The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sanitary Evolution of London, by Henry Lorenzo Jephson

In some ways the local authorities were awakening to their responsibilities, and beginning to avail themselves of some of the provisions placed by Parliament at their disposal.

In Paddington, St. Giles’, and Rotherhithe, the Vestries had adopted the Baths and Washhouses Act of 1846, and thus helped to promote habits of cleanliness, and to diminish some of the insanitary evils consequent on the tenements being turned into temporary wash-rooms.

And in St. James’ (Westminster) and Lambeth, mortuaries had been provided, which, in some cases, at any rate, obviated some of the insanitary evils consequent on the retention of dead bodies for long periods in single-roomed tenements where death had been caused by contagious or infectious diseases.

More action was being taken, too, as regards the disinfection of rooms where there had been cases of infectious disease. Thus in Lambeth in 1877–8, 824 houses were disinfected.

Here and there, too, the owners of noxious trades were being compelled to adopt methods rendering their businesses less insanitary and objectionable to their neighbourhoods.

The Local Government Board had caused an elaborate inquiry to be made by Dr. Ballard as to—

“‘In what measure and by what means nuisances and injury to health from offensive businesses might be avoided,’ and the report led to quite a satisfactory result.

“It showed that by the application of such knowledge as was at command, all or nearly all businesses that are in a serious degree offensive might be carried on either without offence, or with such important reduction of offence, as should make it tolerable, or even trivial.”[131]

In Fulham several piggeries were closed by law; not without regret, apparently, for the Medical Officer of Health stated in his report:—

“It certainly is very hard on the pig keepers individually, but it is in accordance with the recognised law of civilisation, that the interests of the few must be sacrificed to the welfare of the many.”

Upon one course of action all the Medical Officers of Health were in agreement—the absolute necessity of inspection and supervision of the houses of the people. In season and out of season they advised it, and urged it as the most essential and the most useful of all duties.

In support of these views they could point to the results of inspection and supervision in the registered Common Lodging Houses.

In the parish of Spitalfields (in Whitechapel, 1880) there were 109 of these houses containing 454 rooms registered to accommodate 3,992 lodgers. The class of persons occupying them were, notoriously, the very lowest.

“We failed to learn that any respectable mechanic with his wife and family ever applied at these houses for lodging accommodation. Yet,” reported the Sanitary Inspector (1880), “we discovered no case of overcrowding. The bedding was clean; the yards and closets were in a good sanitary condition; there was a good water supply, and the walls and ceilings of the houses were clean.”

If these results were obtainable in dealing with the worst classes, in the overcrowded parts of Whitechapel, a fortiori, inspection and supervision would have been productive of similar benefits among the general tenement population.

The Medical Officer of Health for St. George-in-the-East referred to the low mortality in model lodging-houses, where also there was supervision.

“There we find good sound dwellings, &c., &c. No overcrowding is permitted, only a certain number in family being accepted as tenants. Cleanliness on their part is expected—enforced if necessary—or a notice to quit is speedily given.”

While thus recommending inspection, supervision, and compulsory rules, another view was also expressed.[132]

“As laws have been enacted for the abatement of overcrowding, it is easy to say: ‘let those in authority put them in force’; but I much fear unless the question is taken up with a spirit of love towards the poorer and more ignorant classes by the upper and middle classes, and measures adopted to give instruction to the poor in matters concerning their physical well-being, the existing state of things will long continue.”

“No class will become civilised by being left to themselves, as unfortunately is the case in the numerous back slums of London, but improvement, physically and socially, can only be effected by a superior class mixing and associating with a class below them.”

“The poor want more than model dwellings, more than warmth, food and clothing; they want humanity, and the knowledge of the laws governing health.”

Unfortunately those remedies were, at best, a matter of considerable time, and improvement could be but of slow growth. Immediate measures were required to cope with the appalling evils, and for the house-owners, even more than for the unfortunate tenants, were supervision and compulsory rules requisite.

But not one tithe of the Vestries and District Boards would enforce against owners the regulations under the 35th Section of the Sanitary Act of 1866.

Though something was being done as regarded the inspection of houses and the repair of sanitary defects, hardly any progress could be said to have been made for the improvement of the dwellings of the poor.

The Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act (Torrens) of 1868 was to a small extent being made use of.

In some parishes houses considered by the Vestry or District Board as unfit for human habitation had been closed, and were only allowed to be reopened upon proper repairs having been carried out. In other cases where no amount of repairs could put the house into habitable condition, the landlord was directed to pull down the buildings (without his receiving any compensation), and, in default, the Vestry could pull it down at his expense. The site remained unoccupied, until the owner or landlord used it again for building purposes, or sold it to some one else.

In St. Giles’ (1873–4) the District Board has been enabled under the Act to enforce “considerable improvements in and immediately adjoining the worst parts of St. Giles’.” (Houses in yards and courts were demolished.)

In St. Luke the total number of houses “pulled down or closed” amounted by the year 1875 to 104.[133]

“Applying or threatening to apply the Act to houses that could be fairly subjected to it. Besides having 150 houses, chiefly belonging to one owner, put into a complete sanitary repair, it has been actually applied to 136 houses; 70 thoroughly repaired, 40 demolished, 26 to be rebuilt, and 10 to be closed.”

There were many difficulties in using the Act. Notice of houses being unfit had to be given to “owners.” A certain case in Chelsea was mentioned where—

“There were freeholders, lessees, under-lessees, and sub-lessees, and their trustees and mortgagees, and besides there were the occupiers.”

