In the whole of the metropolis there were 103 Inspectors of Nuisances—a rough average of one Inspector to about 40,000 of the population.

How could it be expected that one Inspector could look after a town of 40,000 people?

Consistently, and, year after year, insistently, did the bulk of the Medical Officers of Health complain of the lack of sufficient Sanitary Inspectors, and point out the necessity for more Sanitary Inspectors; some begged for them—but to nearly all these appeals the Vestries turned a deaf ear.

Every now and then some incident occurred or some exposure was made of some abominations of insanitation which were a revelation of the extraordinary methods adopted by some men in utilising land for building houses regardless of all sanitary consequences whatever to others.

In the Times of December 18, 1883, an article was published entitled “A Curious Site for Industrial Dwellings.”

“The things which are done in London under the shadow of legal right are sometimes startling.”

In Bethnal Green were two disused burial-grounds—“Globe Fields” and “Peel Grove.” Parliament authorised a railway line to be constructed through “Globe Fields.”

Foundations had to be made for the arches, and trenches had to be dug in the burial-ground.

The Medical Officer of Health, on inspecting the place, found a horrible condition of things. But with many precautions against loosing some virulent epidemic in the locality, the human remains were removed and re-interred elsewhere, and, it is stated, part of the ground was built over.

Fuller particulars were given as to the Peel Grove Cemetery. The ground, several acres in extent, had been leased by a pawnbroker and started as a cemetery as a speculation. The statements made by the writer in the Times are specially illuminating. The cemetery was opened about 1840 without consecration. The Bishop refused to consecrate the ground as burials had taken place in it already, and as some difficulties were consequently experienced, the speculating pawnbroker acted, it is said, for some years as chaplain.

Ultimately, somehow or other, a chaplain was appointed.

About 20,000 persons had been buried in it, six deep, and packed as closely as it was possible to pack them—not even earth between the coffins, so anxious was the owner to economise space; large numbers who died of cholera in 1849 having been buried there.

The last interment took place in September, 1855.

In 1883, the ground having served one financial purpose, it became desirable to utilise it for another financial purpose, and the proposal was made to erect houses upon it, and an agreement was entered into with a builder for the erection of blocks of dwellings thereon. This builder commenced excavations for the purpose of laying foundations, and he had sent in drainage plans for a block of industrial dwellings to the Vestry of Bethnal Green.

“Is such an obvious violation of the laws of health and decency to be permitted?” said the writer.

“The Vestry are alive to the situation, and appear to be willing to do all in their power to avert the catastrophe. But the law on the subject is by no means clear…. It is little short of scandalous that such doubts should exist. It is repugnant to every feeling of decency and propriety to invite human beings to live in densely packed crowds over a charnel-house.”

The sanitary condition of any city or district must, as has already been pointed out, depend very largely upon the system of local government in existence at the time, and its efficiency or inefficiency.

This was specially true of this great metropolis with its millions of people, its vast extent, its great diversities.

To all intents and purposes the main features of the local government of London had undergone little change since 1855. There was still the “City” with its special law, special area, and special government, to which had been added the Port Sanitary Authority.

And there was the Central Authority, the Metropolitan Board of Works; and there were the local sanitary authorities, the Vestries and District Boards—and to them had been added the Metropolitan Asylums Board, another indirectly elected central body. But there were very manifest and prominent defects of the very gravest nature in this system of London government, and in 1884 the Government of the day made an effort to construct a better system.

Sir William Harcourt introduced the London Government Bill into the House of Commons.

“While London grew,” he said,[160] “the Corporation remained stationary.”

“The central body must deal with the large affairs, … a central body doing all the great things.”

“The central principle of the Bill is this, that there should be some common control over the Vestries which shall give them a uniform action for the benefit of the whole community instead of leaving them as they now are, independent of any such control.”

“What is the great evil? It is that the metropolis is broken up into fragments acting on a different principle, some doing ill, and those who do well suffering in consequence of the ill-doings of their neighbours.”

“When the danger (of invasion of cholera) threatens a great metropolis like London, all must desire and want a central authority which should advise, which should assist, which should compel every part of the community to take those measures of precaution which are necessary for the safety of the whole. No such authority exists at this time.

“If a Vestry refuses to make sanitary bye-laws, or to carry out a proper system of sanitary inspection, you are absolutely powerless to compel them to do so. A single parish may become a plague-spot in London from which disease may be spread all around, and the Metropolitan Authority have no authority to make the parish do as it ought to do.”

Mr. Gladstone said[161]:—

“The local government of London is, or, if it is not, it certainly ought to be, the crown of all our local and municipal institutions.

“The principle of unity (of London) has already been established under the pressure of necessity as a matter which could not be resisted. It has been established in the Metropolitan Board of Works…. There can be no doubt we have established a principle of unity, and that we have found it satisfactory.

“The supply of water and the supply of gas … two of the most elementary among the purposes of municipal government, have been handed over to private Corporations for the purpose of private profit because you have not chosen to create a complete municipality for the metropolis.

“And that is not all.

“The defects of the present system are admitted…. Surely if there are these great and intolerable defects they ought to be remedied by the action of some genuine popular local authority. But we have got no genuine popular local authority….

“London, large as it is, is a natural unit—united by common features, united by common approximation, by common neighbourhood, by common dangers—depending upon common supplies, having common wants and common conveniences.

