Punch. 1845.
At that time there were loud complaints about the bad ventilation of the House of Commons, and every remedy tried, seemed only to make matters worse. Nor was much improvement felt when the members were installed in Sir Charles Barry’s new Palace of Westminster, which has nearly every fault that it is possible a large public building can have. The site is probably the worst that could have been selected. The palace lies low, close to a polluted river, which smells intolerably in the summer, and gives off fog and damp in the winter. The style of architecture is totally unsuited for our climate, or for the purposes for which it is intended, and the stone of which it is built is rapidly crumbling away, whilst although the building covers nine acres of ground, the room in which the Commons meet will only accommodate a little more than half their number.
Every consideration of comfort and utility was sacrificed to gratify an architectural fad, and the requirements of the two legislative bodies who use the building were simply ignored. Frequent debates have been held, and divisions taken, to express the dissatisfaction of the members. Committees have been appointed to examine into, and report upon the heating and ventilation, the sanitary arrangements, and the possibility of enlarging the Commons chamber. Costly repairs are constantly going on, crumbling stonework is removed and replaced, and experiments of all kinds have been tried to remedy the structural defects. But all to no purpose, and the building remains a costly monument of a nation’s folly, and an architect’s vanity and incompetence.
Sir Percy and the Fearful Fogge.
(A new “Percy Relique.”)
Full seven hundred Members mayde aloude thys one remark—
“Scarce can we breathe, or speke, or thynke. Wee all are in the darke.”
Like unto pygmyes arm’d against great Basan’s Monarque Og,
So gasping, gallant gentlemen doe battell with the Fogge.
Stout Percy to the Commons went, all in Westministeere.