But in the great majority of parishes or districts no steps were taken under the Act. The Act did not give any compensation to the owners of condemned property, as Parliament had declared by it that compensation should not be given to those who permitted their property to fall into such a state, whilst at the same time extracting the fullest benefit from it.

To such a doctrine there was, of course, the strongest hostility by all those who held the opinion that a man might do as he liked with his own, and extract from it the uttermost farthing regardless of the infliction of disease and suffering and death upon those who were so unfortunate as to become his tenants, and reckless as to the injury his action was inflicting upon the community at large. And so:—

“The reluctance of the local authorities to take away a man’s property was insuperable, and consequently no very great demolition took place.”

“The Act is almost inoperative. The highly penal nature of this statute, which in the event of demolition gives no compensation to the owner whose property is destroyed, makes Courts of Justice extend every possible leniency to the owner. Moreover it does not contemplate any scheme for the reconstruction of the houses demolished, or other provision for population displaced….”

And the Medical Officer of Health for St. James’, Westminster, where no action was taken under it, wrote (1872–3):—

“It is scarcely necessary to say that such an Act could not be acted upon without the grossest injustice to the owners of property, and the infliction of the greatest hardship on the poor.”

But there was another view, much nearer justice, which was given expression to before the Select Committee in 1881.

“An owner of property who allowed his property to fall into such a miserable state as to be unfit for human habitation is not a man that deserves the slightest consideration of any kind from Parliament—he ought to be treated rather as a criminal than an owner of property. To compensate him is a mistake entirely.”

And the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel said it was his opinion that—

“If the landlord leaves his house in a very bad state, and will not listen to any representations, he ought not to be paid by the public when he is creating a nuisance.”

The Act of 1868 having helped so little to a solution of the housing problem, and the matter being one of ever-increasing urgency, an effort was made to deal with it in 1875, when a Bill for facilitating the improvement of the working classes in large towns was introduced into Parliament by Sir R. A. Cross, and was carried.

It often happened that in some of the worst slums, the houses were the property of several owners, and it was not therefore in the power of any one owner to make such alterations as were necessary for the public health.

“Dealing with whole areas, where the houses are so structurally defective as to be incapable of repair, and so ill-placed with reference to each other as to require, to bring them up to a proper sanitary standard, nothing short of demolition and reconstruction. Accordingly, in this case, the local authority, armed with compulsory powers, at once enters as a purchaser, and on completion of the purchase proceeds forthwith to a scheme of reconstruction.”[135]

An official representation, that the houses within a particular area were unfit for human habitation, was to be made to the Central Authority, the Metropolitan Board of Works, by the Medical Officer of Health of a Vestry or District Board, and the Metropolitan Board was empowered to declare the same to be an unhealthy area, and to make an improvement scheme in respect of it. If it decided that an improvement scheme ought to be made, it should forthwith make such a scheme, which, after sundry formalities, was embodied in a Provisional Order which had to be confirmed by Parliament.

The compensation to be paid for the property so taken might be settled by agreement between the Metropolitan Board of Works and the owner, but where no agreement was arrived at, an arbitrator was to be appointed by the Secretary of State. The arbitrator was to assess the compensation at the fair market value of the lands concerned, due regard being had to the nature and then condition of the property, but no additional allowance was to be made in respect of the compulsory purchase of the area.

The value settled, and the land having passed into the hands of the Metropolitan Board of Works, the obligation was imposed on that body of pulling down the buildings, and selling, or letting, the cleared ground for the erection of improved dwellings for the same number of people.

The hardship of working class and poorer persons being turned out of houses and no other accommodation being provided for them was formally recognised in this matter, and the scheme had to provide for the—

“Accommodation of at the least as many persons of the working class as may be displaced in the area … in suitable dwellings which, unless there are any reasons to the contrary, shall be situate within the limits of the same area, or in the vicinity thereof. It shall also provide for proper sanitary arrangements.”

The Act was intended to relieve owners of such property without loss or benefit, and several representations as to unhealthy areas were made to the Metropolitan Board. The facts stated in these representations and subsequently brought out in evidence in the public inquiries held, were illuminating as to the terrible depths which the conditions of life of numbers of the people had been allowed to reach, without the intervention of the law, or the staying hand of the freeholder, lessees, or sub-lessees, who derived financial profit from the property.

“The area, though not large, contained abominations sufficient for an area three times its size. Here were crowded houses, built no one knows when; how they stood was a marvel, their walls bulged, their floors sunk, an indescribable musty odour pervaded them; water supply, drainage, closets, all were bad, and in my opinion, nothing could remedy such a state of things short of pulling down the rickety buildings.”

“The area is inhabited by about 800 people, and the death-rate is about 36 per 1,000.”

In another of these schemes, in one Court (Sugar Loaf Court) the death-rate was 105·2 per 1,000.

The Medical Officer of Health for the Strand gave a report on the sanitary state of Bedfordbury:—

“Bedfordbury is the black spot of this parish. It and the contiguous courts are a little over three acres. Population census of 1871 = 2,163. It is a long narrow street of 47 houses with courts leading out of it on either side. Some of the courts are blind and very narrow, thus rendering light and air difficult of access.

“These 47 houses are so old and dilapidated that it is quite impossible to make them fit and proper habitation for the poor to live in.

“Even this bright and sunny morning the staircases were so dark that you could not see a single stair—there was not a scrap of ventilation, and no means of getting light or air to them.

“No. 37 is occupied by 33 people living in six rooms; on the second floor the two rooms are tenanted by two families, respectively five and seven, and the third floor by two families of six each.”

No. 41 was very similar. “These two houses may be taken as a type of the condition of the houses in Bedfordbury.”

