“The inhabitants of Tuson’s Court, Spitalfields, had been entirely deprived of water in consequence of the water company refusing to continue any longer the supply, as the landlord had not paid the water rate.”
The quality of the water, though improved by the change of intakes to the part of the Thames above Teddington Lock, left very much to be desired. It was no longer contaminated by the entire sewage of the metropolis, but it was still by sewage poured into the river and its tributaries by towns higher up—Oxford, Reading, Windsor, Chertsey, Hampton, and others—and received, unchecked, the whole of the pollution, solid and fluid, of the district constituting the watershed. And this same water, after it had been so polluted, was abstracted from the river, sand-filtered, and pumped into the metropolis for domestic uses and distributed to the consumers.[82]
The housing of the people was the problem which, above all others, was more and more forcing itself upon the attention of those whose work brought them into actual contact with the conditions of life of the great mass of the people who were in their charge; not merely the construction of the houses or their situation, but the accommodation afforded and the conditions of life therein.
“Our forefathers,” wrote one of the Medical Officers of Health, “knew nothing about the public health, and cared less. They added house to house, and street to street, according to their own will and apparent benefit, and so have left us this mingled heritage.”
And there were streets and courts and alleys which were not fit for human habitation, and which could never be made so; and thousands upon thousands of houses where “nothing short of a hurricane would suffice to displace and renew the air.”
London had enough to suffer under from the state of the existing houses, and an appalling task before her to remedy them, but not alone was this enormous evil practically unattacked, but fresh sources of evil were allowed to be created, and new houses were being erected which would carry into the future the evils which efforts were now being made to put an end to.
“A house may be built anywhere,” wrote one of the Medical Officers of Health in 1862, “and almost anyhow, provided all the rooms can be lighted and ventilated from a street or alley adjoining. The object of the builder is to save as much ground, materials, and expense as possible. The result is not difficult to foresee….”
No regard, moreover, was had to the ground on which new houses were being built, though that was all-important for a healthy dwelling.