The dwelling house / by George Vivian Poore.

  • George Vivian Poore
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dwelling house / by George Vivian Poore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    ideas which I have put forward have been subjected, I may conclude that the principles advocated are considered right, but that the lowest classes of our population are not to be trusted to safeguard to any extent the wholesomeness of their homes. Therefore we are all asked to come down to the level of the dirtiest and most careless, and our sanitary methods (in which there is too much of Hercules and too little of Minerva) do not admit of any encouragement being given to those living within a municipal boundary who may be so circumstanced that they can adopt the principles I have advocated. No ! we must all be tarred with the same brush, and no quarter is given to those who refuse to allow the municipality to be put to the trouble and expense of robbing them of stuff which they find invaluable on their own land. In Hampshire I have spent a considerable sum of money in freeing the river from some pollution and saving trouble to the town. Incidentally, I have improved the value of a house, and, of course, the rates of that house have been raised. Such a fact is a most effectual check upon the vast majority of those who might wish to imitate what they may approve of in principle, and I feel assured that no real advance in sanitation will be made until there is an equitable adjustment of sanitary rates and we have the right, if we desire it, to pay for water by meter. That water should be paid for according to rateable value, and that the rating authority and the water authority should be identical, seems to me to be an arrangement which the ratepayer will possibly find irksome. The greatest of sani- tary troubles in the present day is overcrowding, and this trouble is greatly fostered by our methods of sanitation. And yet we find responsible persons suggesting that open spaces should be taxed at ' site value,' while at the same time they are willing to spend any amount of millions in bringing water from Wales because they think that eventu-
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