Volume 2
First-[second] report of the Royal Sanitary Commission.
- Great Britain. Royal Sanitary Commission
- Date:
- 1869-1874
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: First-[second] report of the Royal Sanitary Commission. 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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![C.J. Blagg, active and intelligent than an assessment committee ? —The assessment committee is merely dealing with a 1 A tW 1870 paper and a matter in which nobody knows ■ what steps anybody may have taken. The assessment committee meet with closed doors, quoad the public, certain items are written down, nobody is responsible for it, and there is no sort of feeling of hostility. If anybody is charged more or less they cannot lay their finger upon anybody and say so and so has done it. But if the committee of the board of guardians had to summon people before the magistrates, or to give them notice to abate nuisances, and to follow that up by proceedings before the petty sessions, it would be looked upon no doubt as a sort of hostile litigation as against the party who is pointed out, and that is a kind of thing that from my practical experience of country neigh- bourhoods, farmers, and so on, are exceedingly loath to adopt. 11.819. It is the duty of the board of guardians now to summon persons who create nuisances before magistrates, is it not ?—I may state as an instance of what they do in our district that nobody has been summoned yet in our district, and lots of people ought to have been. 11.820. In the perfoi'mance of your duties as a board of guardians do you ever form committees for special purposes ?—Yes, we have a committee for finance and we have a visiting committee. I think, so far as I recollect, these are all, except the assessment committee. They have a visiting committee who go through the workhouse prior to the regular board meeting on every board day. 11.821. If you had some great nuisance reported to you, or if some great work that you thought it was necessary to carry out came before you, should you form a committee for that particular purpose ?—I take it that structural works are not within our department, but that structural works fall within the sewers authority. There is another instance of what I think is a defect in the legislation, that the jurisdictions and the duties are so very apt to conflict. 11.822. I think that up to I5. in the pound the board of guardians have structural powers in case of the necessity of laying down a sewer or other structure, for the removal of a nuisance ; is not that so ?—Just so. I see on referring to a summary that I made in 1866 when this action was taken, that I came to the conclusion that the 18th & 19th Victoria, cap. 121, sec. 22, was the only clause which gives the guardians power to lay down sewers, and this appears only to apply to house drains, and limits each year's assessment to \s. in the pound, and gives no power to borrow money on rates. On the other hand, the Acts of I860 and 1866 give vestries and their committees extensive powers to form special drainage districts, to lay down main sewers, and to levy rates of unlimited amount, and to borrow money on rates ; so that practically I came to the conclusion that the vestry was really the only authority that could deal on any large scale with structural works. 11.823. Does the plan which you have sketched out just now, in which you propose that a permanent commission, something like the Enclosure Commission in London, should preside over sanitary matters throughout the whole kingdom, and have a body of inspectors of their own who should set in motion the resident inspectors upon the spot, involve no board on the spot at all ?—It does not. I would work it in this way : in small matters which relate only to indi- vidual matters, such as privy nuisances, and so on, I would give the sub-inspector power to order an abate- ment of that nuisance, supposing that it was the removal of a dung heap or anything of that sort; but for the sake of the protection of the subject I would give the person causing the nuisance some right to appeal, and it appears to me that in such cases there should be an apjjeal to the petty sessions. 11.824. Whose servant in this case would the sub- inspector be ?—He would be a Government inspector. 11.825. Would he be paid by the Government ?— He would be paid by the Government. f 11,826. Then in fact you think that the whole thing could be carried out without any local ma- chinery in rural districts ?—I think so. The expense appears to me to be the great objection to it, as far as I can see into the matter. 11.827. In what sort of sized town do you think that a local authority would begin to be necessary ?— I should be inclined to preserve all existing local boards, because they have got into no end of com- plications, they have borrowed money and they have got their machinery at work, and therefore I should not propose to annihilate them. 11.828. That I believe would preserve all councils of boroughs, and about 700 elected bodies already formed in various parts of the kingdom in populous places ?—I presume it would, but I do not know the number. 11.829. I suppose that in order to carry out an uniform system you would allow places similarly situated and similarly populous to have elected boards? —I should not jJropose to have any fi-esh boards of that description. I should propose to have Govern- ment inspectors to see that even those local boards did their work properly, and that the inspectors should have jurisdiction even in those districts, but merely then as superintending rather than as acting in the manner in which they would act in semi-rural places which had no board. 11.830. Does not your plan rather militate against the principle of taxation by representation, and would not localities rather object to have their rates imposed by a Government authority ?—I do not suppose that it would be very popular, but I think the most effective schemes are unpopular at the first start. I think if it came to be worked out that people would submit to it cheerfully enough, because there is no disposition on the ]3art of ordinary country people to object to a law which really is strong, and which they know they cannot resist, and they make up their minds to it; but if it is left to their own option they are very slow to set the law in motion. 11.831. You are so thoroughly impressed with the inaction of the local bodies that you have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Government must do these things for them ?—That is the sum and sub- stance of my opinion upon the point. I am not speak- ing at all with special reference to my own district. I do not conceive that ours represents any particular grievance, as I have already stated, but I am looking at it rather as a general question, having been asked to give my opinion upon it in that way. I should explain that the only expenses that I should propose to make part of the imperial expense would be the expenses of the board and the inspectors. The local expenses would fall of course upon the local rates. I should suppose that the machinery would be best set in motion by the inspector giving an order to the overseers as the accessible parish authority, in each case, to do what structural works were required, and the overseers would call the vestry together, and if the vestry objected to the works on the ground of their not being necessary, or on the ground of their being too expensive for the operation, they might have an appeal to quarter sessions, or something of that kind. 11.832. {The Earl of Ducic.^ What area would you propose for those inspectors ?—I think the most con- venient area would be that of the poor law unions for the resident inspectors. I think they would find enough to occupy their time if the work was well done. With regard to head inspectors, I have already stated that I think that the district of the poor law inspectors wo uld be a convenient boundary. Those are well known and recognized districts now, and they seem to form something like an analogous case. 11.833. To whom would this resident inspector report from time to time ?—To his superior officer, the district inspector, who should lay the reports, I take it, before the central board, where it was neces- sary, that is, where there was anything of a structural and important character. 11,834 What amount of power would you give the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21366081_0002_0182.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
