“By the terms of even the old leases the tenant was supposed to keep the place in proper repair…. The property has gradually deteriorated in consequence of neglect.”
And Lord Salisbury, who asked:—
“I suppose it is practically impossible for the ground landlord to see that the conditions are kept?”
Was told in reply:—
“The only way in which it is possible for him to do that is to keep a very active supervision over his property.
“If that was done by ground landlords, and had always been done by them, you would have personal supervision carried out by a sufficient number of people to ensure the conditions being kept.”
Any idea of property having its duties as well as its rights appears to have been non-existent.
Next to the land-owner was the numerous and varied class of house “owners,” from the man who leased the land from the landlord and built the house, or who had leased the house and had sub-leased it to some one else. And often there were sub-lessees, until in some cases there was a chain of persons holding different interests in the same house.
And there was the class of persons who take a house and break it up into tenement-rooms, and who were known as “house-knackers,” or house jobbers, or house farmers, or as “middlemen,” these last being defined as any one who stands between the freeholder and the one who occupies.