for which you have to legislate are so various and complicated, that no formula will apply universally; and you will often be called on to adapt special rules to particular cases as they come before you. I can therefore only venture at present to offer you general suggestions on the subject.

You will find that the houses in which your interference is required fall into three cases, characterised as follows:--(1) Where the house is let in several independent holdings (often as many holdings as rooms) each occupied by a single family and no more, and paid for at a rent not exceeding 3s. 6d. per week;--(2) Where the house is thus let in several independent holdings, and where the renter of each or any portion, admits other persons to share his holding with him, on their payment to him of a sub-rent per week or per night, so that a room comes to be occupied by more than one family at a time;--(3) Where the entire house, or all such part as is let in lodgings is under the direct management of a single resident proprietor or keeper, where the lodgings are let at . . . . per night, and where many persons not belonging to one single family are lodged together in some single room, or in various single rooms of the house.

Of the first arrangement, where a single room is the residence of a single family, you have innumerable illustrations in the City; as, for instance in the large houses of Windsor-street (to which I have recently drawn your attention) where in one house there are sixteen such holdings:--of the second arrangement--the most abominable and brutalising which can be conceived, you have sufficient illustrations in Plumtree-court:--of the third--comparatively little known in the City, there are instances in Field-lane.

In respect of the first class of houses, I should be disposed to look upon each holding as the house of its occupier, and not to interfere within his threshold, except on the ground of some commanding necessity. I would require only that the general arrangements of the house should be adapted to the number of its holdings; that, for instance, numerous families should not be left competing for the use of a single privy, but that such accommodation should be provided in strict proportion to the requirements of the inmates; that every room should be efficiently ventilated; that water should be supplied to the highest occupied part of the house, and a water-tap and sink furnished on every floor; that the dust and refuse of the house should be removed at least once daily.

In dealing with the worst specimens of this class, it may be requisite to go further than I have here intimated; and it appears to me that for this purpose your Hon. Court must address your regulations not to the tenant, but to the landlord. He, I apprehend, must be held responsible for the decent and wholesome condition of his property, and for such conduct of his tenants as will maintain that condition.

Seeing the punctuality with which weekly visitation is made for the collection of rents in these wretched dwellings, it would not be unreasonable, I think, to insist on some such regulation as the following:--The owner of the house, or his agent, or collector, shall visit each room on an appointed day, at least once weekly, between the hours of eleven and three; he shall see that the floor and other woodwork of the room have been properly washed on that day, that the room be free from all dirt, rubbish, or offensive smell, that no objectionable trade be pursued in it, and that it be generally in good and proper repair; he shall see that the premises generally be in a clean and wholesome condition, that water be sufficiently supplied, and that the dustman’s work be regularly performed; and failing either of the two latter conditions, he shall forthwith lay complaint thereof before your Commission; in case of any inmate suffering from cholera, small-pox, erysipelas, or any kind of fever, the owner, or his agent or collector, shall immediately give notice of such illness to the Inspector of his district; and at the meeting of the Commission next after such notice, he shall, if required, attend your Court, to receive any order which you may issue for reducing the number of his lodgers, or for improving the condition of his house, or for employing any disinfectant process; and he shall fulfil any such order within the time therein specified.

Namely--passages, staircases, area, cellar, yard, privy, &c., and if common privies and urinals exist, he shall provide for the cleansing of these, where requisite, at least once daily.

In a proceeding so experimental as the present, I cannot assure you of infallible means for meeting every evil contingency; but it seems to me that a regulation having the general tendency here indicated, enforced by moderate penalties, would work an important revolution in the economy of dwellings affected by its operation, would render it indispensable to the landlord of such holdings to promote cleanly and decent habits among his tenants--even to obtain security for their good behaviour, and it would make it difficult or impossible for persons of opposite habits to obtain holdings under a landlord who would be virtually punishable for their misconduct.

Such a regulation would apply, as I have said, to the lowest and filthiest specimens of the first class of lodging-houses; for, to the large majority of that class less stringent rules would suffice; and it would apply most usefully to the second class of lodging-houses--those in which the single rooms of a house are severally occupied by more than one family. So great are the physical and moral evils attending this indiscriminate admixture of adult persons of both sexes (as I have submitted to you in my former reports), that I entertain no doubts of the necessity for prohibiting it in the most absolute manner. A regulation to the following effect would, probably, fulfil the purpose contemplated by the law, and would disperse these loathsome heaps of disease, destitution, and profligacy: viz.--There shall not be lodged in a sleeping-room, at any one time, more than two persons over fourteen years of age, if of different sexes; nor more than ---- such persons, if they be all of one sex.

This number would be proportioned to the cubical contents of the room, and its facilities for ventilation, of which mention would be made in the registration-schedule of the house.

This order--in addition to its wholesome influence on the second class of lodging-houses, would apply beneficially to the third class; and, in further relation to the latter, there would probably be required various minor regulations with respect to facilities for washing, lighting, ventilation and the like, which admit of being fixed in detail, only as each particular case comes under your notice, with its deficiencies recorded in the schedule of its registration.

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11. In addition to this power of regulating lodging-houses, a further authority has been conceded you by the Legislature, for the amendment or removal of houses presenting aggravated structural faults. Wherever your Officer of Health may certify to you that any house or building is permanently unwholesome and unfit for human habitation, you are empowered to require of the owner (or, in his neglect, yourselves to undertake) the execution of whatever works may be requisite for rendering the house habitable with security to life.

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Finally,--under your former Act you were authorised, and indeed required, to appoint Inspectors of Nuisances, whose duties were to consist in the following particulars:--They were to superintend and enforce the due execution of all duties to be performed by the scavengers; to report to your Commission all breaches of your rules and regulations; to point out the existence of nuisances; to record whatever complaints might arise in relation to the supply of water, or in relation to any infraction, either of the Act, or of any of the regulations made by you under its authority for the preservation of order and cleanliness and for the suppression of nuisances.

Hitherto your Hon. Court has deemed it sufficient compliance with the terms of the Act, to engraft the functions above described on the office of your previously appointed Inspectors of Pavements; and these Officers have endeavoured very diligently to fulfil the multifarious obligations thus imposed on them. During the past year it has become obvious to me that this arrangement of their duties is inconvenient, and that the occupation of their time as Inspectors of Pavements prevents them devoting the requisite number of hours to the other important duties.

I need hardly add, for the information of your Hon. Court, that the immense increase of sanitary business implied in your new Act (an increase probably equivalent to doubling or trebling the former amount) renders a continuance of the former arrangement still less possible than heretofore; the important functions assigned to your Inspectors of Nuisances will now require to be discharged, under the superintendence of your Officer of Health, with uninterrupted assiduity and vigilance; and I would therefore take the liberty of begging your Hon. Court to refer this subject to the consideration of your Committee, together with some other points relative to the administration of your new powers.

Two additional Inspectors came into work, under appointment of the Commission, at Christmas, 1853. See last Annual Report.--J. S., 1854.