“… Unity of Government in the metropolis is the only method on which we can proceed for producing municipal reform.”

The Bill was strongly opposed in Parliament, and was withdrawn at a late period of the Session, “but its introduction and discussion had done much to awaken interest and mature opinion on the question of the practicability of the government of London by a single municipality.”[162]

Up to this time, though overcrowding had occupied so prominent a position in the great health problem of London, no returns of the amount of overcrowding actually existing had been obtained, nor had any estimate even been attempted. The reports of the Medical Officers of Health showed in many graphic descriptions that overcrowding was prevalent in every part of London—more acutely so in some districts than in others—but as to the amount no information was available.

The first reliable figures over a large area—a large central district of London—were collected by Mr. T. Marchant Williams, Inspector of Schools for the London School Board, and published in the Times of February 22, 1884.

He wrote giving some of the results of his recent investigations into the social conditions of the people residing in his district.

“My sole desire,” he wrote, “is to record facts. It will be my endeavour to show that these facts are sufficiently typical or representative of the social condition of the elementary school population of London to serve as a trustworthy basis for a fairly accurate estimate of the stupendous difficulties the School Board for London has to contend with.”

“The Division of Finsbury includes the following parishes:—

(1) In St. Giles’-in-the-Fields there were 9 efficient elementary schools, 4 churches, 6 chapels, 102 public-houses, 27 milk shops.

He gave the number of families scheduled for elementary school purposes residing in more than two rooms as 382, which represents about 14 per cent. of the whole number of scheduled families.

(2) In the parishes of Bloomsbury, St. George-the-Martyr, St. Andrew, Holborn, and part of St. Giles’.

The number of families scheduled for elementary school purposes residing in more than two rooms was 395, which is about 10 per cent. of the whole number of scheduled families.

(3) Lower Division of Clerkenwell and St. Luke’s.

The number of families scheduled for elementary school purposes residing in more than two rooms was 3,886, which is about 37 per cent. of the whole number of scheduled families.

He gave similar information as regarded three other sub-districts, and then went on:—

“The foregoing statistics show that there were at the beginning of the present year, in the Finsbury division—

“10,490 families consisting of 41,044 persons, living, each, in one room only, and 17,210 families consisting of 82,215 persons, living, each, in two rooms only, a total of 123,259 persons living in one or two rooms.

“For every efficient elementary school in the division there are more than 8 public-houses, for there are in the division 111 efficient schools, while the public-houses number 912; the grocers’ shops, 682; bakers’ shops, 409; dairies, 350; coffee shops, 427; churches, 74; chapels, 32; mission rooms, 47; registered lodging-houses, 101.”

And then he summarised his figures for the City Division:

Number of families living, each, in more than two rooms was 1,972, which is about 33 per cent. of the scheduled families.

The Times commented, in a leading article, on this information.

“Everywhere, and by all sections not immediately affected, the scandal and almost the absurdity of the brutish degradation of an enormous number of habitations in the greatest and most opulent city in the world are thoroughly recognised…. Habits of life such as lodgings of the kind now common among London workmen foster and encourage are a positive danger to the whole of society. Only by one rank is the question treated as of no pressing importance. That happens to be the body of persons directly interested.

“… No more instructive contribution has been offered towards a clear perception of the dimensions of the problem than those given by Mr. Marchant Williams….

“Incidentally the census, by the School Board, of the classes it was founded to teach, contains the precise materials for informing the public of the extent of the overcrowding which has been shocking the moral sense of the nation. Formerly, when instances of overcrowding were cited, it might have been fancied they were exceptions or exaggerations. Mr. Williams’ report allows of no possibility of a doubt.

“The Finsbury educational division contained, in 1881, a population of 503,851. Of these, 41,044 live in single rooms, at an average rate of four a room; 82,215 occupy suites of two rooms, at a rate exceeding four persons and three-quarters for each. For a family of two to monopolise a whole room is a luxury, and to possess two rooms is a marvel. Some rooms are made to hold ten, and many to hold six or seven….

“A home partakes of the life of the dwellers in it. They mould and incorporate it with their being, and it helps to mould and fashion them. The 123,000 owners of an undivided and indivisible quarter of a hovel in Finsbury, and the other hundreds of thousands in like case elsewhere in the town, are curtailed of the essential parts of the rights of humanity by the miserable accident that their locality refuses them reasonable standing room. Family life is an impossibility for a whole family collected in the single room 12 to 15 feet by 6 to 10. In a multitude of instances those tenanting a single room are several families, not one. They have to distribute the floor by square inches, and grow up with less regard to decency than a cat or a dog.”

And in another letter written a few days later, Mr. Marchant Williams added:—

“It was only the other day that I discovered in one of these streets (near Fitzroy Square) a house containing nine rooms, each of which accommodates on an average eight persons!

“… The rents in the most crowded parts of my district amount as a rule to about a third or fourth of the maximum wages earned by the tenants.”

He mentions a case, a riveter:—

“He had recently abandoned the room in which he, his wife, and six children had lived for two years.”

“I have more than once when going my rounds been accosted by a landlord in a state of abject terror, lest I might be arranging to rob him of some of his victims. The landlord’s defence invariably is that he is obliged to levy high rents because the tenants frequently run away by night and leave no trace behind them of their whereabouts.”

