CHAPTER V
1881–1890
The census of 1881 showed that the population of London was 3,816,483 persons—an increase this time of well over half a million of persons in the decade.
In the central parts of London, with the single exception of Clerkenwell, the resident population continued to decrease. In the City, the decrease was nearly one-third; in the Strand nearly a fifth, and the parish of St. George, Hanover Square, was now added to the list of those on the decline.
In the East, in Whitechapel, Shoreditch, and St. George-in-the-East, the population had declined, whilst in Bethnal Green the increase had been at a much slower rate. But Mile-End-Old-Town, where there had been a good extent of unbuilt-on ground, had added over 12,000 to its population; and Poplar over 40,000.
In the North, with the single exception of St. Marylebone, all the parishes showed increases; Hackney, the great increase of over 60,000, and Islington the still larger one of nearly 70,000.
In the West, there were large increases in Paddington and Chelsea, in Kensington an increase of over 42,000, and in Fulham over 48,000. In the parishes nearer the centre—St. George, Hanover Square, St. James’ (Westminster), and Westminster, the population had decreased.
On the south side of the river, with the exception of the parishes of St. Olave, and St. Saviour—both in Southwark, and near the City—every parish or district showed an increase. Notably was this the case in Camberwell, where the increase was 75,000, and most remarkable of all, Wandsworth, where the huge increase of over 85,000 persons was recorded.
Thus the movements of population were shown by this census of 1881 to be very much on the same lines as those in 1871—a diminution in the central parts, and increases of various magnitudes in the outer parts.
Interesting information was once more given as regarded the constituent parts of the population.
It was shown that of the residents in London in 1881, the proportion of persons born in London was practically the same as in 1871. Of every 1,000 inhabitants in London, 628 were born in London, 308 in the rest of England and Wales, 13 in Scotland, and 21 in Ireland—the rest elsewhere.
The flow of people from the country to London was thus continuing at much the same rate, and the metropolis was still being fed with labour at the expense of the agricultural districts.[149]
“A contingent untrained in the pursuits of town life” was thus annually thrown upon the labour market of London. But they imported a fresh strain of healthy country people into the constituent elements of the town population, and helped to stay part of the deterioration which necessarily ensued from the insanitary conditions of life in London.
As to the causes of the shifting of the population in London, the same story continued to be told by the Medical Officers of Health.
Thus the Medical Officer of Health for the Strand wrote (1882–3):—
“The material decrease in population is largely connected with the gradual transition of houses from residences into business premises, the construction of new and wider thoroughfares, and the erection of public buildings, combined with the resulting consequence inevitably associated with such changes, a considerable augmentation in the rental or annual value of house property.”
In St. James’ (1882)—
“The large decrease of population (3,754 in last decade), coupled with the fact that the rateable value still has an upward tendency, clearly shows that the character of the parish is undergoing rapid change—offices, warehouses, and clubs taking the place of residences as the centre of trade continues to increase and move westward, and greater facilities are afforded for business men to live in the suburbs.”
Some of the Medical Officers of Health were perturbed by the class of persons coming into their district. Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel drew attention to the fact that of the 70,435 people in his parish no fewer than 9,660 were foreigners, mostly Russian and Polish Jews. Others of them were feeling anxious under the ever increasing numbers.
The Medical Officer of Health for Paddington wrote (1881):—
“Occupying, as the population of Paddington does, a limited area with definite boundaries which do not admit of extension, a continually increasing population can only mean a continually increasing complexity of the problems of sanitation.”
Upon one most interesting point as regarded the influx of population into London the Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth threw some valuable light.[150]
“The evil of overcrowding is aggravated by causes which derive their origin from the effects of that condition itself. A lowered standard of health, always the accompaniment of close building, is a factor in the further increase of pressure in an already congested district. An unsatisfied demand in the labour market for physical strength is a necessary outcome of that quality in the district affected. Muscle and bone in such a locality is at a premium, and that which cannot be supplied in its full development from within must be sought and obtained from without.”
