Note 2 — PREFACE.

In addition to the ordinary powers—given, for instance, in the Public Health or City Sewers Act, for abating accumulated nuisances and for enforcing wholesome constructional arrangements; a principal requirement of all bodies having jurisdiction for the public health is, that there should be vested in them some authority, enabling them to regulate, in the spirit of the Common Lodging House Act, all houses which are liable to be thronged by a dangerous excess of low population. Almost invariably such houses are of the class technically known as ‘tenement-houses,’ i. e., houses divided into several tenements or holdings; whereof each—though very often consisting but of a single small room, receives its inmates without any available restriction as to their sex or number, and without regard to the accommodation requisite for cleanliness, decency, and health. The inhabitants of such houses, especially where of the lower order of Irish, constantly lapse into the most brutal filthiness of habits, and live in almost incredible conditions of dirt, over-crowding, and disease. See sections of the following Reports, beginning severally at pages 44, 146, and 195. Powers for dealing with these evils might be given to Local Boards of Health, most usefully, I think, in some such form as the following: 1) that—in respect of any house occupied by more than one family, if it be situate in any court, alley, or other place having no carriage-way, and be not assessed to the poor-rate at a higher rental than £...... per annum; or if in it any occupied holding consist of only one room, provided the rent of such room do not exceed the sum of ......shillings per week, or if in it there reside, or within three months previous have resided, any person receiving parochial relief, medically or otherwise; on the certificate of a duly authorized medical officer, that any such house, or part thereof, is habitually in a filthy condition, or that from over-crowding or defective ventilation the health of its inmates is endangered, or that there has prevailed in it undue sickness or mortality of an epidemic or infectious kind; the Local Board may call upon its owner to register it in a book kept for this purpose; and in respect of all houses thus registered, the Local Board may make rules for periodical washing, cleansing, and limewhiting, and for the regular removal of all dust or refuse-matter, may fix the number of tenements into which it shall be lawful to divide any such house, or the total number of inmates who may at one time be received therein, may require its better ventilation by the construction of additional windows or louvres, and may from time to time make such other regulations and orders as they shall judge necessary for the maintenance of health and decency; and may recover from the owner or lessee of any such house penalties for neglect of any legal requisitions, rules, and orders, as aforesaid: 2) that—on the certificate of a duly authorised medical officer, that the condition of any house or room is such as to render probable the rise or the spread of infectious and dangerous disease among its inmates, the Local Board may cause the owner or lessee of such house to be summoned before a magistrate; who, after due hearing, or in default of the owner’s or lessee’s appearance, may order the house, or any part of it, to be evacuated of all tenants within such time as he shall judge fit, and not again to be tenanted till after licence from the Local Board given on the certificate of their medical officer that its causes of unhealthiness are abated; and the magistrate may enforce penalties for non-compliance with his order, as aforesaid: 3) that—after an Order in Council bringing into action the extraordinary clauses of the Nuisances Removal Act, the Local Board, on receiving the certificate of their medical officer that any house, or part of house, is in such condition as to be imminently dangerous to the lives of its inmates in respect of the prevailing epidemic, or any similar disease, may issue a peremptory order for its evacuation, and may recover, from the owner or lessee to whom such order is addressed, penalties for every day during which, or part of which, after such order, the house, or any part thereof, continues to be tenanted; nor, under like penalties, shall it be lawful, except after written licence from the Local Board, given as aforesaid, to allow such house to be re-occupied.