More and more did the feeling grow that something must be done to ameliorate the conditions under which the working classes and poorer people were living, and on the 22nd of February, the Marquess of Salisbury, in the House of Lords, moved in an Address to Her Majesty for the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the housing of the working classes.[163]

“The attention of persons of every class, of every creed, and school of politics, has been turned to this question,” he said.

H.R.H. the Prince of Wales said:—

“I feel convinced that your lordships, in common with all classes of Her Majesty’s subjects, will be gratified to learn that the noble Marquess has asked for a searching inquiry into this great and momentous question with regard to the housing and the amelioration of the dwellings of the poor and of the working classes, and that Her Majesty’s Government have decided to issue a Royal Commission for that purpose.

“As your Lordships know I take the keenest and liveliest interest in this question.

“I can assure you, my Lords, that I am deeply flattered at having been appointed a member of this Royal Commission.”

The Government accepted the motion, and a Royal Commission was forthwith appointed and immediately began its work.

While the great question of housing and overcrowding was under discussion and was being investigated, and efforts being made to deal with it, various other matters forming part of the general sanitary evolution of London were attracting attention, or gradually developing.

In October, 1882, the limits of the Port of London were extended seawards, and in the following year the powers of the Port Sanitary Authority were extended.[164] Most of the powers of an Urban Sanitary Authority under the Public Health Act of 1875 were conferred upon it, and the Medical Officer of Health reported that he believed the legal powers of the Authority would be found “amply sufficient for the sanitary control and supervision of the Port.”

The Authority extended its attention now to the inspection of imported meat. It was a matter of the first importance to watch carefully the food supply of the people. The trade of frozen meat had been rapidly growing, and from time to time large quantities arrived in unsound condition, which it was most necessary should be prevented going on to the market.

In connection with another very important article of food—namely, milk—action was also taken.

The effect of the order made in 1879 by the Privy Council, as to dairies, cowsheds, and milkshops, had been very beneficial, and a marked change for the better in the conditions under which the milk trade was conducted was the result. That Order was revoked in 1885 by the Privy Council, and a new one passed extending the powers of local authorities in the matter, and prescribing further precautions to secure the sanitary condition of all dairies and cowsheds, and for the protection of milk against infection or contamination.

Another beneficial sanitary improvement was effected in 1883, by the extension of the benefits of the infectious hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.

The Royal Commission on Fever and Smallpox Hospitals, in 1882, stated that in their opinion it was of paramount importance that the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, to which so many classes of persons might become liable to be removed, should be made as little unattractive as the nature of the case admitted, and they considered that the pauper character which attached to the hospitals of the Board, and which rendered them repulsive to all but the indigent, would disappear if the distinction between paupers and non-paupers were abolished.

This suggestion was partially given effect to by the Diseases Prevention (Metropolis) Act of 1883, which enacted that, subject to certain arrangements, the admission of any person suffering from infectious disease into any hospital provided by the Metropolitan Asylums Board, or the maintenance of any such person therein, should not be considered to be parochial relief.

The plan was only partly successful, but as years went on the hospitals were increasingly used by persons other than those of the legally recognised pauper class.

In the years 1884 and 1885 the hospitals demonstrated their great utility. There was a severe epidemic of smallpox. From its outbreak in 1884, to its subsidence in the autumn of 1885, no less a number than 12,425 patients passed through the hospitals, hospital ships, and camps of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and the arrangements for the removal to hospital of cases of infectious disease, from the whole of the metropolis, worked smoothly and satisfactorily.

The gain to the community in thus removing infectious cases from its midst was immeasurable.[165]

In 1885 the Report of the Royal Commission which had been inquiring into the Housing of the Working Classes was published. It presented to the general public a mass of facts of which previously they had taken but little heed, and the vast importance of which they had utterly failed to realise; and it brought into the forefront of social questions the vital question of the public health, and the imperative necessity of remedying evils which were eating into the very vitals of the community.

The Royal Commissioners depicted the widely prevalent and dreadful overcrowding which existed, and which in certain localities was becoming more serious than ever, and they gave numerous instances of it. They described the fearsome condition of tenement-houses, and of the people living therein—the inadequacy of the water supply—the defective sanitary accommodation in houses—the lack of air space—the absence of ventilation—the use of cellars and underground rooms as dwelling-places—the limitless filth.

And they pointed out the dreadful results of this condition of things—physical, moral, and material—the prevalence of disease, the heavy death-rate, the destruction of bodily health, the dreadful immorality resulting from overcrowding, the degradation to which masses were doomed, the incitement to drink, and depravity, and crime. They declared that:—

“Even statistics of actual disease consequent on overcrowding would not convey the whole truth as to the loss of health caused by it to the labouring classes….

“Nothing stronger could be said in describing the effect of overcrowding than that it is even more destructive to general health than conducive to the spread of epidemic and contagious diseases.”

And they pointed out that there was much legislation designed to meet these evils, yet that the existing laws were not put in force, some of them having remained a dead letter from the date when they first found place in the statute book.

And they investigated the causes of many of these things—and they assigned the blame for some of them—and they passed in review the conduct of the local governing authorities—and they recapitulated the existing laws upon these various matters, and suggested certain alterations, and made various valuable recommendations.