“Off this street were various Courts, one of them of six three-roomed houses; its width three feet five. Another Court—seven houses, 20 rooms in all—population 71. All of them apparently as bad, or worse, than those in the street—miserable hovels, the birthplace of disease and vice, and centres for infectious diseases, which are likely to spread through the whole community.”

The births and deaths were almost equivalent. In 1872, there were 92 births and 95 deaths. In 1873, there were 108 births and 108 deaths.

“In 1874, there were 95 deaths and only 82 births. The deaths are exclusive of those people who have been removed from the neighbourhood and gone elsewhere to die, either in the hospital or the workhouse, where a great many people at the present time do go to die.”

“Here legions of crimes and legions of vices unite, fostering diseases of body, weakened intellect, and utter destruction of the soul; leading inevitably to a career of wickedness and sin.”

Confirmatory of the Medical Officer of Health’s description, was that given in a memorial to the Metropolitan Board by 118 persons: “The Clergy, Medical Men, Bankers, Residents, Professional men, and Traders of the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in support of a scheme of improvement.”

“Bedfordbury, with its swarming, ill-built, badly ventilated, rotten, inappropriate, unsavoury tenements, has seemed to us a very forcing pit of immorality.”

“There is a very large number of interests to be paid for. There is first the freeholder; then there is the first lessee; then there are numbers of under-lessees, and all the trades of those little shops, and they ought all to get something.”

And another area was the “Great Wild Street Scheme,” in the parish of St. Giles’-in-the-Fields.[136]

“This area has long been a hot-bed of disease. It contains about 5½ acres, and 227 houses stand upon it inhabited by 3,897 persons.

Great Wild Street	58	houses containing	926	persons.
Drury Lane	31	„ „	425	„
Princes’ Street	14	„ „	315	„
Wild Court	14	„ „	346	„

“Many of the courts and passages are approached by a narrow passage under a house at either end which renders ventilation very defective. Some of the houses are built close together and have dark passages and staircases, others have no back yards, and their sanitary arrangements are placed in the basement. Health under such circumstances is impossible. This part of St. Giles’ has long been noted for its heavy sick and death rates, especially from diseases of the respiratory and pulmonary organs, and from typhus fever and other zymotic disorders in their most contagious forms.”[137]

Dr. Lovett, the Medical Officer of Health, stated that diseases were very rife in it, and a very high rate of mortality as compared with the number of cases.

And he added, “The district is a nest of zymotic diseases of the most contagious kind. In 1874, 27 cases of typhus were sent to Stockwell Hospital. This state of things cannot be dealt with under Torrens’ Act. The houses are built so close together, the people are so huddled together … you must make a clean sweep of the buildings.”

Another of these insanitary areas was Pear Tree Court, in Clerkenwell, “consisting of small tenements of an exceedingly inferior description. All are more or less calculated to engender disease and filth. The condition of the property has been such as to be a reproach to the neighbourhood.

“Occupied by the very poorest of the community. When disease made its appearance it has been fostered and engendered and continued by the state in which the property and its surroundings have been—the death-rate is nearly double of that which prevails over the whole parish.

“Some of the tenements are of the most wretched description—some constructed of lath and plaster—some wooden houses—the floors rotted partly by the cisterns, partly by rain coming in.

“In some cases the sanitary convenience is in the very rooms themselves—also the water-butt—thereby engendering and perpetuating the worst kind of zymotic disease: the chosen home of fever and also of smallpox.

“… When we come to those occupying only one room each, and remembering that in many of these rooms the closet, the water-butt, the water supply, and everything else was contained in the room itself, and that there was no provision for manure, ashes, or refuse of any kind, you can easily conceive what a wretched state of things that presents. On the average there were 2·80 persons per room permanently occupying them. So it cannot be wondered at an outbreak of the zymotic disease finding a resting-place there, and that such a locality becomes a plague spot in the neighbourhood, and extends its ravages thence into healthier neighbourhoods.”

Some of the houses the Medical Officer of Health had known to be in the same state for the last 36 years.

“… An ill-constructed, unhealthy warren;” some were “regular old shanties—you could hardly find anything like those in the metropolis, they are worth looking at as a curiosity.”

“Some in Clerkenwell Close are large and very old wooden houses, all tumbledown. There is no straight line in roof or windows—the windows are like cabin windows.”

One more case is worth giving details about, as it is one of those rare cases in which one gets a more continuous account of the effects of slum ownership than is usually accessible.[138]

This was the Little Coram Street scheme, in St. George, Bloomsbury, in St. Giles’ District, comprising 119 houses—1,027 inhabitants.

The Medical Officer of Health, in his representation to the Metropolitan Board, gave a minute description of the place.

“The houses are principally let to cab owners, who stable their horses in the lower floor, and reside with their families in the rooms over; they are without back yards, and the rooms mainly derive their ventilation from the staircase leading out of the stable, so that the air is contaminated by the noxious gases which issue from it. All the closets are inside the houses; there are no dustbins, and the drinking-water is often obtained from underground tanks, which serve both for stable, cleaning, and culinary purposes.

“The district now represented as unfit, &c., constitutes the worst part of the parish of St. George, Bloomsbury, and has been notorious for years as largely contributing to the sick and death rates of the sub-district.”

In 1862 it was reported that it had “habitually a much higher mortality than the rest of the parish.”

In 1870 smallpox broke out first in it, and 25 cases occurred in a short time. During the same year the deaths in Chapel Place from three classes of disease—the zymotic, pulmonary, and tubercular—having been 17, the death-rate to population was 70 per 1,000 without reckoning those from other causes.

