"It is but right," wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Fulham (1857), "that those who have hitherto fed their own resources by impoverishing others, should now in their turn make good the damage." The Medical Officer of Health for Poplar (1856), wrote:-- "While on the one hand we must not proceed in a reckless manner so to burden property as to render it entirely unproductive, yet on the other we cannot allow the labouring man, whose health is the only property he can call his own, to live in unwholesome places to the destruction of that capital, by which alone he is enabled to support himself and family." And the Medical Officer of Health for Mile-End-Old-Town (1856):-- "... To charge such property (viz., in bad condition and heavily encumbered) with the costs of thorough repair, would leave the owners in some instances, I am fully aware, destitute, but life is more sacred, and possesses higher rights than property, and it cannot be just to inflict or continue a public injury while endeavouring to spare and sympathise with the inconvenience of an individual." That the evil state of the dwellings of the poorer classes entailed a charge upon the public was also pointed out by the Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green, who, referring to the miserable homes in the parish, wrote:-- "From the cradle to the grave their inmates are a direct charge upon our funds." Happily the law was beginning to be enforced, and beginning to create a little alarm among some house-owners. "As landlords are now aware that their property will be visited in rotation by the Inspector, the necessary alterations and improvements are frequently effected by them in anticipation."[77] Others did the necessary work when ordered to do it by the sanitary authority. Others, however, not until legal proceedings were taken, and they were ordered by the magistrate to do it--and even then some would not obey the magistrate's order, and the work had to be done by the sanitary authority, and the cost thereof levied from the owner. One case was recorded by the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles', in 1858-9, in which the authority of the law was more strongly asserted. "While speaking of the resistance met with in enforcing sanitary requirements, it may be here mentioned that the extreme step of imprisoning the owner of a certain house has been had recourse to for his obstinate refusal to comply with a magistrate's order." That disease and sickness among the people entailed a great loss and heavy burden upon the community appears scarcely to have received any recognition up to this, and yet it was a truth of far-reaching importance. That individuals suffered was of course clear, but that the community did was by no means realised. Several of the Medical Officers of Health promptly discerned how true it was, and in their earlier reports dwelt upon it, pointing out the effects, and emphasising their great importance.