consists in the operation of the window-tax. Your Hon. Court, at various
times, has heard how unfortunate for the health of cities is this
ill-chosen method of taxation, assessing the amount of rate for houses
in proportion to their means of ventilation. You can easily conceive how
much it would impede your endeavours to promote health and cleanliness
within the City, if an additional direct tax were levied on houses by
reason of their _drainage_; or if the assessor regulated his rate
according to the _consumption of water_ for household purposes. The
working of the window-tax is on this principle; and although it may be
very true that health is the greatest of treasures, and that, on this
ground, its means and appliances are eligible for taxation, I cannot but
regret that a struggling population should be tempted by the hope of
some small saving, to make a sensible diminution in their chances of
life, by retrenching within the narrowest measures their inlets of
ventilation and light.
* * * * *
In reference to the more important constructional errors which I have
described to you, as affecting the courts and alleys of the City, it
will be obvious, from the remedies which I have suggested, that no hope
of alteration can be expected from landlords. To throw together the
adjoining houses of two different courts, or to remove one house for the
advantage of certain others, or to destroy a whole block of houses for
the sake of its neighbourhood, could evidently be undertaken, as a
matter of private enterprise, only where property of very considerable
extent, and close juxtaposition, happened to be in the hands of a single
individual; and, as regards the City of London, this is rarely or never
the case. The only manner, then, it occurs to me, in which the requisite
remedies could be applied, would be through the wealth and benevolence
of the Corporation. If there were vested in your Hon. Court (or in any
other authority of the Corporation) the power to make compulsory
purchases of house-property, on the ground of its unfitness for human
habitation, it would be easy to correct the extreme errors which exist;
and, under a single large landlordship of this nature, it might not
improbably be found that measures such as I have described would give to
the localities in which they might be effected as much improvement in
value as in health. After the necessary alterations, such houses would
no longer need to continue under tenure of the Corporation, and the
proceeds of their sale might again be applied to the reclamation of
similar property in other parts of the City.
In throwing out this suggestion to your Hon. Court, I, of course, do not
pretend to offer you any details for its realisation. These can more
fitly be supplied by others; nor should I have introduced even this
general mention of a plan, but for the vividness with which its
practicability and usefulness have struck me. During my period of
office, I have seen distinctly that what seems incurable in the dark
intricacies of our worst courts and alleys often depends for its
difficulty on the _number_ of landlords, and on their mutual
independence. The conviction had thus been forced on me, which I have
endeavoured briefly to express to you; that the only available cure for
such evils would consist in the Corporation assuming to itself (if only
for a time, and in gradual succession) the proprietage of such wretched
tenements, and fulfilling towards them those large and liberal duties
of landlordship, which now remain unperformed through the multiplicity
and neediness of petty owners. And, as a precedent for one species of
such improvement, I may mention to your Hon. Court, that in such
property as I have described to you, situated in other parts of the
metropolis, private societies have already effected purchases which have
enabled them to convert bad and unwholesome residences into the form of
model lodgings for the working classes.
Before leaving the consideration of evils, in which over-density of
building and defective ventilation form such important parts, I would
avail myself of the opportunity to observe, that it is of incalculable
importance to preserve, for the health of the City, every open space
which at present exists. The density of buildings within the City of
London Union is very great, and in the East and West London Unions, is
very considerably greater than in any other part of the metropolis; and
not merely are the houses closely packed together, but (as I have
already described them) very thickly inhabited. Within the City of
London Union, each human being, on an average, has less than an eighth
part of the space he would have if residing in the district of
Islington; and, small as is this pittance, it is more than double what
he would enjoy if he were living in the district of the East and West
London Unions. With such density of population, it would, of course, be
advantageous if any space now occupied by buildings should hereafter
become vacant, so as to increase the breathing-room of the
neighbourhood; and your Hon. Court will see the imperative necessity of
discountenancing, so far as may be, the erection of additional houses on
the few unoccupied spaces which remain. In order to do this effectually,
it would be desirable to procure the enactment of a clause, giving you
absolute prohibiting power in this respect, whenever, for sanitary
reasons, you might think it right to interfere.