In 1871 the general mortality was 50 per cent. greater in it than that in the parish, whilst that of cholera was four times greater.

In 1874, nine cases of typhoid and typhus fevers occurred in it, “and the locality was conspicuous for diseases and premature deaths.”

Asked what class of disease the people chiefly suffer from, the Medical Officer of Health replied:—

“Mostly from debility—zymotic diseases, and infectious diseases—such as whooping cough, typhus, typhoid fever, cholera, diarrhœa, measles, scarlet-fever, &c., &c., smallpox, and gin liver disease…. They are obliged to resort to gin on account of the close and depressing condition in which the people live in these Courts free from the public eye.

“The women have to stop at home; they do not get out, and therefore do not get any excitement. Then they take their drops. You can often see women at twelve o’clock in the day drinking in public-houses.”

“The houses are so old that the air is really poisonous; it is full of miasma and dirt … all the whitewashing and ventilation in the world would do no good. The condition of the property has got worse year by year.”

These are but some of the cases about which “representations” were made to the Metropolitan Board of Works—sufficient, however, as illustration of others. And what an awful and appalling picture they present. Had the condition described been only temporary, a mere passing phase, it would have been dreadful enough; but it had been going on for years—it was permanently so—producing year after year its fearful crop of misery and crime, of disease and death, and scattering broadcast the seeds of disease and death, the “owners” all the while exacting the uttermost farthing they could in rents from the miserable inhabitants, and placidly and remorselessly giving disease and death in return: going on, too, during twenty years of government by “local authority”—Vestry and District Board—and nearly ten years after the passing of the Sanitary Act of 1866, with its provisions for the abatement of overcrowding and the maintenance of a certain standard of cleanliness.

A few years’ experience of the working of the Housing Act of 1875 proved that it was dilatory, cumbrous, and costly to the ratepayers of London.

The arbitrator frequently awarded to owners of places unfit for habitation compensation equal or almost equal in amount to what would have been given if the houses had been good and sound. This the Metropolitan Board felt to be an injustice to the ratepayers upon whom the charge fell, and an encouragement to owners of houses occupied by poor people to allow them to fall into or remain in a dilapidated condition.

In the year 1879 the Board accordingly made representations to the Government, and suggested that the owners of unhealthy houses should not be compensated in proportion to the profit they derived from such houses, but according to their value as places pronounced unfit for habitation. The Board also pointed out—“the great loss entailed upon the ratepayers by the obligation which the Board was under to provide for the accommodation in suitable dwellings in the same area of at least as many persons as were displaced. This obligation rendered it necessary for the Board to sell, at a very low price, ground, which, with the dilapidated buildings upon it, had cost the Board seven or eight times as much, and which, if the Board had been free to dispose of it for commercial purposes, and to provide for the dispossessed people elsewhere, would have realised a much higher price.”[139]

On the six areas which had been sold to the Peabody Trustees it was estimated that the Board—or in other words, the ratepayers of London—would lose the large sum of £562,000.

The Board suggested that it should have power to dispose of the cleared ground for commercial purposes, and to provide for the re-housing of the displaced families in other parts of London.

This latter suggestion was not adopted, but Parliament passed an Act in 1879 which to some extent lessened, though it by no means removed the defects of which the Board complained, for the Board declared that “after careful consideration, it thought it well not to prepare any more improvement schemes until some further experience has been gained of the working of the Amendment Act of 1879.”

And in 1879, also, an Act [140] was passed which nominally “amended,” but in reality destroyed the real good of Torrens’ Act of 1868, and gave the owner power to require the local authority to purchase the premises which had been condemned as unfit for human habitation, and which the local authorities were to rebuild and hold—thus practically relieving the worst class of slum house “owners” of any consequences for their malpractices, relieving them, too, in the most open way at the expense of the ratepaying public, as it empowered the Vestry “to levy a rate of twopence in the pound to bear this expense as well as that of building sanitary dwellings on the site.”

By one means or another it invariably worked out that the slum owner obtained large sums for his vile property, and that the public had to pay heavily for his iniquities.

The work which was within the power of the Vestries and District Boards to do, in connection with the sanitary condition of houses, was far more wide-reaching in extent, and more immediately effective than any the Central Authority could do under its powers. Practically the Vestries had under their supervision the sanitary condition of all the houses of London. Moreover they could act upon their own initiative, whereas the Central Authority could only act when representations were made to it.

But with few exceptions, they resolutely fought shy of dealing with the crucial evil—the condition of the tenement-house population of the metropolis.

“There is no doubt,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington, in 1871, “from the abundant experience and records of the Sanitary Department of this and other Vestries, that houses let out in single rooms, and to several families, have endangered the life of people, have favoured the spread of contagion, and are a source of pauperism and degradation.”

The various Health Acts gave them power to deal with most of the prevalent nuisances.

But no Act gave them such rapid and effective means of action, or so fixed upon the owner the responsibility and cost of keeping his houses which he let as tenement-houses in proper sanitary order, as did the Act of 1866 by its 35th Section.

This Act had conferred power upon them to make effective bye-laws or regulations as regarded such houses; and in 1874 the Sanitary Law Amendment Act conferred further powers upon them. Regulations could now be made as to the paving and drainage of premises, the ventilation of rooms, the separation of the sexes, and to securing notices being given to the Medical Officer of Health, and precautions being taken in case of any dangerously infectious disease occurring in a registered house.

By such regulations the notification of infectious disease occurring in tenement-houses could have been made compulsory, and such notification would have been of the very utmost value in enabling sanitary authorities to combat the ravages of infectious disease.

