But there was another view, much nearer justice, which was given expression to before the Select Committee in 1881.
“An owner of property who allowed his property to fall into such a miserable state as to be unfit for human habitation is not a man that deserves the slightest consideration of any kind from Parliament—he ought to be treated rather as a criminal than an owner of property. To compensate him is a mistake entirely.”
And the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel said it was his opinion that—
“If the landlord leaves his house in a very bad state, and will not listen to any representations, he ought not to be paid by the public when he is creating a nuisance.”
The Act of 1868 having helped so little to a solution of the housing problem, and the matter being one of ever-increasing urgency, an effort was made to deal with it in 1875, when a Bill for facilitating the improvement of the working classes in large towns was introduced into Parliament by Sir R. A. Cross, and was carried.
It often happened that in some of the worst slums, the houses were the property of several owners, and it was not therefore in the power of any one owner to make such alterations as were necessary for the public health.
The Act[134] of 1875 contemplated—
“Dealing with whole areas, where the houses are so structurally defective as to be incapable of repair, and so ill-placed with reference to each other as to require, to bring them up to a proper sanitary standard, nothing short of demolition and reconstruction. Accordingly, in this case, the local authority, armed with compulsory powers, at once enters as a purchaser, and on completion of the purchase proceeds forthwith to a scheme of reconstruction.”[135]
An official representation, that the houses within a particular area were unfit for human habitation, was to be made to the Central Authority, the Metropolitan Board of Works, by the Medical Officer of Health of a Vestry or District Board, and the Metropolitan Board was empowered to declare the same to be an unhealthy area, and to make an improvement scheme in respect of it. If it decided that an improvement scheme ought to be made, it should forthwith make such a scheme, which, after sundry formalities, was embodied in a Provisional Order which had to be confirmed by Parliament.