With respect to those evils which I have set before you, as arising from
the unrestricted accumulation of persons of both sexes, and of all ages,
within a single sleeping-room--dreadful as they are, I do not consider
them irremediable. In the first place, I would beg you to observe, that
the very restricted definition of a ‘lodging-house’ given in your Act of
Parliament, has hitherto rendered it impossible, in any degree, to
regulate dwellings of the description referred to. An amendment of that
definition might bring them within your control, and might enable you,
not only in these instances, but in many others, to restrict the numbers
of inmates, to compel the removal of persons with infectious disease,
and to enforce provisions of decency, cleanliness, and ventilation.
Not, however, alone to restrictive and compulsory measures do I look for
the social improvement of numbers, now so destitute and miserable. That
our entire industrial population within the City might, in such
respects, gain great advantage from an enlightened supervision and
guidance, I formerly endeavoured to show. I sought (from other
experience) to illustrate the benefits they would derive, not only from
your exercising habitual inspection, and possessing a more extensive
control, in many matters relative to their dwellings and mode of life;
but likewise, from the establishment, under the auspices of the
Corporation, of institutions which, raising before them a higher
standard of civilisation, would improve their social habits by an
indirect educational influence, and would elevate the general tone and
character of their class.
On the subject of Model Dwellings for the labouring classes, and of
Public Baths and Wash-houses, as illustrating this view, I dwelt at some
length in my former Report; and, deeply convinced of the boon which
their establishment would confer on the poor, I explained, to the best
of my ability, the nature and the extent of their usefulness.
I now recur to the subject, only that I may repeat my profound
conviction of its importance; and that in doing so, I may congratulate
your Hon. Court, and may utter my deep thankfulness for the labouring
and suffering poor of this great community, that, in compliance with the
Standing Orders of Parliament, formal notice has been given on the part
of the Corporation of the City of London, of their intention, in the
approaching session of the Legislature, to apply for authority which may
enable them to achieve, for their dependent fellow-citizens, this almost
incalculable good.[60]
[60] The intention of the Corporation, here spoken of, has not
hitherto been carried into effect.--J. S., 1854.
I cannot too strongly express the importance I attach to this implied
intention of the Corporation, to establish model dwellings for the
industrial population of the City. But the first and immediate operation
of such an Act will, from the nature of things, hardly reach to those
very destitute and degraded classes of which I have spoken. Model
lodgings of the ordinary character will become the residence of men, who
now pay from two to five shillings a week for such space as they occupy,
and who have the habit of sleeping in beds. To them the gain will be
very great; and the example of improved domestic habits will be
beneficial to their entire class. But among the lowest order which I
have described to you, as it subsists in thronged and pestilent heaps
within your worst quarters, there is little knowledge of beds. The first
hirer of the room may possibly have a pile of rags on which he lies,
with his wife and children, in one corner of the tenement; but the
majority of his sub-tenants (paying for their family-lodging from
sixpence to ten-pence a week) lie on straw, or on the bare boards. It
will be obvious to you, that no _Model_ Lodging-house could be reduced
to the level of their means. By those restrictions to which I have
adverted, something may be done, no doubt, for improving the arrangement
of houses so tenanted--something to prevent the more glaring outrages of
decency which at present prevail--something to maintain comparative
cleanliness, and to check the spread of disease. I fear that no further
remedy than this would prove effectual, unless it were universal for the
metropolis. Unquestionably, it would be possible, with persons even of
the lowest sort above pauperism, to proceed on the same principle as in
the establishment of model-lodgings for the working orders; to provide
for them, namely, under respectable control and supervision, the best
accommodation which their price could purchase, of the kind to which
they have been habituated; to give them the means of lying down, free
from damp or cold, partitioned from one another, and with isolation of
sexes, in a building constructed or arranged for the purpose, where the
ventilation and the facilities for cleanliness might be complete. There
seems little room to doubt that this might be done, on a very large
scale, at a rate considerably less than the poorest now pay for the
right of lairage amid vermin, filth, obscenity, and fever; and with such
dormitories, obviously, there might be connected other arrangements for
giving comfort and cleanliness to the very poor and destitute, at the
lowest possible price. Of gratuitous reception I do not speak, because
that is already provided, under certain regulations, in all the
work-houses of the metropolis. But while I conceive that such a measure,
if generally adopted throughout London, would defray its own cost, and
would remove evils and miseries horrid to contemplate, I cannot but feel
that it would be inadmissible (in its cheapest form) as a local measure.
