Parliament had taken some interest as to the width of the streets, and had shown some anxiety for improvements in them. Hence, much local and general legislation was from time to time directed to control the erection of buildings beyond the regular lines of buildings. Thus the Metropolitan Paving Act, 1817, contained stringent provisions as to projections which might obstruct the circulation of air and light, or be inconvenient or incommodious to passengers along carriage or foot ways in certain parts of the metropolis.
In 1828 the Act for Consolidating the Metropolis Turnpike Trusts, also, contained certain restrictive provisions, but these were rendered futile by the construction put upon its terms by the magistrates.
Again, in 1844, further enactments were made by the Metropolitan Building Act to restrain projections from buildings; but after a short administration of its provisions it was found that shops built on the gardens in front of the houses, or on the forecourts of areas, did not come within the terms of the Act. And so the Act, in that very important respect, was useless.
The action of Parliament had been mainly prompted by the necessity for increased facilities of communication, and by the desire to safeguard house property from destruction by fire; whilst the most important of all aspects of the housing of the people—namely, the sanitary aspect—received no consideration, and was completely ignored as a thing of no consequence.
But whatever the motive of action by Parliament, the ensuing legislation was in the main inoperative or ineffective. The resolution of landowners to secure the highest prices for their property, and the determination of builders, once they got possession of any land, to utilise every inch of it for building, and so to make the utmost money they could out of it, defeated the somewhat loosely drawn enactments. Means of evading the legislative provisions were promptly discovered, and, in despite of legislation, builders, architects, and surveyors of the metropolis were unrestrained in their encroachments upon areas and forecourts—at times even were successful in breaking the existing lines of buildings in metropolitan streets or roads by encroachments which were only discovered too late to be prevented.
Nor was there anything to prevent houses being built on uncovered spaces at the backs of existing buildings, thus taking up whatever air-space had been left between the previous buildings. Hence, great blocks of ground absolutely covered with buildings, back to back, side to side, any way so long as a building could by any ingenuity be fitted in. Hence the culs-de-sac, the small and stifling courts and alleys. Nor were there any regulations forbidding certain kinds of buildings which would be injurious to the health of their inhabitants. Hence the mean and flimsy and insanitary houses which were being erected in the outer circle of the metropolis, and which wrought havoc with the health and lives of the people. Hence, too, the erection, on areas and forecourts, of buildings which narrowed the streets, diminished the air-spaces and means of ventilation, and destroyed the appearance of the localities.
And once up they had come to stay; for years were to pass before the Legislature created any effective means for securing their amelioration, and for generations they were permitted to exercise their evil and deadly sway over the people, and to scatter broadcast throughout the community the seeds of disease and death.
The then existing actual state of the case was summed up by Dr. Southwood Smith in his evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1840:—