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Iain Roberts

The smell of an early Victorian slum

By Iain Roberts | Sun 7th March 2010 - 12:33 pm

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 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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