“Here, then, is a vicious circle of concurrent cause and effect. Overcrowding is the cause of physical weakness: physical weakness results in an unsatisfied demand in the labour market: the unsatisfied demand is the cause of an influx from without: again that influx results in overcrowding.”
Once, then, that the influx of the physically strong began to diminish—the element which had contributed most to the maintenance of the physical vigour and health of the population of London—it was evident that deterioration would ensue, and the only means of counteracting that result was to improve to the utmost possible the sanitary conditions in which the people lived.
The census of 1881 is remarkable as being the last to show an increase of country-born immigrants into London. That tide was soon to begin to ebb.
The immigrants, however, were far from being all of a desirable character.
The Medical Officer of Health for Camberwell pointed this out:—
“A considerable percentage of our population is composed of persons whose natural tendency is to grovel—beggars, thieves, prostitutes, drunkards, persons of feeble intelligence, persons of lazy and improvident habits, and persons who (like too many of the poor) marry or cohabit prematurely and procreate large families for which they are totally unable to provide; and such persons gravitate from all quarters to large towns and there accumulate…. A large town like London will always attract undesirable residents.”
With the increasing population the number of houses in the metropolis increased also.
From 418,802 inhabited houses in 1871 the number had gone up to 488,116 in 1881, and the same tale was told as to the crowding of houses on the land as in previous years.
The Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green (1880) stated that in his parish most of the available ground was already fully built over. The Great Eastern Railway Company, the School Board for London, and the Metropolitan Board of Works, were largely demolishing small house property. “If this sort of thing goes on much longer,” he wrote, “it looks very much as if London in a few years would become a huge agglomeration of Board Schools, intersected by railways and new streets.”
The correct record of the population enabled once more an accurate death-rate to be calculated. The death-rate, which had been 24·6 per 1,000 in 1871, had fallen to 21·3 in 1881.
That was most gratifying testimony to the good results following the sanitary work carried out, under many difficulties, in London, and an encouragement to perseverance.
The vital subject of the housing of the huge masses of the people of London was, during all the earlier years of this decade of 1881–90, uppermost in the minds of those who were solicitous for their welfare.
The Act of 1879 had done but little to help to a solution of the tremendous problem.
A short experience of it, and of “Cross’s” Housing Act, had shown that instead of “owners” being visited with heavy penalties for their iniquities, they were being actually rewarded. In fact, they secured under these Acts not only a full, but an inordinately high compensation for their property—regardless of its infamous condition—and the ratepayers of London were mulcted in large sums to pay them for it.
“I desire,” said the Medical Officer of Health for Hackney in 1883, “to express a very strong opinion that it is most unfair to the ratepayers that they should be compelled to pay for uninhabitable property which has been allowed by the owners to get into a dilapidated state for want of substantial repairs such as cannot be required under the Nuisances Removal Acts….”
The first scheme which was initiated by the Metropolitan Board in 1875 was only completed at a net cost of £151,763, which sum had to be borne by the ratepayers of London; though why they should have been made to pay for the “owners” neglect which had led to the evil conditions of his property is not very clear, except that Parliament willed it so.
By 1882 the total number of insanitary areas dealt with by the Metropolitan Board, or in process of being dealt with, was fourteen. The houses in these areas had been inhabited by 20,335 persons in 5,555 separate holdings, 3,349 of which consisted of one room only.[151]
They were acquired by the Board at a cost of £1,661,000. Parliament had imposed upon the Board the obligation to provide accommodation for at least as many persons of the working classes as were displaced by the destruction of the houses on these areas. As the Board were not empowered to undertake the building of the houses in which to re-accommodate the displaced persons, the sites, after having been cleared, had to be sold to persons or companies, who were put under the obligation to erect workmen’s dwellings thereon; but inasmuch as the land had been bought at its value for commercial purpose, which was far higher than its value for residential houses, this Parliamentary obligation entailed upon the Metropolitan Board, and through them upon the ratepayers of London, an enormous loss.
