The 35th Section enacted that regulations might be made by the Sanitary Authority (in other words, the Vestry or District Board) for fixing the number of persons who might occupy a house, or part of a house, let in lodgings, or occupied by members of more than one family. Houses so let were to be registered by the Vestry. The regulations could fix a certain number of cubic feet of air space which should be available for each person. By this means the number of persons who might live in a house, and in the rooms of the house, could be limited.
That was the plan—simple enough in appearance—which Parliament devised for contending with the great evil of overcrowding.
And then, as regarded the sanitation of the houses when registered, it enacted that regulations should contain provisions for their being put into and kept in a clean and wholesome state. And to secure this being done, regulations were made for their inspection.
It was an original and comprehensive scheme of reform. It struck at the root of the two great evils—overcrowding and insanitary dwellings; at overcrowding, by the limitation of the number of persons inhabiting a house, or part of a house, and at insanitary dwellings by a series of regulations enforcing the necessary measures for a decent standard of sanitation. But it was something far more than this. It was the declaration of principles of the utmost importance. It was a declaration of the principle that the responsibility for the condition of the “houses let in lodgings” should be on the shoulders of the “owner” of the house. It was the declaration of the principle that the “owner” should not be allowed to use his property to the detriment, to the injury of the public. It affirmed, so far as London lodging or tenement houses were concerned, the great principle, abhorred by so many “owners,” that “property has its duties as well as its rights.”
The Act was, however, even more remarkable for the recognition it contained of another principle of vital importance to the people of London—the principle of central authority over local sanitary authorities who neglected their duties.
Hitherto the local authorities were practically their own masters, and could with absolute impunity neglect to put the provisions of the existing health laws into operation; and “often their inaction had been an absolutely inexcusable neglect of duty.”
A power of appeal against this inaction was given. Where complaint was made to a Secretary of State that a nuisance authority had made default in enforcing the provisions of the Nuisances Removal Acts, he could, if satisfied after inquiry that the authority had been guilty of the alleged default, make an order limiting a time for the performance of the duty, and if the duty was not performed within that time, he could appoint some person to perform the duty and charge the costs to the authority. And where the local authority had made default in instituting proceedings against some sanitary law breaker, he could order the chief police officer to institute them. These provisions were a recognition of the fact, long patent to even the blindest, that local authorities did not do their duty, and of the necessity of devising a means of securing that a necessary public duty should be done.
The fact was emphasised a few years later by the Royal Sanitary Commissioners, who pointed out (1871) that—
“However local the administration of affairs, a central authority will nevertheless be always necessary in order to keep the local executive everywhere in action.”
The real underlying truth now beginning to be discerned was that in the matter of health or disease, London could not be treated in bits, each governed by an independent body, but must be regarded as, what it really was, one single entity or whole.