Tag Archives: window tax

The smell of an early Victorian slum

A bit for libetarians and for regulators – so take what you will.  It was laws and regualations, not market forces, that ended this, though it seems we can never under-estimate the ability of a greedy State to make a bad situation worse.

This is an account from 1942 looking back to the condition of the poor a century earlier.

In the early years of the [19th] century the builder and landlord were unrestricted. The filthiest hovel or cellar could be let to as many people as would take it; no drainage or water had to be provided.

Ventilation the State heartily discouraged

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