For if the price of reception--for instance, here, were so low as to
allure the wretched population in question from their places of present
resort within the City, it cannot be doubted that its influence would
extend beyond your jurisdiction, and would throng your dormitories with
the destitute of other districts. As the evil is metropolitan, so ought
the remedy to be; and if there were thus instituted within each Union of
the metropolis, a _Ragged Dormitory_ of the nature described, I am
persuaded, from my knowledge of the poorest classes, that its
establishment would be of infinite advantage in improving the habits,
and diminishing the mortality of those who would become its inmates.
III. SUGGESTED ALTERATIONS IN THE ACT OF PARLIAMENT.
Finally, gentlemen, considering that you are about to procure a renewal
of your Act of Parliament, and that you contemplate strengthening it
with such additional clauses as may render it effective for the
eradication of all preventable disease within the City of London, I
would ask permission, in this point of view, to submit to you in a
connected series, such modifications as in my judgment would contribute
to that purpose. Most of these I have already had the advantage of
suggesting to your Committee on Health; and to many of them I have
adverted by anticipation, in previous passages of my Report. I would beg
to enumerate the _desiderata_ under the following heads, _viz._
1. A clause, which would give you control over the supply and
distribution of water, would enable you in your corporate capacity to
contract with any person or any company for the total service of the
City; and would authorise you to defray the expenses of such contract by
certain specified rates.
2. A clause empowering you to require, that every trade or manufacture
practised within the City shall be carried on with such precautions, and
with such available improvements, from time to time, as shall reduce to
the lowest practicable amount whatever nuisance or inconvenience to the
neighbourhood is apt to arise therefrom.
3. Such change in the definition affixed to your 91st clause as would
render this operative for the regulation and improvement of a larger
number of houses; and such addition to the clause as would enable you,
on the joint certificate of your Officer of Health and Surveyor, to
enforce the making of additional windows, where requisite for the proper
ventilation of houses.
4. A clause permitting and empowering you, on sufficient medical
testimony, to remove, or to call upon the Board of Guardians to remove,
from any lodging-house, within the new definition of your Act, any
person diseased with fever or other infectious malady, whose continuance
there would endanger the lives of other inmates.
5. A clause prohibiting the occupation of under-ground cellars for the
purposes of dwelling.
6. A clause prohibiting the keeping of cattle in or under
dwelling-houses.
7. A clause vesting in the Commission a right to purchase houses by jury
valuation, in any case where they shall determine that such houses are
permanently unwholesome and unfit for human habitation, or that their
alteration or removal is necessary for the public health.
8. A clause enabling the Commission to control all further encroachments
on spaces which are now open within the City; so that on ground now
unoccupied by buildings, no future erection shall be made, except with
the sanction of the Commission.
9. A clause to protect the purity and wholesomeness of human food, as
sold within the City, by affixing penalties to its exposure for sale in
any adulterated, decayed, or corrupted condition, which may impair its
fitness for consumption.
These are the heads under which it has appeared to me that the most
useful additions might be made to your Act of Parliament, in matters
within the scope of my official observation. There are some other minor
modifications, which I have submitted to your Committee of Health, and
which, as they relate merely to detail, it is unnecessary for me to
bring before you. All the recommendations which I have made on this
subject result from a careful scrutiny of the operation of your present
Act, during the two years that I have had the honour of serving you.
Each separate paragraph of my enumeration founds itself upon a distinct
recollection of occasions, sometimes numerous, wherein, for want of such
enactments, nuisances which you were anxious to suppress have eluded
your authority, or advantages which you were desirous to realise have
stood beyond your attainment.
It was in the nature of things that this should be so; for the period
has been one of experiment. When the City Sewers Act became law for a
period of two years, every one interested in its success must have felt
the advantage of that limited duration, and have rejoiced in the
opportunity, thus afforded, of rendering it eventually the most perfect
embodiment of sanitary law.
