Special report by the Medical Officer of Health to the Hertford Rural Sanitary Authority on the houses of the working classes in the Hertford Rural Sanitary District, January 6th, 1894.

  • Hertford (England). Rural Sanitary Authority.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Special report by the Medical Officer of Health to the Hertford Rural Sanitary Authority on the houses of the working classes in the Hertford Rural Sanitary District, January 6th, 1894. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/8
    SPECIAL REPORT. By the Medical Officer of Health to the Hertford Rural Sanitary Authority on the Houses of the Working Classes in the Hertford Rural Sanitary District, January 6th, 1894. Gentlemen, In obedience to your order I beg to lay before you a special report upon the Houses of the working classes in the Hertford Rural Sanitary District and the steps I have taken during the past twelve months to endeavour to improve the cottages generally. The housing of the working classes is a matter of great public importance. I have in previous reports given my opinion as to the influence of badly constructed and damp houses upon the health of the occupants and thus indirectly upon the Poor Rates, and shall not occupy your time to discuss that point at present. The question, however, is one with which it is exceedingly difficult to deal. It appears a simple matter to condemn a house as unfit for human habitation and cause it to be closed. But it must be remembered that there are a certain number of persons in the district who must be housed, and must be housed too within a reasonable distance of their work, and that a cottage pulled down or closed is not necessarily rebuilt or repaired and made fit for habitation, because the rent which an agricultural labourer can afford to pay does not make the erection of houses, such as would in these days be considered fit to live in, remunerative as a speculation. Cottages in the Hertford Rural Sanitary District, broadly speaking, are owned by two classes of people, viz. Landowners who have built cottages for the convenience of their tenant Farmers, and small owners who have invested their savings in cottage property as a source of income or perhaps as a provision for old age.