“It is not surprising to find that the Sanitary Inspectors whose tenure of office and salary is subject to such a body should show indisposition to activity.”
“The state of the homes of the working classes in Clerkenwell, the overcrowding, and other evils, which act and react on one another, must be attributed in a large measure to the default of the responsible local authority.”
“Clerkenwell does not stand alone: from various parts of London the same complaints are heard of insanitary property being owned by members of the Vestries and District Boards, and of sanitary inspection being inefficiently done, because many of the persons whose duty it is to see that a better state of things should exist, are those who are interested in keeping things as they are.”
And in another part of their report they wrote:—
“It is evident that the remedies which legislation has provided for sanitary evils have been imperfectly applied in the metropolis, and that this failure has been due to negligence in many cases of the existing local authorities.”
The part of the evidence which was of greatest value and interest was that which laid bare the responsibility for the dreadful conditions under which such masses of the people lived.
Apart from the measure of responsibility which fell on Parliament itself, and it was no light one, it is clear that those conditions were due (1) in part to the various classes of “owners,” (2) in part to the people themselves, and (3) in part to the local authorities.
As regarded owners, there were first the ground landlords, who themselves, or whose predecessors had leased their land for building purposes, or with houses thereon to a tenant.
It would appear clear that these ground landlords or freeholders, or lessors, had power to enforce against the person who held directly from them the repairing clauses of leases. But the existing condition of things showed that they did not do so.
One of the witnesses, giving evidence about a particular property, said:—