Parts of the Act have abundantly fulfilled your intention. In the
all-important particular of house-drainage--in the enforcement of
water-supply, so far as circumstances rendered possible--in the
effective preservation of exterior cleanliness--in the abatement of
innumerable nuisances--in the provision and maintenance of sewerage and
paving and lighting throughout the City--the public has seen your Hon.
Court exercising very large powers with very unusual success. And this,
let me add, during a time of no ordinary difficulty: a time when, day by
day, the vast importance of sanitary improvement has been gaining ground
among the educated classes of the country, as a deep and settled
conviction; a time when the feelings of all classes have been powerfully
excited, and when the metropolis especially has been convulsed with
alarm, in the anticipation and in the aspect of a pestilence.
In some other respects the Act has been less operative, and for an
obvious reason. To legislate for health was new to you. It was only
through the gradual investigation of officers, appointed under the Act,
that you could become adequately informed of those sanitary requirements
on which your ultimate legislation for the City must found itself. Only
by their slow experience, only by failure as well as by success, was it
possible that correct knowledge could be obtained of the powers really
needful for fulfilling your sanitary intentions.
In carefully watching the fluctuations of health amid your population;
in investigating the causes which determine them; and in testing, on
every occasion, how far these causes are amenable to the control of your
Act of Parliament, I have arrived at the conclusions submitted to you in
the present and in my previous Report.
* * * * *
To excuse the length at which I have addressed you, I have but another
word to say. My apology consists in the assurance, which again I lay
before you, that in spite of all your exertions, untimely and
preventable death still prevails most largely in the population under
your charge. If the deliberate promises of Science be not an empty
delusion, it is practicable to reduce human mortality within your
jurisdiction to nearly the half of its present prevalence.
It is the sad prerogative of my Profession to have such knowledge of
death as cannot lie within your experience. Knowing all that is implied
in each one separate instance of its visitation--how much pain and
sorrow, often how much bereavement and destitution, we, perhaps better
than others, learn to appreciate that vast amount of social misery which
has its symbol in the high death-rate of a population. It is from this
practical point of view that I have ever estimated the importance of
your functions, and have fixed the obligations of my own humbler office.
Notwithstanding all that Medicine can achieve, to succour the body as it
struggles against actual disease--notwithstanding those resources of
drugs and handicraft, by which the physician or surgeon opposes death or
mitigates pain in the detailed exercise of his art, all past experience,
and every transaction of our daily practice, confirm the popular adage
that _prevention is better than cure_. If this be true in any particular
case, much more is it true in the largest application. While _Curative
Medicine_--ministering step by step to the individual units of a
population, can produce only minute and molecular changes in the health
of society; Sanitary Law, embodying the principles of _Preventive
Medicine_, may ensure to the aggregate masses of the community
prolongation of life and diminution of suffering: in the working of some
single enactment, it may affect the lives of generations of men, and may
moderate in respect of millions the sources of orphanage and poverty.
Surely, it is no common epoch in the history of the metropolis when you
are appealing to the Legislature, on behalf of the Corporation, for the
grant of additional powers towards the accomplishment of so great a
beneficence. To me it has always been an act of the deepest and most
anxious responsibility to address you; and it would ill have become me
now, in the attempt to discharge so grave a duty, if I had spared any
pains or withholden any conviction.
While endeavouring in this, and in my previous Report, faithfully and in
detail to depict for you the actual condition of human life within the
City, and while seeking to deduce for you, from reason and experience,
those sanitary principles which are applicable for its improvement, I
have had no trivial or easy task; and you will pardon me, I hope, both
if I have incompletely surmounted the difficulties of so large a
subject, and if, by the length of my Report, I have made too great
claims on your indulgence.
I have the honour to remain,
&c., &c.
Note to Column I.
Speaking generally, this column may be taken to express the number of
houses in each Ward. Exception must be made, however, in respect of
the four wards marked with asterisks; for in them the real number of
houses somewhat exceeds the number of assessments. This discrepancy
depends on the fact that, in the specified wards, a court containing
several houses is often assessed by composition as a single property.