The Goulston Street scheme in Whitechapel, for instance, was acquired at a cost of £371,600. When sold, under the conditions imposed by Parliament, it realised only £87,600; and the Whitecross Street scheme (in St. Luke’s), which cost £391,000, when sold realised £76,350.
The whole of the transactions, so far, resulted in a net loss to the Metropolitan Board, or in other words, a net charge upon the ratepayers of London of over £1,100,000.
As Mr. Chamberlain described the result, in an article he contributed to the Fortnightly Review of December, 1883:—
“Torrens’ and Cross’ Housing Acts are tainted and paralysed by the incurable timidity with which Parliament … is accustomed to deal with the sacred rights of property….
“The individual wrong-doer is to remain unpunished—retribution for his sins is to be exacted from the whole community.”
The enormous cost of carrying the Acts into effect stayed the hand of the Metropolitan Board, while the length of time, stretching out into years, required for the various proceedings, militated against the success of the schemes so far as providing residences for the displaced people.
An example of the working of the Act was described in 1883 by the Rev. S. A. Barnett.[152]
“In 1876 the dwellings of 4,000 persons in this parish (Whitechapel) were condemned as uninhabitable, and the official scheme for their demolition and reconstruction was prepared. During the next four years the ‘scheme’ ploughed its course through arbitration and compensation with a puzzling slowness.
“It was indeed a ‘killing slowness,’ for, during all those years, landlords whose claims had been settled spent nothing on further repairs; tenants, expecting their compensation, put up with any wretchedness; while the Vestry, looking to the approaching reconstruction of the houses, let streets and footways fall to pieces. It was not until 1880 that the needful demolition was seriously begun. Since that date the houses of some thousands of the poor have been destroyed.”
And then he described the slowness of the reconstruction, and added:—
“Such is the seven years’ history of the Artizans’ Dwellings Act in a parish under the rule of the Metropolitan Board of Works.”
He expressed his opinion that the prime source of the evil was not in the law, but in the local administration; but the complications of ownership, the endless legal difficulties and formalities, the numerous arbitrations, necessarily consumed years of time before the land could be cleared for building, and then the actual building of the new houses was by no means rapid.
The mode of procedure was attended with such difficulties and disadvantages, and the administration of the Acts so clogged, that a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed and sat in 1881, and again in 1882, to inquire into the causes of the want of success, and to consider in what way the law might be further amended so as to make it really workable.
The condition imposed as to re-housing, and which was so rigorously insisted on, did not by any means achieve the desired result.
According to Mr. Lyulph Stanley[153] in 1884: “Not one single person of all the poor displaced in the carrying out of the Gray’s Inn Road improvement, powers for which were obtained in 1877, had been re-housed by the Board.”
The Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel, in his evidence in 1881, also showed that many of those in the houses which were to be pulled down were not working men at all.
“Many of the people do not come into the Whitechapel District for the purpose of getting employment. They have other motives; they come from all parts of the country; a great many are tramps, and come up for the purpose of begging, some for stealing, and some to obtain the advantage of the charities which exist in London, and many of them to get out of the way and hide themselves.”
By this time, moreover, the possibilities of getting accommodation further afield was beginning to come into view.
“With the facilities for coming by the early trains and the various tramways that we have now at a cheap rate, the rents of many of the inhabitants of Whitechapel would not be increased by moving from it.”
That the obligation to re-house was imposed alone upon the public authorities and upon railway companies was rather inequitable. In many districts the destruction of houses, and the unhousing of the inhabitants, was carried out on a far larger scale by private owners, and no such obligation was imposed upon them. The policy, therefore, was decidedly onesided, and was very costly to the ratepayer who was in no way responsible for the proceedings of the private house-owner who had caused all the trouble.
The Committee reported in June, 1882. They expressed their opinion that—
“Nothing would contribute more to the social, moral, and physical improvement of a certain portion of the working classes than the improvement of the houses and places in which they live.”
