The Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's HandbookBoulnois, H. Percy (Henry Percy)
Science
The Municipal and Sanitary Engineer's Handbook
Boulnois, H. Percy (Henry Percy)
Municipal engineering; Sanitary engineering
Prior to these amendments of the Act 1868, it was felt that it dealt
only with isolated buildings, and consequently, in order to improve
large areas, the “Act for Facilitating the Improvement of the Dwellings
of the Working Classes in Large Towns” was passed in 1875 (38 & 39 Vic.
c. 36), since which date, like the Act 1868, it has been twice amended,
once in 1879 (42 & 43 Vic. c. 63), and again in 1882 (45 & 46 Vic. c.
54).
The object of the Act of 1875 was to facilitate the removal of portions
of towns, especially of the courts and alleys in the poorer and more
densely-populated parts.
The Act is to be put in force where an official representation is made
by the medical officer of health to the local authority of an urban
sanitary district (which must contain a population of at least 25,000)
that “any houses, courts, or alleys within a certain area” are “unfit
for human habitation, or that diseases indicating a generally low
condition of health amongst the population have been from time to time
prevalent in a certain area,” and that this is attributable to the bad
arrangement or bad condition of the streets and houses, or “other
sanitary defects,” which can only be remedied by “an improvement scheme
for the rearrangement and reconstruction of the streets or houses” (38 &
39 Vic. c. 36, s. 3).
The improvement scheme to be prepared on receipt of this report by the
local authority must be accompanied by “maps, particulars, and
estimates” (no doubt these must be prepared by the surveyor, although no
mention is made as to who shall prepare them), and this scheme may
“provide for widening any existing approaches to the unhealthy area, or
otherwise for opening out the same for the purposes of ventilation or
health.” It must distinguish “the lands proposed to be taken
compulsorily,” and by the Act 1875 it was necessary to “provide for the
accommodation of at the least as many persons of the working class as
may be displaced in the area with respect to which the scheme is
proposed in suitable dwellings, which, unless there are any special
reasons to the contrary, shall be situate within the limits of the same
area or in the vicinity thereof” (sec. 5).
So much practical difficulty was experienced in carrying this latter
part of the clause into effect, that in 1879 a short Act was passed (42
& 43 Vic. c. 63), which by the 4th section amended that part of the
original clause as to the provision of accommodation for the working
classes as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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