To more than one of these officers the idea occurred that similar benefits would follow if tenement houses were similarly inspected. "I believe considerable good might be accomplished by a legislative enactment placing every house let out in weekly tenements to more than one family under similar regulations to those affecting common lodging-houses, and rendering landlords liable for permitting overcrowding to exist upon their property." The success of the common lodging-houses was due to the enforcement upon the owner of the first essentials of sanitation in the house he let to occupants, and to the regular "inspection" of his house to secure that those essentials were maintained in a state of efficiency. But it was just these two things that were most held in abhorrence by the majority of tenement-house owners in London. The Medical Officer of Health for the Strand, after describing the overcrowding of tenement-houses, wrote (1858):-- "No remedy it is feared will be found until all houses of the class alluded to, the rooms of which are let out as separate tenancies, shall be compulsorily _registered_ under the supervision of the Local Authority of the District in which they are situate, as fit for the accommodation of a certain number of persons, and no more." "This suggestion will doubtless excite the sneers of the ignorant, the fears of the weak, and the ridicule of the selfish, coupled with the usual expressions about interference with the liberty of the subject; but the upright and unprejudiced will not fail to perceive that it is the liberty and the health of the working classes, forming, as they do, so large a proportion of the mass of the people which it is sought to protect from the tyrannical and grasping covetousness of an avaricious few who care little whether the health of the working man be destroyed, or whether his children be reared up in such a way that disease and vice must almost necessarily result, provided they succeed in obtaining for themselves an additional percentage upon their investment." And the following year he again forcibly adverted to the subject.