There was, in fact, placed on record a calm, unimpassioned, and unexaggerated statement of the evils which masses of the population of the great capital were enduring in the last quarter of the highly civilised and enlightened nineteenth century.

It was a thorough confirmation of all the reports of the Medical Officers of Health, and of the facts set out, and pressed by them, year after year, upon the attention of the Vestries and District Boards, and which had so persistently been ignored by so many of those authorities.

The Commissioners classified the—

“Unquestioned causes which produced the overcrowding and the generally lamentable condition of the homes of the labouring classes.”

The first was—

“The poverty of the inhabitants of the poorest quarters, or in other words the relation borne by the wages they received to the rent they had to pay.”

The next was the demolition, for various reasons, of houses inhabited by the working classes and poorer people, and the consequent displacement of the people.

The third was the relation between the owners of property upon which the dwellings of the poor stood, and the tenants of those dwellings.

“The other great remaining cause of the evil was the remissness of local authorities.”

From their very origin, these “authorities” were unsatisfactory instruments for the performance of the public duties.

“But little interest was, as a rule, taken in the election of vestrymen by the inhabitants,” instances having been known of vestrymen in populous parishes being returned by two votes, on a show of hands.

Elsewhere it is reported they elected each other.

The Commissioners referred to the “supineness” of many of these metropolitan local authorities in sanitary matters, and to the “laxity of administration of some of them.” And still worse, to the self-interested action of vestrymen.

Thus on the Vestry of Clerkenwell, they said, were—

“Thirteen or fourteen persons who are interested in bad or doubtful property, including several ‘middlemen’; and ten publicans who, with the exception of one or two, had the reputation of working with the party who trade in insanitary property; and accordingly this party commands a working majority on the Vestry.”

“It is not surprising to find that the Sanitary Inspectors whose tenure of office and salary is subject to such a body should show indisposition to activity.”

“The state of the homes of the working classes in Clerkenwell, the overcrowding, and other evils, which act and react on one another, must be attributed in a large measure to the default of the responsible local authority.”

“Clerkenwell does not stand alone: from various parts of London the same complaints are heard of insanitary property being owned by members of the Vestries and District Boards, and of sanitary inspection being inefficiently done, because many of the persons whose duty it is to see that a better state of things should exist, are those who are interested in keeping things as they are.”

And in another part of their report they wrote:—

“It is evident that the remedies which legislation has provided for sanitary evils have been imperfectly applied in the metropolis, and that this failure has been due to negligence in many cases of the existing local authorities.”

The part of the evidence which was of greatest value and interest was that which laid bare the responsibility for the dreadful conditions under which such masses of the people lived.

Apart from the measure of responsibility which fell on Parliament itself, and it was no light one, it is clear that those conditions were due (1) in part to the various classes of “owners,” (2) in part to the people themselves, and (3) in part to the local authorities.

As regarded owners, there were first the ground landlords, who themselves, or whose predecessors had leased their land for building purposes, or with houses thereon to a tenant.

It would appear clear that these ground landlords or freeholders, or lessors, had power to enforce against the person who held directly from them the repairing clauses of leases. But the existing condition of things showed that they did not do so.

One of the witnesses, giving evidence about a particular property, said:—

“By the terms of even the old leases the tenant was supposed to keep the place in proper repair…. The property has gradually deteriorated in consequence of neglect.”

And Lord Salisbury, who asked:—

“I suppose it is practically impossible for the ground landlord to see that the conditions are kept?”

Was told in reply:—

“The only way in which it is possible for him to do that is to keep a very active supervision over his property.

“If that was done by ground landlords, and had always been done by them, you would have personal supervision carried out by a sufficient number of people to ensure the conditions being kept.”

Any idea of property having its duties as well as its rights appears to have been non-existent.

Next to the land-owner was the numerous and varied class of house “owners,” from the man who leased the land from the landlord and built the house, or who had leased the house and had sub-leased it to some one else. And often there were sub-lessees, until in some cases there was a chain of persons holding different interests in the same house.

And there was the class of persons who take a house and break it up into tenement-rooms, and who were known as “house-knackers,” or house jobbers, or house farmers, or as “middlemen,” these last being defined as any one who stands between the freeholder and the one who occupies.

Some interesting descriptions of some of these “middlemen” were given.

One of the largest in Clerkenwell was a Mr. Decimus Ball, and there was also a Mr. Ross—both of whom were on the Vestry.

The witness stated that these men had neglected the houses, and in many cases were very extortionate in their demands against the occupants.

Mr. Ball had many houses which were inhabited by families in single rooms, but which up to a short time previously were inhabited by whole families to a house.

Mr. Ball’s profit is “perfectly enormous if he does not do any repairs.” And he made very few; and if the rent were not paid on the Monday morning, he threatened to raise it.

Probably the most notorious “middleman” was a certain Mr. Flight.

“He must have been the owner of thousands and thousands of houses in the metropolis.” (18,000, it was said.)

“He owned property in every part of London, and the squalid nature of that property, the wretched condition in which it has been kept, the avoidance of all decent rules by which habitations are governed, was something very fearful.”

“Middlemen,” it was stated, sometimes appeared to be making 150 per cent. per annum, but they assert that repairs have to come out of that. Repairs, however, were only executed once in three or four years, and in the others they get their 150 per cent.

“If the house-farmers do no repairs for years the profits are large…. They collect their rents very sharply.