The regulations struck at the root of the very worst and most prevalent evils in the homes of the people, and had they been enforced, would have been a charter of health to millions of the people.

The Medical Officer of Health for Chelsea, in one of his reports, well enforced their importance.

“When it is remembered that the whole of the labouring population occupies but part of the house in which their families live; that in many houses three or four families live together; and not infrequently each family occupies only a single room; and when it is considered that whenever necessary all such houses may be registered, it will at once be seen how important is this regulation.”[141]

These sections nevertheless remained absolutely a dead letter in nearly every one of the metropolitan districts, and even the newly constituted Local Government Board did not exercise its power of declaring them to be in force in any district.

(a) In only seven parishes or districts [142] were regulations made and enforced; how imperfectly even in these is illustrated by Lambeth where, in 1873, 47 houses only had been registered—there being 29,000 in the parish, one half of which were probably let in lodgings.

The explanation usually put forward of the determination on the part of the Vestries not to enforce the sanitary laws as regarded houses was their regard for the financial interests of the ratepayers. But the real ground of their aversion was that action would put house-owners to expense. “Vested rights in filth and dirt” were strongly represented on the Vestries and District Boards.

“So long as vestrymen own little properties, and so long as their relations and friends do the same thing, and they are all mixed up in a friendly association, you can never get the prevention of the continuance of unhealthy tenements carried through.”[143]

And not only was there a passive but often an active opposition to work being performed which it was their duty to do.

A general inspection would have shown what houses ought to have been made subject to such regulations, but it would also have exposed too publicly the iniquities of house-owners, and would have entailed a heavy expense on those who left the houses in a perpetual state of dilapidation, insanitation, and filth; and so the staff of inspectors was kept as low as possible.

A thorough enforcement of the regulations would have necessitated a supervision of their houses by the owners in addition to expense.

Many straws showed which way the wind blew. Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green wrote:—

“It is by the constant inspection and reinspection of property inhabited by careless and destructive tenants that most good can be done. I recently felt it my duty to recommend a house-to-house inspection of the whole parish—a procedure urgently required to ascertain the condition of the drainage and water supply arrangements. I regret to say this recommendation was not acted upon.”

And the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras, in referring to house-to-house inspection, wrote:—

“This most important branch of all sanitary work has received as much attention as the number of the sanitary staff will admit.”

And so the regulations were not made, or if made were not enforced. And, as the result, the great masses of the working classes, and the poorer classes in the metropolis, were by the deliberate decision of the great majority of Vestries and District Boards deprived of the protection which Parliament had devised and provided for their sanitary and physical well-being; and all the well-known evils of overcrowding were indefinitely perpetuated.

Apart from the sense of duty or responsibility to the people which ought to have appealed to them, there were other motives which might have done so.

The Medical Officer of Health for Paddington called attention to one of them in 1872. He wrote:—

“(a) Sanitary supervision. (b) Removal to hospitals. (c) Disinfection. (d) Expenses in hospital. (e) Cost of burial. (f) Loss of work in wages. (g) Loss of life to the community. (h) Cost of widows and children.”

“… As the local rates are continually increasing for the relief of sickness and the support of widows and orphans, the building of asylums for the insane, and the providing of workhouse infirmaries for the debilitated and prematurely old, it is probable that local boards will direct more attention to the condition of the houses of the poor than they have hitherto done.”

The cost was brought home to them in 1871—“an exceptional year of mortality caused by the continued spread of smallpox.”

“It has been,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth, “one of the most alarming and expensive epidemics that have visited the country for a century. The cost in a pecuniary sense has been great, but it is nothing as compared to the cost of human life.

“No extravagance can be compared with that of sanitary neglect. Pounds are willingly paid for cure, where ha’pence would be grudged to prevent. Some diseases we can create, most we can propagate, and send on their errand of misery and destruction.”

In 1878 the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel again referred to the subject:—

“It may be asserted without fear of contradiction, that all money laid out for the improvement of the public health will secure an ample dividend….

“The alleviation of suffering and the prolongation of human life is the duty of every noble-minded man to endeavour to promote.

“It cannot be too frequently reiterated, too extensively known, that the rich not only pay a heavy pecuniary penalty, but often suffer a heavy affliction in themselves and families by neglecting to improve the sanitary condition of the houses and localities occupied by the poor. It is well known that defective sanitary arrangements in the poorer localities are the chief causes of disease among the poor, and when a contagious disease is once located it soon assumes an epidemic form and attacks, indiscriminately, all classes of the people.”

These views were sound and true, but the contingencies described always appeared remote, and arguments of more immediate and remunerative results were constantly present.

If the conduct of the Vestries and District Boards was reprehensible for not administering the existing laws for the improvement of the sanitary condition of the poorer classes, and if the consequences of their deliberate inaction were so fatal to the lives of countless thousands of the people and so disastrous to the well-being of the community, the conduct of the “owners” of the houses, for the manner in which they allowed their tenants to live, was still more so.

“I often wonder,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. George-the-Martyr (1874–5), “what many of the owners of property think man was created for except indeed that he should be housed in foul, wretched dwellings in order that money may be put in their purses, and so they may reap where they have not sown. A grim kind of harvest that will prove. Surely the owners have neither humanity nor justice on their side when they allow their houses to become hotbeds for the fostering and spreading of disease, moral and physical, and in which it is impossible either to maintain cleanliness, or support health, or practice morality. There are thousands of such houses….

“The only true and lasting foundation upon which the glory and safety of a nation can be built, must be upon the cultivation of the moral and physical powers belonging to man.”

