“… To charge such property (viz., in bad condition and heavily encumbered) with the costs of thorough repair, would leave the owners in some instances, I am fully aware, destitute, but life is more sacred, and possesses higher rights than property, and it cannot be just to inflict or continue a public injury while endeavouring to spare and sympathise with the inconvenience of an individual.”
That the evil state of the dwellings of the poorer classes entailed a charge upon the public was also pointed out by the Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green, who, referring to the miserable homes in the parish, wrote:—
“From the cradle to the grave their inmates are a direct charge upon our funds.”
Happily the law was beginning to be enforced, and beginning to create a little alarm among some house-owners.
“As landlords are now aware that their property will be visited in rotation by the Inspector, the necessary alterations and improvements are frequently effected by them in anticipation.”[77]
Others did the necessary work when ordered to do it by the sanitary authority.
Others, however, not until legal proceedings were taken, and they were ordered by the magistrate to do it—and even then some would not obey the magistrate’s order, and the work had to be done by the sanitary authority, and the cost thereof levied from the owner.
One case was recorded by the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles’, in 1858–9, in which the authority of the law was more strongly asserted.
“While speaking of the resistance met with in enforcing sanitary requirements, it may be here mentioned that the extreme step of imprisoning the owner of a certain house has been had recourse to for his obstinate refusal to comply with a magistrate’s order.”