“The middleman makes the tenant pay an excessive rent because he insists upon making an excessive profit.”

The great work which the Commission did was in the enlightenment of the public, and the material they afforded for the formation of public opinion in the right direction. Subsequent experience showed that the recommendations made—excellent and helpful as so many of them were—did not by a long way cut deep enough to extirpate the more serious evils.

“It is evident,” wrote the Commissioners, “that the 35th Section of the Sanitary Act of 1866 (dealing with tenement-houses) which contains a remedy for some of the evils which have been described is likely to remain a dead letter in many districts of the metropolis until some improved means be devised for putting it into action.” They recommended that the local authorities who had not already made and enforced bye-laws under the section “should proceed to do so.”

But no compulsion was suggested to make them do so, or for the only effective alternative, the provision of other machinery to act in their default, and so the local authorities were in this matter allowed to remain in their position of complete independence and to continue their policy of inactivity—if not obstruction.

As to inspection, and the inadequacy of a sanitary staff, much evidence had been given, but, they remarked:—

“It is evident that where work is performed according to the custom of certain districts of the metropolis it really does not matter whether the staff of inspectors be large or small.”

They summed up their general view in the following passage:—

“Without entering upon questions of policy of far wider application than the more immediate subject-matter of the present inquiry, Your Majesty’s Commissioners are clearly of opinion that there has been failure in administration rather than in legislation, although the latter is no doubt capable of improvement. What at the present time is specially required is some motive power, and probably there can be no stronger motive power than public opinion.”

And with that view they recommended that inquiries should be held as to the immediate sanitary requirements of different districts, and the reports be presented to Parliament.

Public opinion, however, is hard to move, and usually slow in moving; and when it has at last decided on definite action Parliament is slow in giving effect to the decision, and, when Parliament at last acts, the legislation itself is frequently defective. And so the outlook was rather hopeless.

Various other more concrete amendments were, however, suggested in the various Housing Acts to render them more effective for their purpose.

And, as a result, in the session of Parliament of 1885 a Bill was introduced dealing with the “Housing of the Working Classes.”

Lord Salisbury, in moving the second reading, said[166]:—

The Bill he introduced was to a certain extent “a compromise.” “No one need expect to find that it contains any magic formula which will cure all the evils of which this House and the public have heard a great deal, and there is nothing startling, sensational or extreme in its provisions. We are hoping to cure these evils by slow and gradual steps, by the application of remedies apparently not far-reaching in their character, but still judiciously directed to the precise difficulties which arose in each department of our inquiry.”

The Bill duly passed (48 & 49 Vic. cap. 72).

Most of the reforms embodied in it were of a trifling character and such as could have only the most limited and gradual effect.

This Act extended generally the operation of the Labouring Classes Lodging Houses Acts of 1851 and 1867, and substituted the Metropolitan Board of Works for the Vestries and District Boards as the authority under the Act.

A really useful plan was authorised by it, namely, the sale, at a fair market price, to the Metropolitan Board of certain prison sites in London for housing purposes. And one other good thing done was depriving the owner of insanitary premises, which had been pulled down by order of the local authority, of the power to require the local authority to purchase such premises.

But merely again to declare—

“That it shall be the duty of every local authority entrusted with the laws relating to public health and local government to put in force the powers with which they are invested so as to secure the proper sanitary condition of all premises within the area under their control”—was futile, considering that the authorities in question had steadily ignored the same direction, made nineteen years previously, in the Act of 1866.

Lord Salisbury wound up his speech with the following abnegation of Parliamentary power:—

“We must not imagine that it is anything we can do in this House, or in the House of Commons, that will remove all these evils. It must be done by that stirring up of public opinion which these investigations cause; it is to this that we must look for any real reform, it must be from the people themselves, from the owners, builders, and occupiers, when their attention is drawn to the enormous evils which past negligence has caused, it is from them that the cure of the sanitary evils which have so largely increased the death-rate must come.”

Considering, however, the accumulated mass of evidence which had shown beyond all question that it was the owners and builders who were mainly responsible for those “enormous evils,” and who were still hard at work adding to them and perpetuating them, it was rather hopeless to expect “the cure of the sanitary evils” to come from that quarter.

Unfortunately two general elections, and the heated discussion of great political questions, threw even these great health questions into the background, and not so much immediate benefit as was to be hoped followed the inquiry of the Royal Commissioners.

It is an awful handicap to the welfare of a community, and of a nation, when those who should take a principal share in the duty of raising the physical, social, and moral condition of the people over whom they can exercise influence, and who are more or less under their control, not alone stand idly aside, but absolutely exploit the misery and helplessness and ignorance of masses of the people.

The Imperial Government may make most excellent laws, but the physical and sanitary welfare of the people cannot be secured by a local governing authority alone, nor their moral and religious welfare by the Churches alone.

There is a great sphere of life where those who stand in the relation of land-owners or house-owners to tenants could exercise an enormous influence for good, and where nobody else could exercise it so effectually or so easily.

But the disaster has been that in the great metropolis—the greatest of all cities—a vast proportion of those who ought to have been active in using this influence, have never made the slightest effort to use it, whilst others have used their position, and the dependence of the people upon them, solely to wring from them the last farthing that could be extracted.

