As a witness said before a Select Committee in 1882:—
“So long as vestrymen own little properties, and so long as their relations and friends do the same thing, and they are all mixed up in a friendly association, you can never get the prevention of the continuance of unhealthy tenements carried through.”[143]
And not only was there a passive but often an active opposition to work being performed which it was their duty to do.
A general inspection would have shown what houses ought to have been made subject to such regulations, but it would also have exposed too publicly the iniquities of house-owners, and would have entailed a heavy expense on those who left the houses in a perpetual state of dilapidation, insanitation, and filth; and so the staff of inspectors was kept as low as possible.
A thorough enforcement of the regulations would have necessitated a supervision of their houses by the owners in addition to expense.
Many straws showed which way the wind blew. Thus the Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green wrote:—
“It is by the constant inspection and reinspection of property inhabited by careless and destructive tenants that most good can be done. I recently felt it my duty to recommend a house-to-house inspection of the whole parish—a procedure urgently required to ascertain the condition of the drainage and water supply arrangements. I regret to say this recommendation was not acted upon.”
And the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras, in referring to house-to-house inspection, wrote:—
“This most important branch of all sanitary work has received as much attention as the number of the sanitary staff will admit.”