In St. Pancras (1856–7) the laundry department, erected by the “Society for Establishing Public Baths and Wash-houses,” was of great value in affording the poor housewife an opportunity of washing and drying her linen away from her one room, in which the family had to live night and day.
“I have frequently seen a small room of this kind with from four to eight or even ten inmates rendered doubly unhealthy by these laundry operations, which produce a damp and almost malarious atmosphere.”
The Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth had pleaded for such an establishment in his district, but “the idea of erecting them seems quite abandoned by the Vestry.”
“I know nothing more objectionable in a sanitary point of view than the washing of foul clothes in the dwellings of the poor, and still worse the drying of them in courts and rooms already deficient of free circulation of air and light.”
Nothing, however, was done. But inaction far greater in gravity and infinitely more reprehensible was that relating to the housing of the people. The Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel drew attention, in his report of 1857, to their power in this respect:—
“Docks, railways, warehouses, &c., &c., must be constructed for the increase of the trade of this great metropolis, but our construction of them ought not to prevent us from providing better habitations for the working classes whose labours effect these improvements; more especially as it is in the power of parishes by virtue of an Act of Parliament to encourage the establishment of lodging-houses for the labouring classes.”[73] Not one single Vestry or District Board ever attempted to deal with the evils of bad housing and overcrowding by putting into operation the provisions of this Act.
The occasional statement in the report of a Medical Officer of Health as to what was actually done in his parish, by showing what might have been done in any other one, brings into strong relief the incapacity or deliberate inaction of the local authorities of other parishes. Thus, in some parishes the Medical Officers of Health endeavoured to effect some diminution of overcrowding—for instance, the Medical Officer of Health for Islington reported that—
“In several instances the owners of dwelling-houses had been summoned for permitting the overcrowding of their houses; and the magistrate had fined the offenders.”
And the Medical Officer of Health for Holborn in the same year wrote:—
“Your Board has already done much to ameliorate the condition of this class of society (the poor and overcrowded) by compelling the owners to cleanse, drain, and ventilate their dwellings; to close cellars, to provide proper water supply, sanitary accommodation, and in many cases had abated overcrowding.”