One gets a clue to the unceasing insanitary condition of the greater part of London and to the inhuman conduct of so many tenement house-owners when one realises that there was no legal punishment whatever for the perpetration and perpetuation of the insanitary abominations, no matter how noxious or dangerous they were, nor how rapidly or directly they led to disease or death. An order to abate a nuisance (which usually was not obeyed) appears to have been the only penalty, and it was only obtainable at great trouble and after great delays; and, even if obtained and the nuisance abated, there was nothing to prevent the offender at once starting the nuisance again. Offences of the most heinous description--amounting morally to deliberate murder--were perpetrated with absolute impunity. Houses which were scarcely ever free from fever cases were allowed to continue year after year levying their heavy death tax from the unfortunate inhabitants. In Whitechapel one house, inhabited by twelve or fourteen families, was mentioned as scarcely free from fever cases for as many years. "It is also a fearful fact that in almost every instance where patients die from fever, or are removed to the hospital or workhouse, their rooms are let as soon as possible to new tenants, and no precautions used, or warning given; and in some houses, perfect hotbeds of fever probably, where a patient dies or is removed, the first new-comer is put into the sick man's bed." Sanitary improvement was almost a hopeless task. There was a dead weight of opposition to it in the ignorance and recklessness and indifference of the poorer classes, the very hopelessness of being able to improve their condition. And there was an active and bitter opposition from those house-owners or lessees who for their own financial profit exploited the poorer classes. "There is one house in Spitalfields," said Dr. Lynch, "which has been the constant habitation of fever for fifteen years. I have enforced upon the landlord the necessity of cleansing and lime-washing it, but it has never been done!!... There are many landlords with whom nothing but immediate interest has any effect."[24] The favourite principle that an Englishman's house was his castle was used as a defence against any suggestion that the malpractices committed therein should be curbed. Others argued, "I am entitled to do what I like with my own." "We everywhere find people ready to declare in respect to every evil: There is not any law that could compel its removal, the place complained of being private property." All sorts of far-fetched and strained arguments were devised by them in the efforts to evade responsibility for the infamous condition of their property, and to defend and justify inaction. Fortunately some voices began to be raised as to the persons upon whom both equitably and morally the responsibility lay of improving the condition of things.