They stated that “very great hardship would often follow if the provision for the replacement in or near the area of displacement were wholly done away with.”
“The special calling of many of the work people, the hours of their work, the employment of their children, the maintenance of their home life, the economy of living together in a family, the cheapness of food owing to the nearness of the great evening markets, &c., render it very desirable that a large portion should be enabled to re-house themselves in or near their old houses of living, and if no fresh dwellings be provided the evils of overcrowding will at once increase.
“Still, it is equally true that these observations do not apply to the whole population. Many without any special calling may live in one place as well as another. The facilities of transit recently offered by cheap trains, by boats, by tramways, &c., have enabled many to live in the suburbs who can do so consistently with their calling.”
“Your Committee are of opinion that the existing law, which requires that the improvement scheme shall provide for the accommodation of, at the least, as many persons of the working class as may be displaced, may be relaxed, and that the accommodation to be required should vary from half to two-thirds.”
As a matter of fact very few, if any, of the families thus dispossessed returned for the purpose of occupying the new buildings.
Indeed one witness[154] said that—
“Neither the Peabody Trustees, nor—more or less—the other Artizans’ Dwellings Companies would take in the class of people who had been displaced.”
The Committee called attention to the importance of favouring in every way facilities of transit between the metropolis and its suburbs by an extension of cheap workmen’s trains.
And they also recommended that—
“All existing sanitary legislation should be more fully enforced, especially in those parts of the suburbs where buildings are so rapidly springing up.”
A Bill was at once introduced into Parliament, the object of which was to lay down such rules for estimating the value of the premises to be purchased as would prevent the owners of insanitary property obtaining an undue price for it—“the intention of Parliament being that the owner should not gain by having allowed his property to fall into an insanitary state.”
It was passed, and as an Act it further empowered the Secretary of State, under certain circumstances, to dispense with the obligation of re-housing the people to a greater extent than one-half of those displaced.
Into the detailed intricacies of many of these Housing Acts it is really useless to enter; and the enumeration of the details tends to obscure the broad and essential features of the whole subject.
In the effort of the “owners” to repudiate the responsibility for their or their predecessors’ infamous neglect, and to shift the blame for the appalling state of affairs on the middlemen and the occupiers; in the effort of the middlemen to evade their responsibilities by availing themselves of every obstructive device the law so lavishly placed at their disposal, and of both of them to extort the utmost amount of money they could for their disease-begetting, death-distributing property; the unfortunate occupiers were the immediate sufferers and victims, and a huge wrong and injury was inflicted upon the community.
It was mere tinkering with the subject to pass an Act removing some petty technical difficulties for putting some previous and very limited Act in force, and to diminish the expense and delay in carrying out the Act.
It was farcical to amend the Standing Orders of Parliament, fixing twenty instead of fifteen as the minimum number of houses in any one parish which could be acquired by the Metropolitan Board without preparing a re-housing scheme, as if that would revolutionise the condition of the housing of the people of London, and yet something not far short of revolution was required if the housing of the people was to be reformed, and put on a proper sanitary basis.
It is manifest that what was being dealt with by these Acts was only a fragment of the great housing question, and that such destruction of insanitary buildings as could possibly be effected by these means would amount to but a fraction of those unfit for human habitation in London, and would not touch the thousands of inhabited houses in every parish of London which were insanitary in varying degree, and dangerous to the individual and public health. It is clear, too, that if the insanitary conditions of the housing of the people were to be dealt with on a large scale, and with success, measures must be taken to secure the sanitary condition of the houses which such legislation did not touch. Otherwise general improvement was impossible, and existing conditions must continue indefinitely to flourish, and to produce their inevitable and enormous crop of deadly evil.
How urgent was the need for reform in some parts of London may be gauged from the description of the condition of things in Bethnal Green in 1883, given by the Medical Officer of Health of the Parish:—
“The portions of the district I have examined include nearly 2,000 houses.