And these were the men who made the loudest protests and outcry against legislation and against administration which was to make them do that which the vital interests of the community and of the State required to be done.

The root of the evil connected with the housing of the people in London lay with the disregard of “owners” for the condition of their tenants.

Many “owners” appeared to be under the impression that their investment in house property was to be as free from trouble or labour as money invested in the national funds is; and so long as they got the rent they expected, they did not trouble themselves about the state of the houses or of the people living therein. They were loth to spend money on them, as that curtailed their income, and the argument was constantly used that it was useless spending money to put the property in order, when anything they did to it would be promptly destroyed. And they cared not who were their tenants so long as a high rent was obtainable from them.

Some declared that the people were so sunken, so degraded, so filthy, and depraved, and destructive, that nothing they could do could secure their property being kept in a sanitary or decent condition.

Doubtless in many districts and many cases the conduct of the tenants was as bad as bad could be. As one of the Medical Officers of Health wrote in 1883:—

“It must be borne in mind that many of the occupants of tenement property are careless and filthy in their habits; and in addition are very destructive; fittings put up one day are pulled down and destroyed the next; ash-bin covers, closet doors, and even flooring boards, share the same fate.”

And many were the “owners” of various degree who endeavoured to justify their neglect on this ground.

Were such an argument admitted, the owner could claim to be exonerated from the duty of keeping his property in proper order, and the evil conditions and consequences resulting from his neglect would go on increasing indefinitely, until a state of things destructive to the community was ultimately reached.

Viewed broadly, and impartially, there was much truth as regarded the misconduct and uncleanliness of great numbers of tenants, but the central fact was that the “owner” was the person mainly interested in, and benefited by possession of the property, and therefore primarily responsible for maintaining it in a condition which should not endanger the health of the community.

If, through the neglect and indifference of his predecessors, the property had fallen into a bad state, the consequences equitably fell upon him, just as the consequences of any other bad investment by his predecessor would have done. He had inherited something which was not worth as much as he anticipated—that was all; but the consequences must not be shifted on to the community, nor must his tenants be made the victims.

And if he allowed his property to become a danger to his tenants, and through them to the community at large, the community had an absolute right to protect itself by insisting that he should be prevented from so doing.

The only way in which, in the interests of the public, abuses can be prevented is by holding the person responsible for them who has the power of preventing them. And that was just what in this case the “owners” did not like.

Building constituted an important part of the housing problem. The Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth, in his report for 1887, gave an interesting account of the process of building in London which shows how even the amended Building Acts had failed to secure those conditions of air and space which are essential for health.

“In proximity to the centres of business every available plot of garden or recreation ground has been converted into building sites. Houses constructed from materials of the poorest quality and by workmen employed only for the cheapness of their labour, have been hurried into occupation.

“The system of close building, at first confined in its application to the consolidation of the inner zone, has been adopted in the outer, and with the demand for shelter, which increases in a progressive ratio with the growth of the population, the once open suburbs must ere long become indistinguishable in the monotony of house row and pavement.

“The art of close building appears a progressive one. In its infancy, twenty years ago, the art has now arrived at a stage nearly approaching perfection. In the earlier examples the space allotted to garden land was larger than that built on. Then the size of the two quantities reached an equality—then the covered ground becomes a larger quantity than the uncovered land, until the final stage of development is attained when the extreme limit of encroachment permitted by the Building Act is reached, and garden land is represented by a yard 100 superficial feet in area.”

Extraordinary loopholes in the sanitary laws, moreover, were constantly being discovered which almost neutralised the original enactment.

Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Camberwell remarked in his report for 1888:—

“It has been long known to the Sanitary Committee that there has never been any efficient supervision of the drainage and other sanitary arrangements of houses in course of construction…. It is true that every builder has been required before constructing his private drains and connecting them with the public sewers, to send in a plan of his proposed drainage for the sanction of the Surveyor. But there has been no machinery by which builders could be compelled to carry out their private works in accordance with the plans submitted, and to ensure that the details of their works had been carried out in a workmanlike or efficient manner. The inspections of houses even recently built have shown that sanitary nuisances complained of have been largely due to scandalous neglect of duty on the part of those concerned in carrying out the drainage works, and that in most cases the plans sent in have not accorded with the arrangements finally adopted.”

Various, indeed, were matters connected with the public health which unexpectedly came cropping up; sometimes matters thought to have been disposed of but only partly so, sometimes, wholly new origins and ramifications of insanitation.

Thus in 1886 the Medical Officer of Health for the south part of Poplar District drew special attention to a grievance long previously complained of and for many years endured.

“A greater scandal cannot well be shown in matters vital to health than that in spite of abundant evidence of the magnitude of the evil, thousands and tens of thousands of families living in houses, the rates of which are payable by the landlords, may at any moment, without a particle of fault of their own, be suddenly denied one of the first necessaries of life—water—through the neglect and wilfulness of others.”

The main remedy open to the water companies to recover rates from defaulting non-resident owners of tenement-houses was the simple expedient of discontinuing the supply of water. This course was open to a double objection—first, tenants who had paid their rent were deprived of that for which they had constructively paid; and secondly, a tenement-house deprived of water might speedily become a focus of disease.

“That disease and death are directly traceable to this want,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health, “no one acquainted with sanitary work in London can doubt. Take this instance. Water cut off, drains stopped, opening up of ground and drains, removal of filth accumulations, horrid stench, diphtheria, death.

