Beeton's housewife's treasury of domestic information : comprising complete and practical instructions on the house and its furniture, artistic decoration ... and all other household matters. With every requisite direction to secure the comfort, elegance, and prosperity of the home. A companion volume to "Mrs. Beeton's book of household management".

  • Isabella Beeton
Date:
[1880?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Beeton's housewife's treasury of domestic information : comprising complete and practical instructions on the house and its furniture, artistic decoration ... and all other household matters. With every requisite direction to secure the comfort, elegance, and prosperity of the home. A companion volume to "Mrs. Beeton's book of household management". Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    belonging, situate and being [No. 54, Upton Street, Clapham], in the County of [Surrey], which I now hold of [you] as tenant from year to year, at the expiration of the current year of my tenancy, which will expire next after the end of half a year from the date hereof. Dated this [twenty-fourth] day of [March], 188-. The verbal alterations necessary in the foregoing notice, when given by land- lord’s agent to tenant, or by tenant to landlord's agent, are obvious, and require no explanation. 45. TO BE TAKEN NOTE OP. Although instructions have been given in the preceding part of this chapter sufficient for the regulation of all ordinary transactions as between honourable men in the relative positions of landlord and tenant, there yet remain a few points on which some remarks may be useful. 1. In any agreement respecting repairs to be executed by the landlord (or tenant), describe exactly the nature of the repairs to be done and the cost and nature of the materials to be used. For example, a landlord agrees to paper and paint a house throughout, and, relying on this engagement, the tenant signs an agreement to take the premises. Two coats of paint may be necessary, but in absence of any stipulation to the contrary the owner of the house may put on but one coat, and claim to have done all that he promised to do. He may also, in absence of any express definition of what is to be done, give the woodwork a coat of ordinary paint instead of graining and varnishing ; and he may proceed to paper the walls with inferior paper if the price per piece be not agreed on beforehand, and even hang the new paper on the old paper, without first stripping the walls, a proceeding detrimental in all prob- ability to health, and certainly subversive of cleanliness. 2. An agreement in detail having been come to respecting the repairs to be done, do not take possession of the premises until the repairs agreed on have been carried out. If the agreement respecting repairs is not in writing, the landlord cannot be com- pelled by law to execute the repairs agreed on after possession has been taken. If the agreement is in writing, the continued presence of workmen on the premises— for the builder or house agent to whom the repairs have been entrusted is not likely to hurry himself to complete them when the tenant has taken possession—is so annoying, that it leads the tenant sometimes to forego the execution of the repairs rather than have the chance of getting to rights postponed well nigh indefinitely. Therefore— 3. When arranging to take a house that requires considerable repairs, have an agreement in writmg that all repairs shall be conchidedprior to the day on which the tenancy is to commence, and that in default thereof a deduction pro rata shall be made from the first quarter's rent for the number of days during which the house is in the hands of the workme?i after the day on which the tenant should take possession; or, in other words, that the tenant shall not be bound to take possession until the workmen have finally quitted the premises, a7id that he shall pay 710 rent for the ti77ie during which he is kept out of the pre77iises by this cause. It may be argued that no landlord or agent would let premises on such terms as these. Perhaps so ; but it may be urged on the other side that if tenants per- sistently refused to take hbuses unless some such stipulation as the above formed an 3
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