“I have visited and carefully examined almost every one of these houses, and I must confess that a condition of things has been thereby revealed to me of which I had no previous conception, for I do not think I visited a single house without finding some grave sanitary defect; in a very large number the walls of the staircases, passages, and rooms are black with filth, the ceilings are rotten and bulging, the walls damp and decayed, the roofs defective, and the ventilation and lighting most imperfect.
“The dampness of the walls is in some instances due to defects in the roof, but in many the moisture rises from the earth owing to the walls being constructed without any damp-proof course….
“In almost every house I visited I found the yard, paving, and surface drainage, in a more or less defective condition, a quantity of black fœtid mud having accumulated in places.”
And all this was nearly thirty years after Bethnal Green had been endowed with a local sanitary authority.
Returns given occasionally by the Medical Officers of Health revealed the appalling state of insanitation in which people still lived; streets where in nearly every house nuisances dangerous to health were found to exist; a “Place” in St. Pancras where the death-rate in 1881 had been 57 per 1,000, or 2½ times as much as that for London; a “Place” in St. Marylebone with 22 six-roomed houses, where the births were less in number than the deaths, and the existing population were extinguishing themselves. And overcrowding had increased in many parts of the metropolis, and some of the Medical Officers of Health had come to regard it as inevitable and impossible to prevent.
The reports of the Select Committees of 1881 and 1882, and the outbreak of cholera in Egypt in 1883 which awakened apprehensions of its spread to England, quickened public interest in the sanitary condition of the metropolis, evoked a stronger expression of public opinion upon the existing evils, stirred up lethargic Vestries and District Boards to some special show of activity, and awakened the Local Government Board, and brought it into the field as an active inciter of the local sanitary authorities to adequate efforts to improve the sanitary condition of the people, and to grapple with the terrible problems of insanitary dwellings, of overcrowding, and the consequent physical misery and degradation of hundreds of thousands of the people.
The position of affairs had become clearer than it had ever been before, and its magnitude and importance was beginning to be appreciated, and the iniquities which were being allowed, and the evils which were tolerated, were coming more into the light of day and were being better understood and realised. Though in many ways there had been progress and improvement, yet in many others, of the most vital consequence, it was evident things were scarcely moving at all.
It was now manifest that at the rate the demolition of slums and the re-housing of the people could be carried out, a very great length of time must elapse; so great that the remedy must be of the slowest, whilst, by itself, it would be wholly inadequate; and it was beginning to be realised that many of the local authorities, instead of administering the laws they were charged by Parliament to administer, were even obstructing and opposing sanitary reforms.
Once again the alarm of cholera woke up the Vestries, and some of the recorded results of such wakening are an illuminating exposure of the normal state of inaction on their part, and of the chronic insanitary condition of their parishes not revealed at other times.
In Westminster:—
“In anticipation of cholera a thorough inspection by a house-to-house visitation through the whole of the united parishes has been undertaken. Naturally many defects were found, and directions given as to what was required. The work has been completed and I consider that the parishes are now in a very satisfactory condition.”
In Poplar, 2,114 houses were inspected, of which only 334 were found to be in good order.
In Lambeth, six men were engaged temporarily for the purpose of a special inspection.
“11,493 houses were visited; 5,594 required sanitary improvements…. In many houses several defects were reported, bringing up the total of sanitary improvements to 12,014.”
In Bermondsey, no fewer than 5,992 notices were issued for the execution of sanitary works which were required.
The Sanitary Act of 1866 had enacted that—
“It shall be the duty of the Nuisance Authority to make, from time to time, either by itself or its officers, inspection of the district with a view to ascertain what nuisances exist calling for abatement under the powers of the Nuisances Removal Acts, and to enforce the provisions of the said Acts in order to cause the abatement thereof.”
But by many Vestries the duty had been either entirely neglected or very imperfectly performed.
The Medical Officers of Health were unceasing in pressing upon their employers the necessity of inspection.
