Painfully and laboriously, and in the face of persistent obstruction and hostility, has the present sanitary position been attained. “Vested rights in filth and dirt” have offered a prolonged and dogged fight against reforms which curtailed their privileges. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been needlessly cast away, an uncountable number blighted and made useless by diseases which were preventable, and which were not prevented, and an incalculable injury inflicted upon the community.
And the expense to the community has been enormous. Millions upon millions of money have had to be spent to make good—so far as could be made good—the ravages of past neglect and culpable management. Millions upon drainage, upon hospitals, upon houses for the working classes, upon open spaces—tens of millions upon water supply, and most unjustifiable and regrettable of all, millions to compensate slum owners for their iniquities.
And even yet we have not arrived at our goal. What, then, are still the causes of failure? What the impediments? Where the shortcomings?
The failure is in part due to a great omission by Parliament—in part to the non-administration of existing laws by local authorities—in part to a great defect in the system of local government.
Parliament had, most unfortunately, omitted from all its enactments affecting London any provision for the supervision of the great movement in part economic, in part social, which has been going on in London for well-nigh two-thirds of a century—namely, the change of houses inhabited by one family into tenement-houses, or houses inhabited by several families.
That movement with its appalling attendant evils was allowed to go on practically unregulated, uncontrolled, and unsupervised.
The great evil of this movement was, that a house which had been structurally and sanitarily designed for one family was sanitarily unsuited for its altered career as the abode of several families. Nothing was done to obviate this evil. And so these houses became packed with people and families who had to live in one or two rooms in them without the primary necessities of a healthy existence—without ventilation—without an adequate supply of water—without facilities for cooking food—with the scantiest and filthiest sanitary accommodation—had to live under conditions which put a high premium upon dirt and insanitation, and which absolutely invited disease and death.
Even the Sanitary Act of 1866, and its amending Act of 1874, did not deal with this crucial matter; and no legal obligation was created by Parliament to ensure that the houses undergoing such a change should be adapted to their altered circumstances.
The Sanitary Act of 1866 only in part dealt with the evils inherent in such houses. It imposed on the Sanitary Authority the duty of making regulations which prescribed a standard of the air space for each person, and thus made an effort to prevent overcrowding; it imposed upon the “owner” the duty of maintaining a certain standard of cleanliness—the rooms were to be painted or lime-whitened every year—it laid upon the tenants certain duties also as to maintaining cleanliness.