An experienced witness [144] before the Committee of 1881, who had acted as arbitrator in some of these cases, referring to some of the worst slum areas in London, said:—

“It came before me that a great many people in life better than that supposed, do draw considerable incomes from insanitary house property.”

“The class of landlords we have here are very shrewd money-making men, and they would not show much consideration to their tenants.”

The Medical Officer of Health for St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, reported (1876–7):—

“We have heard denounced, times out of number, and in the strongest terms, the conduct of the holders of small property as being most selfish, and they themselves the most persistent and obstinate opponents of sanitary measures and improvements; and moreover that this class formed a considerable portion of our Vestries. However this may be, they cannot claim a monopoly to this unenviable distinction….

“Much of the small class property is placed in the hands of agents who neither hold nor cultivate any interest in the welfare and comfort of the tenants.

“To get the most rent with the least possible trouble and outlay seems to comprise their whole duty (of course there are exceptions).

“How much better in all respects would it be that the owner himself should give some personal supervision to his property and to the state of those who dwell in it.”

And there was another class of “owners”—the middlemen—“the very curse that is incident in all society.”

“There are a great many middlemen dealing with these properties. A great deal of it is to let out in lodgings. A man goes and buys this wretched property at public auction in different parts of London to pay him 10 or 12 per cent., and he underlets it at so much a room to weekly tenants.”

“It is these small men who go into it to make a profit, and screw the poor, wretched holders down to the last farthing—in fact they get as much as they can out of the property, and do as little as they can.”

Some of the Medical Officers of Health referred to the difficulties of getting the “owners” to do anything to keep their property in order.

“On eastern border of parish a large number of houses are now increasingly being underleased in order to be let out as tenement-houses…. Dealers in these houses make enormous aggregate rentals out of the improvident working people whom they thus herd together; and persistent efforts on the part of the sanitary officers are needed to goad some of these ‘landlords’ into keeping their ‘property’ in a decent condition.”

With a very large number of house-owners and other sanitary misdoers, nothing but the vigorous administration of the law would induce them to abate nuisances or do anything for their tenants.

“I am quite sure,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Hackney in 1880, “that a prompt and strict enforcement of the various sanitary Acts is beneficial not only to tenants, but landlords, because the latter will not allow tenants to occupy their houses who frequently bring them under the notice of the sanitary officers.”

With many, however, the fact that the law had been put in force against them, and would, if necessary, again be put in force was sufficient.

“The number of statutory notices this year was not much more than half. Owners have carried out the necessary works for fear of being summoned.”

And numerous other reports were to the same effect. But a vigorous administration of the sanitary laws against owners was the very last thing which it was of use looking to the Vestries or District Boards for.

Some of the Vestries and District Boards put pressure upon their Medical Officers of Health to prevent energy upon their part.

Thus the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras in 1875 tendered his resignation, giving the following reasons:—

“That while I am held responsible for the sanitary condition of the parish, I am denied that assistance in outdoor inspection of houses either visited with contagious diseases or habitually in an unsatisfactory condition, which I believe to be necessary. I feel that the severe condemnation which a house-to-house visitation of the poorer parts of the parish has received from a majority of the sanitary committee must of necessity hopelessly weaken my authority with the sanitary inspectors, and render nugatory my efforts to carry out the Sanitary Acts….”

Parliament was passing some useful legislation for the improvement of the public health, and taking some action against some of the more heinous existing abuses.

Several of the evils already described connected with the building of houses were dealt with in an Act [145] passed in 1878. It was at last declared to be—“expedient to make provisions with respect to the making, filling up, and preparation of the foundation of sites of houses and buildings to be erected within the metropolis, and with respect to the quality of the substances to be used in the formation or construction of the sites, foundations and walls of such houses with a view to the stability of the same, the prevention of fires, and for purposes of health.”

The Metropolitan Board of Works was empowered to make bye-laws respecting the foundations and sites of houses to be constructed, and with respect to the material used in the construction of such houses and of the walls and buildings; and the Board issued a set of comprehensive regulations upon the subject.

“Considerable opposition was manifested by builders before the Secretary of State.”

And in the same year (1878) Parliament had passed an Act which materially improved the sanitary conditions under which men, women, and children worked in factories and workshops.[146]

Guided by experience, Parliament had gradually been extending the operation of the previous Acts from one trade to another, and as Lord Shaftesbury said:—

“The general result had been to introduce and establish a system of order, content, and satisfaction. The children in the factories presented quite a different appearance from that which was their characteristic in former times; they were now hale and stout.”

“The improvement in the sanitary arrangements and ventilation of factories had been most marked in recent years; and the cases in which young persons and women suffer in labour unfitted for their years, or in which young persons and women suffer physically from overwork, are now, we believe, as uncommon as formerly they were common.

“A factory or workshop should be kept in a cleanly state and free from effluvia arising from any drain, or other nuisance.”

And that they should “not be so overcrowded while work is carried on therein as to be injurious to the health of the persons employed therein, and should be ventilated in such a manner as to render harmless, as far as practicable, all the gases, dust, &c., generated in the course of the manufacturing process and that may be injurious to health.”

By subsequent order of the Secretary of State, 250 cubic feet air space were to be given to each adult during the day, 400 cubic feet after eight o’clock at night.

It was to be “the duty of the sanitary authority to make such inquiry and to take such action thereon as to that authority may seem proper for the purpose of enforcing the law.”

A very material factor in the health of the people was dealt with in this Act—namely, the condition of the bakehouses where the daily bread of the community was prepared.

Legislation as to bakehouses had been left unchanged since the Act of 1863, and in harmony with the usual disregard of their duties by the local sanitary authorities, little use was made of that Act.

