If the conduct of the Vestries and District Boards was reprehensible for not administering the existing laws for the improvement of the sanitary condition of the poorer classes, and if the consequences of their deliberate inaction were so fatal to the lives of countless thousands of the people and so disastrous to the well-being of the community, the conduct of the "owners" of the houses, for the manner in which they allowed their tenants to live, was still more so. "I often wonder," wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. George-the-Martyr (1874-5), "what many of the owners of property think man was created for except indeed that he should be housed in foul, wretched dwellings in order that money may be put in their purses, and so they may reap where they have not sown. A grim kind of harvest that will prove. Surely the owners have neither humanity nor justice on their side when they allow their houses to become hotbeds for the fostering and spreading of disease, moral and physical, and in which it is impossible either to maintain cleanliness, or support health, or practice morality. There are thousands of such houses.... "The only true and lasting foundation upon which the glory and safety of a nation can be built, must be upon the cultivation of the moral and physical powers belonging to man." The "owners" were of all classes. An experienced witness[144] before the Committee of 1881, who had acted as arbitrator in some of these cases, referring to some of the worst slum areas in London, said:-- "It came before me that a great many people in life better than that supposed, do draw considerable incomes from insanitary house property." "Some of these worst places are held by rich gentlemen and ladies." "The class of landlords we have here are very shrewd money-making men, and they would not show much consideration to their tenants." The Medical Officer of Health for St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, reported (1876-7):-- "We have heard denounced, times out of number, and in the strongest terms, the conduct of the holders of small property as being most selfish, and they themselves the most persistent and obstinate opponents of sanitary measures and improvements; and moreover that this class formed a considerable portion of our Vestries. However this may be, they cannot claim a monopoly to this unenviable distinction.... "Much of the small class property is placed in the hands of agents who neither hold nor cultivate any interest in the welfare and comfort of the tenants. "To get the most rent with the least possible trouble and outlay seems to comprise their whole duty (of course there are exceptions). "How much better in all respects would it be that the owner himself should give some personal supervision to his property and to the state of those who dwell in it." And there was another class of "owners"--the middlemen--"the very curse that is incident in all society."