“It is only by the constant inspection and re-inspection of property inhabited by tenants of this class (tenement-houses) that the houses can be kept in decent sanitary condition,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green.
“My opinion of the value of regular house-to-house inspection throughout the year,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Poplar, “is more confirmed than ever, and that such is needed for the proper sanitary supervision of the district.”
“It is by constant inspection,” wrote another Medical Officer of Health, “that the Vestry can best do its duty in preserving the lives and health of its parishioners.”
“Facts are stubborn things,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. Mary, Newington, after 28 years’ sanitary work himself, “and they clearly demonstrate the necessity for a continual supervision of the dwellings of the poor (more especially) and for as constant an attack on all removable insanitary conditions. This after all is the real work to be done.”
But the Vestries and District Boards paid little heed to this advice.
Naturally, inspection was not welcome to sanitary defaulters or misdoers; naturally, the light of the sanitary policeman’s lantern into the dark places of slum-owners and ‘house-knackers’ was resented. It was an invasion of the rights of property, of the privacy of an Englishman’s home, even if he did not live in that home himself, but let it to somebody else to live in. “Why should not a man do as he liked with his own?”
And so, as inspection was, from the house “owners’” point of view, an unpopular thing, too much money was not spent by Vestries upon Sanitary Inspectors’ salaries, and even in the best inspected parishes or districts the portion inspected was small indeed compared with the whole of the parish or district. How much was left undone, and left undone for years, was proved over and over again by whole areas being represented by their Medical Officers of Health as insanitary, or by their having to shut up houses as unfit for human habitation.
The attempt made by Parliament in 1866—in the scheme embodied in the 35th Section of the Sanitary Act—to provide a remedy for overcrowding, and to secure the maintenance of a moderate standard of cleanliness and sanitation in the tenement-houses, had been an excellent one; and Parliament improved the scheme in 1874 by extending its scope. Almost the whole of the existing evils lay in these tenement-houses, for it was there where the great mass of the disease, filth, and misery of London was to be found, and there where the greatest overcrowding, and the deepest moral and physical degradation existed.
But with the few exceptions already described practically no use had been made of the powers.
“Vested rights in filth and dirt” had still too large a representation upon, and too powerful a grip of the local sanitary authorities for any action to be adopted which would entail trouble upon the possessors of those rights.
Some Vestries, for form’s sake, had made regulations but never put them in force. A few had tentatively put them in force, and promptly dropped them. A large proportion of them did not take even that much trouble, but simply ignored them altogether; and so, some seventeen years after the Act was passed, the whole scheme had ceased to be operative, and was in complete abeyance.
In December, 1883, the Local Government Board, having realised the gravity of the situation, endeavoured to get the Vestries and District Boards to take action, but the Local Government Board could not compel them to make such regulations, as there was no power of compulsion, and there was no penalty for refusal to enforce or even to make them.[155]
The Vestries and District Boards were, in fact, masters of the situation, and could act or not act, just as they pleased—and most of them did not act.
Various were the excuses made by the Vestries for doing nothing.
The feeling which prevailed in the Vestry of Clerkenwell was that—
“The regulations generally were of such an inquisitorial and troublesome character that they were unsuited to an Englishman’s home. For instance, it was shown that in some cases even clergymen occupied lodgings which would be reached by these regulations.”
And yet there were 4,700 houses in the parish to which such regulations would have been applicable, and where their application would have been of the utmost benefit to thousands of families. And from 1866 up to 1884 this power might have been, but was not used.
The Vestry of Bethnal Green was—
“Unanimously of opinion that it was unnecessary to make the regulations, and considered the existing powers sufficient.”
The Vestry of St. George-in-the-East resolved—
“That whilst fully recognising the necessity of continuing to carry out with vigour the general sanitary laws, the Vestry did not consider it advisable in the present depressed condition of trade in the parish to incur the additional expense of enforcing special sanitary regulations for houses let in lodgings” (estimated to number above 4,000).