The Royal Commission of 1875 reported that it was “only here and there that any active steps had been taken by the local authorities to carry out the provisions of the Bakehouse Act.”

By the Act passed in 1878 the Bakehouse Regulation Act of 1863 was repealed, and the duty of regulating the sanitary condition of bakehouses was transferred from the local authority to the Inspectors of Factories.

In 1878, also, the Contagious Diseases Animals Act was passed. Primarily it was directed to the protection from cattle plague of the cattle of the country, and the prevention of the spread of disease, which had been entailing heavy losses upon their owners, and very stringent precautions were imposed.

But it contained also some very valuable provisions as to the condition of cowhouses and dairies, and early in 1879 the Privy Council issued an Order providing for the registration of all persons carrying on the trade of cowkeepers and purveyors of milk, for regulating the lighting, ventilation, cleansing, drainage, and water supply of dairies and cowsheds, for securing the cleanliness of milk stores, milk shops, and milk vessels, and for protecting milk against infection and contamination.

“At the time of the passing of the Order the London cowsheds were, with few exceptions, unsuitable in construction and in sanitary arrangements. By opposing the renewal of licenses the Metropolitan Board succeeded in abolishing from two to three hundred of the worst of them, and obtained improvements, amounting to entire reconstruction, in the remainder. In the larger dairies and milk stores much improvement was also effected.”

It was this Act of 1878 which drew from the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel the following remarkable passages in his report; passages which are enlightening as to the prevalent views of the time.

“We have a striking instance of the great interest that is shown in the protection of property and the comparatively little value that is attached to the health of the people in the recent Act—‘The Contagious Diseases Animals Act 1878.’

“As regards the laws which are in force for the protection of the health of cattle, which may be looked upon as property, I have nothing to complain; but as a health officer I may express my surprise that similar laws to those which are now in force respecting disease in cattle are not enacted to prevent the spreading of infectious and contagious diseases among the people. At present there is no general law in force to compel persons, who may become acquainted with the existence of an infectious disease in a dwelling-house, to give notice of the same to the Sanitary Officer….

“Surely it is more important to protect the lives of the people than to protect from loss the dealers in cattle; but until the care of public health is considered to be of more importance than the care of property, little improvement in the laws relating to health can be expected.”

“The preference which is given by our law makers to the protection of the supposed vested rights of property above that of public health is likewise shown by the rejection of the several Building Bills for the amendment of the Building Act.

“The opinion of the House appeared to prevail that ‘a man has a right to do what he likes with his own, as regards the building of as many houses as can possibly be packed together on his own land, without taking into consideration the health of the people who are to inhabit them, or the health of those in the immediate neighbourhood.’ So long as the Building Act as regards open spaces at the rear of houses remains unaltered, so long will unhealthy houses continue to be built.”

Some of the more capable of the Medical Officers of Health in their reports did not content themselves with mere tables of the births and diseases and deaths in their parishes, and a narrative of the principal incidents in their work during the year, but pointed out the defects in the laws, and made suggestions as to the best ways of coping with some of the great sanitary evils daily confronting them.

Based upon actual experience, their views and suggestions were entitled to great weight, and were often of very great value.

One point, and that the most important of all, finds expression in the reports of more than one of them, namely, that the administration of many of the health laws should be compulsory instead of permissive, and that merely declaring a law compulsory without providing the means for making it compulsory was of little use.

What was wanted in London was a real central authority which should have power to make the local authorities carry out the orders of Parliament. This did not exist, for the Metropolitan Board of Works had no such powers, and the Vestries and Districts Boards were independent local governing authorities acknowledging no master and free to obey or disobey Acts of Parliament just as they pleased.

“It has been one of the great faults of our sanitary arrangements and legislation for London,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. James’ in 1872, “that the metropolis has not been regarded as a whole, and that through the ignorance, or carelessness, of one District or Local Board the whole of the others may be put in peril.”

“It is impossible, with our present municipal machinery, in London, at any rate, to exercise all that power which is necessary for the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases.”

“If any alteration is made in the constitution of the Metropolitan Board of Works it would be desirable to add to its functions that of a sanitary supervision over the whole metropolis.”

“London is grievously in need of a Central Sanitary Department to establish something like unity in the sanitary arrangements of its 39 divisions…. Every other large centre of population has but one sanitary authority.”

Though much more time, thought, and labour, were being devoted than ever before to matters relating to the public health, and with very beneficial results, one matter appeared to be quite unaffected thereby, for none of the great measures of sanitary improvement which had been carried out since the central and local authorities had come into being seem to have had any effect during the 1871–80 decade upon infantile mortality.

If anything the figures appear higher. In St. George-in-the-East in 1871–2 the deaths of children under five years were 51 per cent. of all the deaths.

In Mile-End-Old-Town in 1872–3, out of a total of 2,200 deaths, 1,087, or practically 50 per cent., were deaths of children under five, a mortality which evoked the comment from the Medical Officer of Health:—

“Apart from congenital causes, a large majority of these young lives would, under conditions more favourable to existence, be preserved…. It is certain that the present generation of London children is physically degenerate.”

“I consider about two-thirds of the infantile mortality attributable to neglect, improper feeding, impure air from overcrowding, and general bad management through ignorance and carelessness of parents and nurses.”

In Kensington, away in the west, the average annual infantile mortality over a period of ten years—1863–73—was 42 per cent. of the total deaths.

“There must be something very wrong in the condition of the people when we find that out of all children born about one-fifth die before they are one year old, and one-third before they are five.”

In the north part of his district in the quarter ended December 28, 1872, the rate of mortality of children under five was 61·1 per cent., whilst in the quarter ended September, 1873, in Goodman’s Fields the rate was 72·4 per cent.