“In Hanbury Place—having six houses—there was no water supply for twenty-six days, and families numbering each seven, nine, two of six, and others had to exist in May, 1885, with choked drains, yard flooded with sewage, and no water—and all because of non-payment of rates by the landlord.”

In 1887 Parliament happily dealt with this evil, and by an Act passed in that year—

“Water companies were prohibited from cutting off the water supply from any dwelling-house for non-payment of water rate, if such rate were payable by the owner and not the occupier of the premises….”

In the middle of this decade, too, anxiety revived, owing to the state of the Thames, a matter which it was hoped had been finally disposed of. The discharge of sewage at the new outfalls make the river in those parts much what it had previously been in London.

A Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the subject. They reported that they found a condition of things which they “must denounce as a disgrace to the metropolis and to civilisation.” They said that in 1884 “the sewage water from the outfalls manifestly reached London Bridge.”

“At Greenwich Pier the water was very black, and the smell exceedingly strong.”

“At Woolwich the river for its whole width was black, putrid, sewage—looking as if unmixed and unalloyed. The stench was intolerable.”

“We are of opinion that it is neither necessary nor justifiable to discharge the sewage of the metropolis in its crude state into any part of the Thames.”

This evil was surmounted by the adoption by the Metropolitan Board of Works of a system of treatment of the crude sewage. Chemical precipitation was effected by adding to the sewage certain proportions of lime and protosulphate of iron, and allowing it to remain for an hour or two in settling tanks. The effluent water was let flow into the river, and the sludge was carried down the river in barges and cast into the sea.

The public interest evoked by the inquiries made by the Royal Commissioners on Housing, and the publication of their Report, certainly quickened the activity of many of the local authorities.

In several of the parishes and districts the Regulations under the Sanitary Acts of 1866 and 1874 were being more readily adopted, and being put into force on a slightly more extended scale; and in every case it was reported that the results had been satisfactory, a great improvement taking place in the houses which were registered.

A report of the Inspector of such houses, for Bermondsey, describes this well:—

“108 were placed on Register by Vestry. The majority of these houses are situated in the lowest and most densely populated parts of the parish. They are occupied by the very poor, costermongers, dock and waterside labourers, &c. They contain 509 rooms, occupied by 386 families, numbering 1,434 persons. 285 rooms were overcrowded. With three exceptions the overcrowding has been abated. Previous to registration the number in each house was 13, present average 9.”

“The sanitary condition of the said houses has been greatly improved. Staircases, &c., are now regularly swept and washed. In 85 houses the walls have been stripped and whitewashed. Many of the walls had 15 layers of paper, thus hiding filth and harbouring vermin. Ventilation in them is also improved. Many owners rendered much assistance.”

Several inquiries of the sort suggested by the Royal Commissioners were held in the course of the ensuing years and reports presented to Parliament, but it is much to be doubted whether they had any effect in so inciting public opinion as to make it insist on the recalcitrant local authorities carrying the laws into effect.

Clerkenwell, Mile-End-Old-Town, Bethnal Green, and Rotherhithe, were inquired into, and reported on. The tale was much the same as that set forth time after time, and year after year, by various Medical Officers of Health—want of adequate sanitary supervision, numerous neglects by the Vestries, especially the neglect to make, or, if made, to enforce Regulations under the Sanitary Acts of 1866 and 1874.

The initiative of dealing with the existing condition of things rested with the Vestries. It was forcibly pointed out that complaints could hardly be expected either from the owners of insanitary houses, on whom the cost of the improvements would fall, or from tenants who are too often indifferent to considerations of health and cleanliness, and who in any case would fear to offend their landlords by complaining.

Rotherhithe came in for the strongest condemnation. Of it the Commissioners reported:—

“It is, in fact, no exaggeration to say that the results of lax administration abound in Rotherhithe, and especially in houses occupied by poor persons.”

The increase of the sanitary staff was recommended, but the obdurate Vestry resolved not to increase it.

The absolute necessity of inspection was demonstrated every day of the year to every Vestry and District Board in the metropolis by the results of such exceedingly limited inspection as was carried out.

In St. Luke, in 1890, of 1,348 houses inspected 296 were found “in fair sanitary condition.”

In Hackney, in 1887, 5,213 were inspected; 3,620 of them were found to be wanting in some sanitary requirement, or were so dirty as to necessitate orders being served for whitewashing and cleaning. In one street 111 houses were inspected, and in 97 nuisances were found.

In St. Marylebone, in 1884, 2,136 orders were sent out for repairs and various sanitary improvements. In Hammersmith, 3,377 notices to abate nuisances were served in 1886. In Westminster, 1,609 notices served for sanitary defects.

The Medical Officer of Health for St. Saviour, Southwark, reported (1890–1):—

“The importance of house-to-house inspection may be estimated by the fact that of 491 houses inspected, it was found necessary in nearly every instance to serve notice for the carrying out of urgent sanitary requirements.”

In Camberwell there were, in 1889, between 30,000 and 40,000 houses in the parish, “of which probably one-half should be inspected periodically.”

