In Whitechapel (1867), rules and regulations were adopted by the Board. "Unfortunately," wrote the Medical Officer of Health, the Act was permissive, not compulsory. "I brought under the notice of your Board several houses which in my opinion ought to be registered. "... The Board having reserved to itself the power of determining as to the propriety of causing any house to be placed upon the register, this enactment, which was framed not only for the improvement of the moral and physical condition of the poor, but for the benefit of the whole community, has been carried into effect in only one instance." In Islington, draft Regulations were prepared, but it does not appear that they were ever adopted. In Paddington, the Vestry decided against putting the Regulations in force. In Westminster, "such obstacles were offered by the holders of small property" to the Regulations that they were not enforced. And on the south side of the river the story was very much the same. The sting of the enactment was that it put house-owners to the expense of putting the house into, and maintaining it in, habitable and sanitary repair, and to the expense of annually painting or lime-washing it; the provision of proper ventilation--of sanitary and washing accommodation, and for a supply of water: in fact, of doing to the houses that which was essential for the health of their occupants. The Regulations simplified and shortened, and made more effective, the processes for enforcing penalties for breaches of the sanitary laws--all which was of course unpalatable to the sanitary law-breaker. And so the great bulk of the local authorities would have nothing to do with this 35th Section or its Regulations. The law was not compulsory, but permissive--and they availed themselves of that permission. But the Vestries and District Boards who took no action, and allowed the principal provision of the Act to be a dead letter, proved by their conduct their deliberate determination not to impose what was a just expense upon the "owners," even though the not doing so should result in a frightful annual sacrifice of human life, and in an untold amount of human suffering and misery, and a long train of physical and moral evils of the very worst character. That the Act had been successfully administered by some two or three Vestries proved that it was quite a workable measure--so no excuse could be raised on that ground by the recalcitrant Vestries. Their attitude is an irrefutable proof of their selfish indifference to human suffering where it clashed with the "rights of property," and of their incapacity for the position they held as guardians and trustees of the people. "The slaughter-houses and cow-houses are ordered to be whited at least twice a year, while the houses of the poor are allowed to remain for years without this important means of purification."