Mr. Daw informs me that in order to correct on this score the numbers
which stand opposite the Wards in question, addition should be made as
follows:--to Bishopsgate Without, 80--raising its number to 1100; to
Cripplegate Without, 150--raising its number to 1112; to Farringdon
Without, 100--raising its number to 3633; to Portsoken, 150--raising
its number to 1408. This would raise the total number to 16,384, which
is about the estimated number of houses in the City. From the results
of the last census it appeared that the population of the City was
distributed as follows:--within the district of the City of London
Union on an average of 7·1 persons to each house; within the district
of the East and West London Unions on an average of 8·8 persons to
each house.
_Comparative prevalence, in the several Wards of the City, of such
Deaths as particularly depend on local circumstances._
+-------+--------------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+
| I. | II. | III. | IV. | V. | VI. |
| | | | | | |
|Number | WARDS |Total |Separate |Cholera, |Fever, |
|of | |for the |Totals of|Dysen- |_&c._ |
|Assess-| |biennial|the two |tery, |Year |
|ments. | |period, |years |Epidemic |ending |
| | |from |ending |Diarrhœa.|Sept. |
|_vide_ | |Oct. 1, |respec- |Year | |
|Note. | |1848, to|tively |ending | |
| | |Sept. |Sept. 29.|Sept. | |
| | |28, | | | |
| | |1850. | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | |1849|1850|1849|1850|1849|1850|
+-------+--------------------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| 184|Aldersgate Within | 30 | 15| 15| 1| ...| 1| 1|
| 572|Aldersgate Without | 179 | 122| 57| 32| 4| 15| 5|
| 809|Aldgate | 102 | 66| 36| 3| 1| 7| 7|
| 133|Bassishaw | 7 | 5| 2| 3| ...| ...| 1|
| 314|Billingsgate | 33 | 28| 5| 15| ...| 2| ...|
| 334|Bishopsgate Within | 60 | 43| 17| 20| ...| 1| 3|
| *1020|Bishopsgate Without | 329 | 231| 98| 88| 7| 18| 13|
| 251|Bread Street | 22 | 16| 6| 2| ...| 3| ...|
| 205|Bridge | 18 | 12| 6| 4| ...| ...| ...|
| 536|Broad Street | 42 | 29| 13| 7| ...| 4| 1|
| 194|Candlewick | 13 | 12| 1| 7| ...| ...| ...|
| 499|Castlebaynard | 103 | 75| 28| 28| ...| 5| 5|
| 341|Cheap | 32 | 22| 10| 4| 1| 3| ...|
| 626|Coleman Street | 66 | 42| 24| 1| 3| 8| 3|
| 294|Cordwainer | 5 | 5| ...| 2| ...| ...| ...|
| 158|Cornhill | 4 | 2| 2| ...| ...| ...| ...|
| 471|Cripplegate Within | 80 | 50| 30| 8| ...| 4| 1|
| *962|Cripplegate Without | 299 | 207| 92| 86| 11| 15| 6|
| 232|Dowgate | 25 | 20| 5| 12| ...| ...| ...|
| 961|Farringdon Within | 153 | 117| 36| 67| ...| 9| 4|
| *3533|Farringdon Without | 845 | 613| 232| 370| 19| 48| 40|
| 409|Langbourn | 29 | 12| 17| 3| 1| 1| 2|
| 166|Lime Street | 8 | 4| 4| 1| ...| ...| ...|
| *1258|Portsoken | 143 | 82| 61| 29| 5| 7| 14|
| 343|Queenhithe | 59 | 36| 23| 14| 1| 2| 4|
| 611|Tower | 46 | 22| 24| 9| ...| 4| 3|
| 253|Vintry | 14 | 11| 3| 5| ...| 2| 1|
| 235|Walbrook | 24 | 15| 9| 3| 1| ...| 2|
| |City of London Union| 25 | 18| 7| 1| ...| 7| 2|
+-------+--------------------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| 15904|The Deaths from all}| | | | | | | |
| 480|causes within same }| 2795 |1932| 863| 825| 54| 166| 118|
|-------|period were 6551 }| | | | | | | |
| 16384| | | 2795 | 879 | 284 |
+-------+--------------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+