The Medical Officer of Health of Bethnal Green stated:—

“In my district we have a population of about 130,000, and about 18,000 houses, and we have two Inspectors. Of course there should be periodical inspection, that is to say, every house in the parish should be visited at least once a year by a Sanitary Inspector, but that with the present staff would be utterly impossible. In my district there is no house-to-house visitation; we simply attend to complaints as we receive them, and this completely fills up the time of the two Inspectors.”

And he further stated[167]:—

“In my district the Sanitary Inspectors are not under the control of the Medical Officer of Health.”

It is of course manifest that if houses had not been inspected, and the necessary sanitary improvements enforced, things would have gone on rapidly deteriorating, and with that deterioration would have come all those causes of disease which would endanger the lives of the occupants and create fresh centres for spreading disease broadcast.

It might have been thought that the numerous inquiries into the condition of the working classes in factories and workshops would have laid bare nearly all there was to lay bare.

A report to the Board of Trade on the Sweating System in the East End of London, by J. Burnett in 1887, rudely dispelled such an idea, and opened out to public view a new vista of causes, deleteriously affecting the public health, a new area of insanitation. Though the evils depicted had become acuter, they evidently had been going on for years.

“The system may be defined as one under which sub-contractors undertake to do work in their own houses or small workshops, and employ others to do it, making a profit for themselves by the difference between the contract prices and the wages they pay their assistants.

“The mass of those employed under the sweating system labour in workshops where much fewer than 20 are engaged, or in the houses which may be single rooms of the ‘small sweaters.’”

After referring to the numerous branches of the tailoring trade, he said:—

“Immense numbers of people of both sexes and all ages have rushed into the cheap tailoring trade as the readiest means of finding employment. The result has been an enormously overcrowded labour market, and a consequently fierce competition among the workers themselves, with all the attendant evils of such a state of things…. Matters have been rendered infinitely worse by an enormous influx of pauper foreigners from other European nations. The result has been to flood the labour market of the East End of London with cheap labour to such an extent as to reduce thousands of native workers to the verge of destitution….”

“There are, of course, in addition many English workers employed in the same trade and in the same shops, but their number is gradually being reduced, owing to the severity of a competition in which those who can subsist on least are sure to be victorious.

“The object of the sweater being his own gain, the inevitable tendency of such a system is to grind the workers down to the lowest possible level….

“The character of the workshops, or places used as workshops, varies considerably. The smaller sweaters use part of their dwelling accommodation, and in the vast majority of cases work is carried on under conditions in the highest degree filthy and unsanitary.”

“In small rooms, not more than nine or ten feet square, heated by a coke fire for the pressers’ irons, and at night lighted by flaring gas jets, six, eight, ten, or even a dozen workers may be crowded.

“The conditions of the Public Health Acts, and of the Factory and Workshop Regulation Acts, are utterly disregarded, and existing systems of inspection are entirely inadequate to enforce their provisions even if no divided authority tended to weaken the hands of the Inspectors.

“Some of the shops are hidden in garrets and back rooms of the worst kinds of East End tenements, and a third of them cannot be known to the Factory Inspectors.

“It is in regulating the hours of the women that factory inspection should be of most service, but how can two or three Inspectors keep in check the multitude of sweating dens of East London? Basements, garrets, backyards, wash-houses, and all sorts of unlooked for and unsuspected places are the abodes of the sweater.”

Early in the following year Lord Dunraven, in the House of Lords, moved for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the sweating system.

“The evils which existed there were caused by natural laws which were not by any means of necessity unwholesome in any degree…. But his belief was that though the causes were perfectly natural in themselves they had been allowed to run riot, and had not been put under proper control, and had thus produced the present terrible state of things….

“Large workshops were the exception. In the ‘dens’ of the sweaters there was not the slightest attempt at decency; men and women worked together for many consecutive hours, penned up in small rooms and basements, garrets, backyards, wash-houses, and all sorts of unlikely places, were the abodes of the sweaters.”

And he quoted the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops:—

“To add to the evils of overwork pursued by these people, we must note the overcrowded, ill-ventilated, and excessively hot state of the workrooms; … it is surprising how such people can live under such conditions.

“… It was,” he said, “a ridiculous and scandalous thing that Parliament should pass Factory and Sanitary Acts regulating the hours of labour of women and children, and that those Acts should be grossly violated.”

Lord Sandhurst said:—

“It might appear to their Lordships almost incredible that within three or four miles of that House a state of things, involving so much human misery, could possibly exist as was to be found at the East End of London.”

The Select Committee was appointed. The results of its inquiries are stated in the next chapter.

In 1888 the local government of London underwent a most notable change.

In the early part of 1887 various rumours gained currency as to questionable dealings in connection with the lettings of land owned by the Metropolitan Board. Certain officials of the Board were mentioned. The details do not fall within the history of the sanitary evolution of London, except so far as they affected the central governing authority of London. The allegations made received increasing confirmation, and early in 1888 a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into and thoroughly sift them, and early in May the Commission held its first sitting, the Metropolitan Board affording every facility for the thorough investigation of the matter.

Before that time, however—namely, in March—the Government had introduced into the House of Commons its proposals as regarded the local government of England and Wales generally; and the opportunity was taken to deal with the great problem of London government which had so long vexed and perplexed successive governments, and which was becoming more and more insistent as years went on, and London was accordingly included in the general scheme.

By the measure now introduced London was to be created—not a Corporation, nor a Municipality, but a County—with a Council as the governing authority of the County.