Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of London

by John Simon

With respect to the rules, which, under authority of this clause, you may find it requisite to lay down for better regulating the residences of the poor,—the conditions for which you have to legislate are so various and complicated, that no formula will apply universally; and you will often be called on to adapt special rules to particular cases as they come before you. I can therefore only venture at present to offer you general suggestions on the subject.

You will find that the houses in which your interference is required fall into three cases, characterised as follows:—(1) Where the house is let in several independent holdings (often as many holdings as rooms) each occupied by a single family and no more, and paid for at a rent not exceeding 3s. 6d. per week;—(2) Where the house is thus let in several independent holdings, and where the renter of each or any portion, admits other persons to share his holding with him, on their payment to him of a sub-rent per week or per night, so that a room comes to be occupied by more than one family at a time;—(3) Where the entire house, or all such part as is let in lodgings is under the direct management of a single resident proprietor or keeper, where the lodgings are let at . . . . per night, and where many persons not belonging to one single family are lodged together in some single room, or in various single rooms of the house.

Of the first arrangement, where a single room is the residence of a single family, you have innumerable illustrations in the City; as, for instance in the large houses of Windsor-street (to which I have recently drawn your attention) where in one house there are sixteen such holdings:—of the second arrangement—the most abominable and brutalising which can be conceived, you have sufficient illustrations in Plumtree-court:—of the third—comparatively little known in the City, there are instances in Field-lane.

In respect of the first class of houses, I should be disposed to look upon each holding as the house of its occupier, and not to interfere within his threshold, except on the ground of some commanding necessity. I would require only that the general arrangements of the house should be adapted to the number of its holdings; that, for instance, numerous families should not be left competing for the use of a single privy, but that such accommodation should be provided in strict proportion to the requirements of the inmates; that every room should be efficiently ventilated; that water should be supplied to the highest occupied part of the house, and a water-tap and sink furnished on every floor; that the dust and refuse of the house should be removed at least once daily.

In dealing with the worst specimens of this class, it may be requisite to go further than I have here intimated; and it appears to me that for this purpose your Hon. Court must address your regulations not to the tenant, but to the landlord. He, I apprehend, must be held responsible for the decent and wholesome condition of his property, and for such conduct of his tenants as will maintain that condition.

Seeing the punctuality with which weekly visitation is made for the collection of rents in these wretched dwellings, it would not be unreasonable, I think, to insist on some such regulation as the following:—The owner of the house, or his agent, or collector, shall visit each room on an appointed day, at least once weekly, between the hours of eleven and three; he shall see that the floor and other woodwork of the room have been properly washed on that day, that the room be free from all dirt, rubbish, or offensive smell, that no objectionable trade be pursued in it, and that it be generally in good and proper repair; he shall see that the premises generally[71] be in a clean and wholesome condition, that water be sufficiently supplied, and that the dustman’s work be regularly performed; and failing either of the two latter conditions, he shall forthwith lay complaint thereof before your Commission; in case of any inmate suffering from cholera, small-pox, erysipelas, or any kind of fever, the owner, or his agent or collector, shall immediately give notice of such illness to the Inspector of his district; and at the meeting of the Commission next after such notice, he shall, if required, attend your Court, to receive any order which you may issue for reducing the number of his lodgers, or for improving the condition of his house, or for employing any disinfectant process; and he shall fulfil any such order within the time therein specified.

[71] Namely—passages, staircases, area, cellar, yard, privy, &c., and if common privies and urinals exist, he shall provide for the cleansing of these, where requisite, at least once daily.

In a proceeding so experimental as the present, I cannot assure you of infallible means for meeting every evil contingency; but it seems to me that a regulation having the general tendency here indicated, enforced by moderate penalties, would work an important revolution in the economy of dwellings affected by its operation, would render it indispensable to the landlord of such holdings to promote cleanly and decent habits among his tenants—even to obtain security for their good behaviour, and it would make it difficult or impossible for persons of opposite habits to obtain holdings under a landlord who would be virtually punishable for their misconduct.

Such a regulation would apply, as I have said, to the lowest and filthiest specimens of the first class of lodging-houses; for, to the large majority of that class less stringent rules would suffice; and it would apply most usefully to the second class of lodging-houses—those in which the single rooms of a house are severally occupied by more than one family. So great are the physical and moral evils attending this indiscriminate admixture of adult persons of both sexes (as I have submitted to you in my former reports), that I entertain no doubts of the necessity for prohibiting it in the most absolute manner. A regulation to the following effect would, probably, fulfil the purpose contemplated by the law, and would disperse these loathsome heaps of disease, destitution, and profligacy: viz.—There shall not be lodged in a sleeping-room, at any one time, more than two persons over fourteen years of age, if of different sexes; nor more than[72] —— such persons, if they be all of one sex.

[72] This number would be proportioned to the cubical contents of the room, and its facilities for ventilation, of which mention would be made in the registration-schedule of the house.