To remove the well-constructed houses of the City, in order that its wretched courts and alleys should participate in the blessings of light and air, might seem one method of conquering the difficulty which is before you; but I apprehend the opposite alternative, of proceeding to a gradual suppression of all residence in the former class of dwellings, may more naturally have your approbation.
To the latter aim, sooner or later, the sanitary efforts of the Corporation must be directed.
There are many parts of the City where great and immediate advantage would arise from an expenditure of money applied solely to the purpose of destruction; parts, where the purchase of an entire court, or series of courts, for the sole object of pulling down houses, and leaving open spaces in their stead, would be the cheapest as well as the most effective manner of dealing with their sanitary difficulties. And I have earnestly to suggest for your consideration, that proceedings of this nature will require to be pursued to a very great extent, and at a large annual expense, within the City, before the cleanliness and habitability of its poorer localities will stand in their legitimate proportion to the modern stateliness of thoroughfare and grandeur of public buildings which attest the magnificence of the Corporation.
I would, therefore, beg to recommend that a survey be made of the worst districts which I have specified, with a view to the immediate purchase and destruction of some considerable portion of the court-property lying in them; and, still more, I would urge that this is an exertion, which for some years must proceed systematically, in order to thin the density of a population which now breeds pestilence and augments mortality by its overcrowding and excess.
I am aware that considerable difficulties lie in the way of accomplishing an object of this sort with immediate rapidity. It is my great hope, however, that the principle may be distinctly recognised; and that the City will not tolerate within its municipal jurisdiction the continuance of houses absolutely incompatible with healthy habitation. This principle being once established, and a certain annual expenditure devoted to enforce it, I feel assured that within a few years opportunities will have arisen for that outlay to have been made in the most judicious manner, and for its results amply to have demonstrated the advantages of the system which I recommend.
SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR.
VI. Last, and not least, among the influences prejudicial to health in the City of London, as elsewhere, must be reckoned the social condition of the lower classes; and I refer to this the more especially, because often, in discussion of sanitary subjects before your Hon. Court, the filthy, or slovenly, or improvident, or destructive, or intemperate, or dishonest habits of these classes, are cited as an explanation of the inefficiency of measures designed for their advantage. It is constantly urged, that to bring improved domestic arrangements within the reach of such persons is a waste and a folly; that if you give them a coal-scuttle, a washing-basin, and a watercloset, these several utensils will be applied indifferently to the purposes of each other, or one to the purposes of all; and that meanwhile the objects of your charitable solicitude will remain in the same unredeemed lowness and misery as before. Now it is unquestionable, and I admit it,—that in houses containing all the sanitary evils which I have enumerated—undrained, and waterless, and unventilated—there do dwell whole hordes of persons, who struggle so little in self-defence against that which surrounds them, that they may be considered almost indifferent to its existence, or almost acclimated to endure its continuance. It is too true that, among these classes, there are swarms of men and women, who have yet to learn that human beings should dwell differently from cattle; swarms, to whom personal cleanliness is utterly unknown; swarms, by whom delicacy and decency in their social relations are quite unconceived. Men and women, boys and girls, in scores of each, using jointly one single common privy; grown persons of both sexes sleeping in common with their married parents; a woman suffering travail in the midst of the males and females of three several families of fellow-lodgers in a single room; an adult son sharing his mother’s bed during her confinement;—such are instances recently within my knowledge (and I might easily adduce others) of the degree and of the manner in which a people may relapse into the habits of savage life, when their domestic condition is neglected, and when they are suffered to habituate themselves to the uttermost depths of physical obscenity and degradation.
Here again, as in an earlier part of my Report, I think it requisite to remark, that I do not mean in any degree to suggest that the evils adverted to present themselves within the City to a greater extent than in sundry other parts of the metropolis. My sphere of duty lies within the City boundary, and it would be an impertinence in me to comment, either favourably or unfavourably, on districts which lie within another jurisdiction than that of the Commission which I have the honour to address. Simply to guard myself against the possibility of being misunderstood, I again draw attention to the fact that I studiously refrain from instituting comparisons with other metropolitan localities. Let me likewise observe that I am far from insinuating, or suspecting, that the majority of the poorer population of the city has fallen to that extreme debasement which I have just illustrated as affecting some portion (perhaps not an inconsiderable portion) of the poorest; but I dare not suppress my knowledge that such instances exist, nor can I refrain from stating my belief, that ignorance and poverty will soon contribute to increase them, if sanitary and social improvement do not co-operate against their continuance.
Contemplating such cases, I feel the deepest conviction that no sanitary system can be adequate to the requirements of the time, or can cure those radical evils which infest the under-framework of society, unless the importance be distinctly recognised, and the duty manfully undertaken, of improving the social condition of the poor.