“The poverty of the inhabitants of the poorest quarters, or in other words the relation borne by the wages they received to the rent they had to pay.”
The next was the demolition, for various reasons, of houses inhabited by the working classes and poorer people, and the consequent displacement of the people.
The third was the relation between the owners of property upon which the dwellings of the poor stood, and the tenants of those dwellings.
“The other great remaining cause of the evil was the remissness of local authorities.”
From their very origin, these “authorities” were unsatisfactory instruments for the performance of the public duties.
“But little interest was, as a rule, taken in the election of vestrymen by the inhabitants,” instances having been known of vestrymen in populous parishes being returned by two votes, on a show of hands.
Elsewhere it is reported they elected each other.
The Commissioners referred to the “supineness” of many of these metropolitan local authorities in sanitary matters, and to the “laxity of administration of some of them.” And still worse, to the self-interested action of vestrymen.
Thus on the Vestry of Clerkenwell, they said, were—
“Thirteen or fourteen persons who are interested in bad or doubtful property, including several ‘middlemen’; and ten publicans who, with the exception of one or two, had the reputation of working with the party who trade in insanitary property; and accordingly this party commands a working majority on the Vestry.”