First report of her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the housing of the working classes.

Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First report of her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the housing of the working classes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    Boodle, 95. Local Go- vernment of THE Metropolis, Owen, 250, & c. Owen, 329. Owen, 276. Owen, 283. Owen, 286. Owen, 260. Jennings, 3204. prevent overcrowding and to enforce sanitary requirements it would be impossible for middlemen to make the large per-centages they at present secure. This leads to the other great remaining cause of evil, the remissness of local authorities. The metropolis, outside the city boundaries, is divided under the Metropolis Local Management Act into 23 areas under the jurisdiction of vestries, and 15 areas under district boards made up of representatives of the smaller parishes. These vestries and district boards are the local authorities for the enforcement of the Nuisances Removal Acts and of Mr. Torrens’s Acts. The admi- nistration of Sir Richard Cross’s Acts is in the hands of the Metropolitan Board of Works, which has the discretion of refusing schemes under these Acts on the ground that they ought to be dealt with under Mr. Torrens's Acts. The Board of Works has, moreover, power of acting as though it were the local authority in case of the default of the local authority in putting in force Mr. Torrens’s Acts, a power which, as already stated, has never been put in force. The Sanitary Act of 1866, s. 35 (which will be dealt with in i detail later), contains certain provisions, known as the tenement ; provisions, authorising the local authority to make regulations for fixing the number of persons who may occupy a house or part of a house let in lodgings or occupied by members of more than one j family, for the registration and inspection of such houses, and for enforcing the provision therein of sanitary appliances. The Local Government Board, as already explained, has the power, of which • it has now made general use, to declare this enactment in force in any part of the metropolis. The mere putting in force of the 1 enactment is, however, of no avail unless the authority is willing to make regulations and when made to enforce them; and it has been found that only two of the local authorities in the metropolis have been energetically acting upon such regulations, some of the other bodies having almost forgotten that they had made regulations with regard to tenements. The vestries and district boards have under 18 & 19 Yict. c. 120, power of appointing medical officers of health and inspectors of nuisances who are in no way subject to the Local Government Board or any other public department, either as to tenure of office 4 or as to salary. These powerful governing bodies are elected by < parishioners rated to the relief of the poor; but little interest is, as a rule, taken in the election by the inhabitants, instances having been known of vestrymen in populous parishes being returned by two votes on a show of hands. The fact that only two authorities out of 38, the vestry of Chelsea and the district board of Works of Hackney, have in the past been energetically taking action under the provisions of the Sanitary Act in respect of tenement houses, may be fairly taken as presumptive proof of supine-; ness on the part of many of the metropolitan local authorities in sanitary matters, at all events as regards parishes which contain large numbers of such houses as would come under the Act. The proportion of inspectoral staff which is considered
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