8. You are invested with important authority against such trades and occupations as are offensive or injurious to their neighbourhood. Under your former Act, you can subject to penalties any person who shall ‘roast or burn, boil, distil, or otherwise decompose any root, drug, or other article or thing, in any house or building, and thereby cause offensive or injurious smells or vapours to be emitted therefrom, so as to become a common nuisance;’ and the same Act also gave you a very inoperative clause against such nuisance-causing manufactories as might begin to work in the City after the commencement of that Act.
Your new law enacts that everything practicable shall be done for the suppression of all nuisances arising in manufactures and the like:—that, after the first of January next, every furnace used in the City shall be such as to consume its own smoke; and that whatever trade or business may occasion noxious or offensive effluvia, or otherwise annoy the inhabitants of its neighbourhood, shall be required to employ, to your satisfaction, the best known means for preventing or counteracting such annoyance.
9. You have certain powers, to which I adverted in [my former Report], as likely to come into activity whenever the injurious practice of intramural burial might cease; powers, namely, relating to the disposal of dead bodies in certain specified cases: and under your new Act, you have acquired some further authority (likewise only to be exercised after that cessation, and with the consent of the Bishop of London) to appropriate the disused burial-grounds for purposes of improvement. At the time of my last Report I looked ‘forward to the complete discontinuance of burial within your territory as a matter for warm congratulation among all who are interested in the cause of sanitary improvement;’ and it is with proportionate disappointment and regret, that I have now to report to you that the Order in Council, which was to have closed all metropolitan burial grounds, has never yet been issued; and that negociations, conducted by the General Board of Health for the purchase of a sufficient extramural cemetery, were suddenly arrested at the close of the last session of Parliament. Your powers in relation to these matters remain of course meanwhile inoperative.[68]
[68] In the Parliamentary Session of 1852, the Interments Act of 1850, which had remained inoperative, was repealed under a new ‘Act to amend the Laws concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis,’ which became law July 1st, 1852. Under this Act, the powers, alluded to in of this volume, were given to the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London as a Burial Board for the City.—J. S., 1854.
10. The most important additions made to your power relate to the dwellings of the poor, and are embodied chiefly in the tenth section of your new Act. The definition of ‘lodging-house’ given in this clause is so extensive, and the power of regulation conceded to you is so unconditional (where once the necessity for your interference is shown) that your Hon. Court can now exert your authority for every legitimate object, in respect of all the poorer houses in the City.[69] The definition is, that ‘the expression common lodging-house shall, for the purposes of this Act, mean any house, not being a licensed victualling house, let, or any part of which is let, at a daily or weekly rent not exceeding the rate of three shillings and sixpence per week; or in which persons are harboured or lodged for hire for a single night, or for less than a week at one time; or in which any room let for hire is occupied by more than one family at one time.’ And your powers are to the following effect:—Wherever over-crowding has taken place unwholesomely or indecently—wherever undue illness has prevailed—wherever from any one of several causes the house is unfit for occupation, you can require its immediate registration; you can then make such rules as you think fit for the maintenance of decency and health; and you can enforce conformity to those regulations with appropriate penalties.
[69] Circumstances, which need not here be detailed, have led to disappointment in the working of this clause, and have shown, to my great regret, that I over-estimated the benefits it was capable of conferring.—J. S., 1854.
The terms of the clause throw on your Medical Officer the responsibility of initiating these proceedings; and his task in the matter will be one of anxiety and arduousness. In most other clauses of your Acts of Parliament, an alternative is allowed as to your taking the opinion ‘of the Officer of Health, or of any two duly qualified Medical Practitioners:’ but in this clause you are expressly restricted to the certificate of your Officer of Health.
In my two former Reports, I have addressed you at length on those conditions relative to the dwellings and social habits of the poor which made the enactments of this clause indispensable; and I look forward to its operation with a sanguine belief that it may be rendered one of the most important boons ever conferred on the labouring classes of the community.
I subjoin to my Report the schedule which I would suggest for the registration of lodging-houses, and which (as you will observe) requires detailed information as to every sanitary particular of the dwelling.[70] I would recommend that in every case, where registration is made, the owner’s specification of these particulars should be accompanied by a written certificate from your Inspector; testifying (in some such form as that annexed to the schedule in my Appendix) first, to the accuracy of the statement, and, secondly, to the general condition of the house.
[70] Vide [page 210].