The Sanitary Evolution of London

by Henry Jephson

But even this imperfect legislation was completely brought to naught by the opposition of the Vestries and District Boards to such action as would have secured at any rate some degree of decent accommodation in the tenement-houses of London.

By the Public Health Act, 1891, the London County Council was empowered to make bye-laws enforcing a certain standard of sanitary accommodation in them, and did make them. But in other respects nothing was done; and so the process still goes on, large numbers of houses hitherto occupied by one family are passing into the occupation of several families devoid of the primary necessaries of a healthy existence. The great movement has by no means spent its force; for long to come houses will be going through this transition, and until legislation deals definitely with this matter the inevitable evils attendant on the change will continue.

The second main cause of failure lies at the door of the local authorities who would not and did not administer the existing laws.

The local governing authorities are now more active than they have ever been before; the amount of work done in every branch of sanitation is far greater than ever before; the number of Sanitary Inspectors has been increased from 188 in 1893 to 313 in 1904. But the regulations or bye-laws under the Act of 1891 which Parliament had imperatively directed them to make and to use as regarded the tenement-houses in London, are very far from being enforced to the extent they should be.

The total number of houses let in lodgings which were on the various registers in 1905 was 22,257.

With only a few exceptions the Borough Councils, like their predecessors the Vestries, make comparatively little use of this power, though there is a concurrent mass of testimony as to the beneficial results following its use. Stepney, under the inrush of aliens, found the benefit of exercising the power, and heads the list with 2,672 houses on the register. Kensington has 2,107; Westminster 1,641; St. Pancras 2,192; Hammersmith 2,266; and Finsbury 1,169. These amount to 12,047, or 10 per cent. of all the inhabited houses in those six boroughs. In the whole of the rest of London with 451,596 inhabited houses, only 10,207 of the houses let in lodgings are registered: so that only 2¼ per cent. of the houses in them, as against 10 per cent. in the others, are registered.

It is manifest, therefore, how imperfectly the greater number of even the present local authorities perform the duty which has been imperatively imposed upon them by Parliament.

The Borough of Shoreditch, for instance, with 22,940 tenements of less than five rooms, of which 6,269 were overcrowded with 35,500 persons living in them, has only 283 of the houses let in lodgings on the register. The Borough of Lambeth with 44,495 tenements of less than five rooms, of which 6,548 were overcrowded with 36,900 people living in them, had only 372 houses on the register. The Borough of Bermondsey with over 25,000 persons living in overcrowded tenements had only 221 houses on the register.

This, as has been explained ([see p. 377]), is not a matter in which the Central Authority, the London County Council, has any authority to interfere. The Borough Councils are their own masters in this matter, as were their predecessors the Vestries, and the responsibility as to administering or not administering in their areas the Act of Parliament rests entirely with them. The consequences of the non-administration of these bye-laws to the health and physical well-being of great masses of the people are disastrous.

Various legal decisions in recent years have somewhat impeded the effective administration of the bye-laws in this matter, but the real impediment is the dislike to them of the Borough Councils.