Page:Dwellings of working-people in London.djvu/19

 surveyor of the local authority. The Medical Officers of Health are in the service of the Vestries, and the members of the Vestries are to a large extent property owners; and yet it is to these Vestries that the Medical Officer of Health has to make his report that property is unfit for human habitation and ought to be demolished. The effect of adopting the suggestion would be that the report of the Medical Officer would be made with much greater confidence. At present he sometimes shrinks from condemning places which are unfit for human habitation because he knows his report will be unsupported when it comes before a body who, naturally enough, will be somewhat prejudiced in favour of the supposed rights of their own property. If he were supported by an Inspector of the Local Government Board, he would have more confidence in recommending the resort to the measures now authorised by what is known as Torrens's Act.

There are other respects in which the Act will not work efficiently. A Medical Officer of Health shrinks from condemning property because in the first place he knows there is no power to reconstruct. That is a fault which might have been avoided by passing the provisions of the Act that were rejected by the House of Lords. Further, the Medical Officer knows that the site of the property, if it were condemned, could not be utilised for any purpose unless adjoining property could be dealt with as well; but that may not be unfit for human habitation, and therefore he is not able to condemn it. He knows that if the houses to be condemned are demolished, the site will remain vacant and no property will be erected. This points to the necessity of some powers for obtaining neighbouring property, even though it be not of a character to render it unfit for human habitation.

We have now seen sufficiently what Acts have been passed by the Legislature in recent years, and I pass on to show what precedents exist to guide us in the future, and what circumstances there are to encourage us. To go at once to the root of the matter I point to the examples of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and what has been done in those places.

When I was a member of the Committee of the Charity Organisation Society, one of the most interesting meetings was that at which the Lord Provost of Glasgow, the City Architect, and the Town Clerk attended to give evidence of what they had been able to do in Glasgow. They obtained