In St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, in 1873–4, of 1,256 deaths 694 (= 55·3 per cent.) were under five.

“In taking fifteen streets typical of the ordinary condition of the dwellings in which the working-class reside, I find the annual proportion of deaths under five ranges from 41 to 75 per cent. of the total deaths….

“The deaths from all causes in eighteen such streets varies from 21·7 to 50 per 1,000.”

“As usual we find that of 1,000 deaths more than 500 are those of children under five.”

Nor was it only in the central parts of London that the infantile mortality was so frightful. In Wandsworth, the mean annual rate during the years 1865–74 was 49·6 per cent.

The infantile death-rate did not diminish as the decade proceeded. In Islington in 1875–6 the infant mortality was “much about the same” as it had been twelve years previously.

In Kensington it had increased to 46·3 in 1878; in St. George-the-Martyr to 57·7 per cent.; in St. Pancras in 1877–8, of 5,068 deaths, 2,212 (or 45·6 per cent.) were of children under five.

“The deaths of children under five years have been more than half the total of deaths—truly a ‘massacre of the Innocents.’”

“The number of deaths of children under one year is still painfully large…. Children seem to be born for little else than to be buried.”

Passing from record to comment, there are some striking passages in the reports of the Medical Officers of Health.

“… Of infantile mortality one is tempted to ask whether the provision of so much life, such a prodigality of being, to be followed so soon by an almost Pharaoh sacrifice of it, is necessary to the multiplication of the race.”

“It is sad, and in a sanitary point of view, humiliating to contemplate, that for every three children born in Marylebone, one dies before reaching the age of five years; ’tis true that in this respect Marylebone stands in no worse position than other large parishes in the metropolis, nor so bad as in the majority of them, but the knowledge of this fact will, I apprehend, afford but slender consolation to those who know from experience and daily observation that hereditary diseases, habitual neglect, unwholesome dwellings, together with other preventable causes, are largely concerned in the sacrifice of infant life.”

“Whilst the houses’ drain-pipes, from defective construction and workmanship, and want of being cut off from the main sewer, act as much as sewer ventilators as channels for removing filth … whilst overcrowded houses and foul smells in living and sleeping rooms are taken as a matter of course; whilst infectious disease is sedulously propagated first by concealment, and then by criminal exposure and neglect, … so long the yearly recurring Herodean massacre of helpless children, whose almost sole use in life appears to be the providing of fees for doctors and undertakers, will continue, in spite of all efforts of sanitary authorities and sanitarians.”

The evil done, however, by bad sanitary conditions was not limited to the children who died. Probably ten or twenty times the number of those who died went through the illness and survived—but of those many were injured in constitution for life.

In other respects, however, sanitary progress was being made, and slowly but steadily the conditions of the health of the public were improving. Undoubtedly the main causes of that progress were the great system of main drainage and sewerage which had relieved London of the incubus of enormous accumulations of the deadliest filth in its houses, and of an open main sewer through its midst; and the greater quantity, and improved quality, of the water supplied for household consumption which relieved her inhabitants from the necessity of drinking liquid sewage.

And the construction of sewers in nearly all the streets, and the substitution of an effective system of house drainage instead of the abomination of cesspools, was also a great stride to improvement.

Since 1856 plans for the construction of a total length of nearly 1,000 miles of local sewers had been submitted to the Metropolitan Board for their approval, many of them being in substitution of old and shallow ones for which the Board’s new main and intercepting lines afforded the means of improving the gradient and outlet.

In their report for 1881 the Metropolitan Board of Works gave “a brief summary” of what it, as the Central Authority, had accomplished since 1856.

“There was the great main drainage work which had cost about five and three-quarter millions, an undertaking which ‘although fruitful of good results, and of greater magnitude than anything of a similar kind that had previously been accomplished, has left, as might be expected, few visible marks of its existence.’”

It is rather the Thames embankments and broad new streets which remind the inhabitants of London of the great changes and improvements that the Board’s operations effected.

“On the north side of the Thames, from Blackfriars to Westminster, and from Grosvenor Road to Battersea Bridge, and on the south side, from Westminster to Vauxhall, embankments have been made which, whilst reclaiming from the river a considerable extent of ground, have substituted for the unsightly and offensive mud banks that formerly prevailed, handsome river walls, with broad and commodious thoroughfares, relieved and ornamented by public gardens. New streets have been made, some of the principal of which are Queen Victoria Street, Southwark Street, Northumberland Avenue, Commercial Road, and the new thoroughfare from Oxford Street to Bethnal Green; many other leading thoroughfares, which had become inadequate for the increased traffic of the present day, have been widened and improved, greatly to the convenience and comfort of the public; and liberal grants of money have been made by the Board to the authorities in aid of the cost of smaller street improvements which have not been of sufficient extent or importance to be carried out by the Board.

“Two new parks have been provided, in districts previously unsupplied with such places of needed recreation. Public gardens have been laid out and are maintained in the neighbourhood of dense populations; and suburban commons, to the extent of about 1,500 acres, have by the action of the Board been secured in perpetuity for the undisturbed enjoyment of the public.

“Many areas formerly covered with dwellings unfit for human habitation have been cleared, under the operation of the Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act, and the ground let to societies which have undertaken to build, and in some cases have built, improved dwellings, in which the humblest class of the working population can live with health, decency, and comfort.”

These and many consequential improvements, and the better paving of the streets, and the better cleansing of streets, places, and yards, the more rapid removal of filth from London, had made the general conditions of life much less unwholesome.