In Westminster, the District Board resolved that no further steps should be taken as regarded making or enforcing regulations, as the Board—
“Already possessed ample powers under existing statutes to enable it to deal promptly and effectively with such sanitary defects as the proposed regulations are intended to remedy”—a contention which, if true, threw discredit upon themselves, as there were thousands of filthy and insanitary abodes in that district which were not dealt with at all.
St. Pancras Vestry refused (1883) to make regulations, though its Medical Officer of Health had made more than one appeal to them to do so.
“I would beg to remind the Vestry that until proper regulations are made and enforced in St. Pancras for this class of houses, the Vestry have not exercised to their full extent the powers they possess for improving the condition of their poorer parishioners, and that the moral and physical welfare of those who are least able to help themselves is a question which concerns the Vestry as much, if not more, than any other it is their duty to consider.”
And in the following year he wrote:—
“Upon the Metropolitan Sanitary Authorities rests a great responsibility, for it is absolutely within their power to insist upon all dwelling-houses being maintained in condition fit for human habitation, and they may, within limits, prevent overcrowding, which is no less disastrous to health than to morality.
“I have repeatedly recommended the Vestry to adopt regulations for houses let in lodgings, and have pointed out the power they would then possess for ensuring tenemented houses being maintained in proper sanitary condition. I would desire, in my last report, to urge upon them the further consideration of this subject.”
There were doubtless difficulties in putting regulations such as these in operation—as, indeed, there are in putting all laws in operation—but two Vestries had put them most successfully in operation, and therefore the difficulties were not so great as those who were opposed to them insisted.
Some of the Vestries stated that they could equally well attain the same results under the powers of the Nuisances Removal Acts; but that was not the fact, for there were many and considerable advantages in this form of procedure over the procedure prescribed in other Acts relating to health and sanitation. Indeed, the Medical Officer of Health for Fulham declared (in 1884) that—
“This section gave almost all the legal power that could be wished for to place the dwellings of the poor in a proper sanitary condition.”
And in the following year he wrote:—
“It will therefore in future be the fault of the Sanitary Authority if the dwellings of the poor are not kept as they should be.”
The Medical Officer of Health for Camberwell, discussing the general aspect of the matter, wrote (1884):—
“I cannot help remarking on the feebleness which constantly spoils the best intentioned sanitary legislation, and which is conspicuous in the enactments relating to houses let in lodgings.
“The Local Government Board have declared that certain enactments are in force, but they cannot compel the Vestries to frame any regulations of their own, nor even can they compel Vestries to carry out and enforce regulations which the Vestries have framed and the Board have sanctioned.
“Now I am one of those who think that by the judicious regulation of lodging-houses of certain kinds, and in certain localities, very much good might be effected, and much advantage would accrue both to the lodgers and to the public. But it is clear that it ought never to have been left to individual Vestries in a place like London, to adopt or not to adopt, the enactments referred to, simply according to their pleasure, still more that they should never have been allowed to frame inconsistent orders or regulations….
“The opportunity (of the Act of 1874) might have been seized, not for giving an empty power to the Local Government Board, but for requiring the Metropolitan Board of Works to frame suitable regulations for the whole of the metropolis, which the Vestries might have been required to enforce as they are required to enforce other provisions of the Sanitary Acts.”
A similar opinion was expressed by the District Board of St. Olave, Southwark, which, after stating that it had been one of the first to make regulations, it had been found unnecessary or impracticable to enforce them, went on to say:—
“The fact of the enactment having been practically inoperative throughout the metropolis, … it was considered that it would be unjust to enforce stringent regulations in the district, while in other parts of the metropolis regulations might differ in principle, and be neglected in practice: and what the Board wanted to see was a system of sanitary regulations which should be strictly uniform throughout the metropolis, and in which there should be no option on the part of local authorities of enforcing or neglecting.”
