The Express.
London, England, 1867-02-28 00:00:00

ITOLB IRN.

.....
THIS EVENING, MY 'MKS NEXT. Mr. Delmore: Mires
Yo. to and keit FLYING SCI'D. Messrs. Neville, Bel-
mere, Nikki', Niesilamee F. Jueeplia, C. thunders,
Darla note, Flddes, Letinox,l4)inead, &v.

BRITANNIA.

*Mfg PlrrNtNn, TIFF! I. IsT LINK of DIVE. —To conehrle
with THE YRINt ENS 1/1."11111.; PEARL INLAND; ON, TIRE
THREE KINGIsioNls lI:SILLS:OLD. AND SILVER. Mrs.
LaucO:MlssJavoits —lh ,of ; First-rats rantaulolists.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

THI DAT —%llorolog, nrn Afternoon. 9K lent.
Toddoiutow—Morning, 911. 56m Afternoon, 100.

LONDON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28.

A VERY perplexing problem presents itself to
those who ari, concerned about the health of the !
inhabitants of London and the improvement,
in an ornamental point of view, of the huge
conglomeration of bricks and mortar which
constitutes this metropolitan city of ours ; how
to reconcile vested interests and the present
enormous value of property within a four or five
mile radius line centering at St. Paul's, with the
requirements of an increasing population, limited
powers of control, and last, but certainly not
least, of limited finances.
If a second great fire were to make a clean
sweep of London as it is, there are people suffi-
ciently sanguine to believe that a new city
would arise from its ashes, and become an
embodiment of all the aspirations and concep-
tions of the sanitary reformer as well as of the
lover of art. But while none but a
madman would desire to purchase even so
great an advantage at so terrible a cost,
it is very questionable whether there are any
fair grounds for supposing that the errors which
are daily perpetrated in partial reconstruction
would not equally enter into the designs for an
entirely new city.
In how many cases does it not happen that
lad houses are pulled down and new ones erected
in which little or no advantage, from a sanitary
point of view, is secured as an improvement on
the old structures I We are not alluding to the
dwellings of the poor so much as to those of a
class well able to bear whatever extra cost is en-
tailed by the adoption of proper hygienic construc-
tive principles. And too often this carelessness
about matters wherein no nuirgin of profit is
apparent in the banker's account is in the case of
a house newly erected on an old site productive
of mischief to the neighbourhood, even when the
house itself is fairly devised for the health of its
inmates. Take an instance. Everybody will
admit that total exclusion from the beneficial in-
fluence of the sun's rays renders a house undesirable
for occupation ; yet in streets which run east
and west persons are allowed to carry up
buildings on the southern aide of the way to such
an enormous height as practically to shut out the
sun altogether from the houses opposite. If the
laws which operate on health were understood and
appreciated, u proper relation between the width
of the street and the height of the houses along
its course would be enforced in our Building Acts
for London and other large cities. A good illus-
tration of the observance and the violation of this
relation may be seen by anybody who will take the
trouble to notice two contiguous houses in Fleet-
street, just omeeiteChancery-lane—theold "Palace
" of HENRI: VIII." and the immense modern build-
ing which faces it : the old house is fairly propor-
tioned to the width of the street, while the new
one towers up to twice the height of its less as-
piring neighbour, and acts as an effectual screen to
intercept the sun from the roadway and houses op-
posite. We observe that the Medical Officers of
Health have memorialised the Metropolitan Board
of Works upon some of the deficiencies of the
Building Acts at present in force, but they
do not appear to touch the matter we have
been referring to. Yet we believe it to be quite
as essential a defect in our Buihling Acts as any
which the health officers have pointed out ; the
huge blocks of buildings which are everywhere
being run up, even in narrow streets, are as objec-
tionable to the public as they are profitable to
their owners, for they render the ways gloomy,
damp, and retentive of the atmospheric impuri-
ties generated by the traffic streams. The fabu-
lous price,: which good building sites in the City
comiumul would of course create opposition to
restrictive legislation, but the moderate interests
of the many ought to be considered as well as the
excessive advantages of the few ; and such oppo-
sition would have to give way or he disregarded.
There is plenty of room for lateral extension—
to apply a parliamentary phrase—within the metro-
politan area ; and if the effect of an edict curtail-
ing the dimensions of the miniature editions of the
Tower of Babel which abound in the City were to
diffuse sonic of the overwhelming amount of
business now carried on within a very limited
space over a wider area, we think that the public
would gain in many ways by the change.
The health officers, in their memorial to the Me-
tropolitan II call attention to the desirability,
as measures of public health, that every new street
should be efficiently paved and drained before any
house in it is allowed to be inhabited ; that
further provision should be made for protecting
the open area adjoining inhabited houses, by pro-
hibiting the erection, unless under special permis-
sion, of any buildings, outhouses, or sheds on
the minimum area id ground proposed to be re-
served to each house by the Bill for Amending the
Building Acts which the Metropolitan Board is
prosecuting this session ; and that provision
should be made for securing more effectual super-
vision of new buildings, so as to ensure attention to
certain obvious sanitary necessities. No fault can
be found with these atiamstions so far as they go,
and that being so, there is no earthly
reason why we should not go on in
the same direction, so as to embrace the
regulation of the height of houses in propor-