The third case was that of a child three weeks old, who died at No. 5, Devonshire Place, Whitechapel. The body of this child was kept in the room occupied by its parents for a period of twelve days, and at the time of the visit of the inspector the smell from it was most offensive.
Although in each of these cases everything was done by the officer of this Board, and by the relieving officer, to induce the respective parties to bury their dead before a nuisance was occasioned, yet to a certain extent their effort s were unavailing.
As such cases are of frequent occurrence, it is certainly full time that power was given to magistrates to order the burial without delay of every corpse which is certified to be a nuisance or dangerous to the public health.
It is necessary a great many things were done. It is necessary, above all, that the direct attention of the State should be given to the whole question, but the Home Secretary says there is 'no time' to attend to such matters. The question which led to this answer and the Home Secretary's statement in full were as follows:
Sanitary Condition of Whitechapel.
Mr. Bryce asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention had been called to the two last reports presented to the Whitechapel District Board of Works by the Medical Officer of Health on the sanitary condition of the Whitechapel district, in which he condemned, as unsanitary and ill-arranged, several new buildings recently erected in that district, and expressed the opinion that amendments in the existing Building Acts were urgently required; and whether, if sufficient powers to prevent the erection or order the closing of unsanitary dwelling were not now possessed by local authorities, he would undertake to bring in a Bill to amend the Building Acts in this important particular, by investing the proper local authorities with such powers.
Sir W. Harcourt said he would be glad to introduce Bills upon this and many other subjects, but there was no time for them.—Evening Standard, June 18, 1883.
'No time!'
It is well, with that answer ringing in our ears, to turn to the Parliamentary proceedings and discover what the important questions are which are engrossing the entire attention of the Legislature, and leaving 'no time' for such a matter as the constant menace to public health which exists in the present system of 'Housing the Poor.' I will not enumerate them, or I might be tempted into a political disquisition, which would be out of place; but the reader can, with considerable profit to himself, find them and make a note of them.
The list of important measures which have consumed the session and left 'no time' for this question will be instructive and amusing—amusing because the discussions which have taken up the time of the House contain in themselves all the elements of screaming farce.