The explanation of this general inaction was the simple and obvious one that on those bodies there were many whose interests ran counter to the adoption of the Act, and what its adoption entailed; the sanitary obligations, the annual lime-washings, &c., would entail expense; they were not going to inflict the cost upon themselves or upon their friends if they could avoid doing so. And as they could avoid it, the great bulk of the local authorities deliberately ignored the remedy devised by Parliament, and with most reprehensible callousness let the evils go on and increase. But while they remained inactive, death and disease did not.
Progress in sanitation was retarded also somewhat by other circumstances.
The Medical Officers of Health were under no obligation to reside in their district, and were at liberty to take private practice, and so the whole of their time was not given to their public duty.[156]
But furthermore, they were in a state of dependence on their employers, which naturally would often prevent their reporting fully upon sanitary matters, though, happily, there appear to have been few who were influenced by this consideration. And some of the Vestries and District Boards did not hesitate to put pressure upon their Medical Officers to prevent energy on their part. It was stated in evidence before the Select Committee in 1882 that a Medical Officer would very soon “bring a hornet’s nest round his ears if he attempted to do his duty strictly and independently.”
Lord Shaftesbury declared, in 1884,[157] that he was quite certain that—
“They would never have the laws of health properly given effect to, until they asserted the independence of the Health Officers.”
Nor were the Sanitary Inspectors as efficient as they might have been, though there had been a great improvement in the class of man appointed.
The Chief Sanitary Inspector for Clerkenwell[158] reported:—
“The two men (in Clerkenwell) are not very active. It is the greatest trouble I have to get the men to do their duty.”
“The Sanitary Inspectors have not always shown as much zeal and interest as they might have done, but lately they have improved…. It is openly talked about in a good many districts in London that a system of bribing goes on.”[159]
But those who were energetic were also discouraged by the same pressure which damped some of the energies of the Medical Officers of Health.
The Medical Officer of Health for Fulham wrote, in 1884:—
“So many are the vested interests that Sanitary Officers are obliged in the performance of their duty to interfere with, that they must be prepared to meet with injustice and opposition in almost all directions. It is not at all surprising that the dwellings of the poor in London should be in an insanitary condition seeing the great obstacles public sanitary officers have in the performance of their duties.”
And yet there were many who did their work well, and who did much to improve the conditions of living of those who were under their care or charge; and did it in the face of many obstacles and much discouragement, and of all the opposition that vested interests could bring to bear against them.
Many of the Vestries and District Boards were not only not above reproach, but were strongly to be condemned.
Sir Charles Dilke, then President of the Local Government Board, speaking in 1883, said:—
“There were some parishes in London which had very zealously tried to work the existing law, but, on the other hand, there were more parishes the government of which was a flagrant scandal.”
And Mr. Chamberlain, in an article in the Fortnightly Review of December, 1883, wrote:—
“In the metropolis, where the evil is greatest, the want of an efficient and thoroughly representative municipal government stands in the way of reform.
“The Vestries, often in the hands of cliques and chosen at elections which excite no public interest, are largely composed of small house-property owners, who cannot be expected to be enthusiastic in putting the law in force against themselves.”
And in the House of Commons, on the 4th of March, 1884, Sir Charles Dilke stated that—
“In Clerkenwell, the two joint dictators of the parish, who had control of the Vestry and its leading Committee, one of them being Chairman of the principal Committee, were the largest owners in the whole district of Clerkenwell of bad or doubtful property…. In Clerkenwell there were fourteen house-farmers on the Vestry and twelve publicans who seemed to work very much with them.”
Nothing more decisively demonstrates the hostility of the Vestries to the Act of 1866, indeed to all this branch of sanitary reform, than the fact that they would not make adequate provision for the performance of the sanitary duties imposed on them by divers Acts of Parliament.
A return compiled by the Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green in 1885, from information supplied him by the Medical Officers of Health of thirty-eight Vestries, shows how the local sanitary authorities crippled sanitary work by a wholly inadequate staff of Inspectors.