Housing

• The Common Lodging Houses Acts 1851 and 1853:

  This act laid down that all lodging houses were to be registered and inspected by the police. However, these acts were badly drafted and rarely enforced.
• A Nuisances Removal Act 1855:

  This act empowered local authorities to combat overcrowding (as a nuisance), with fines and prosecution.
• The Sanitary Act 1866:

  This act placed limitations on the use of cellars for occupation.
• The Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Act 1868:

  Also known as the Torren's Act, this gave local councils the power to force a landlord to repair an insanitary house. If they didn't, the council could buy it and pull it down. This act was permissive.
• The Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875:

  Also called the Cross's Act, this gave local councils the power to clear whole districts, not just individual houses. This act was permissive.
• Council Houses:

  After 1918, a rise in the cost of building materials slowed down any rebuilding programmes, making it impossible to build houses that lower-paid workers could afford. In 1919, parliament stepped in and passed the Housing Act, where government subsidies were given to local councils and private builders to build affordable housing for people on low incomes. These were called council houses, with gardens, piped water and inside lavatories. Waiting lists were common.
• George Peabody:

  As a London-based American banker, he founded the Peabody Donation Fund (later the Peabody Trust), with the idea of providing model dwellings for London's poor. The first block of 57 dwellings (flats) opened in Spitalfields 1864 and contained water closets, baths and laundry facilities. By 1882, the Trust was housing more than 14600 people in 3500 dwellings, which rose to over 8000 dwellings and over 33000 people by 1939.
• Titus Salt:

  As a wealthy Bradford mill owner, in the 1850s he moved his factory and workers out of the industrialised town and into a purpose-built village of Saltaire. He built a new mill, houses, a school, park, almshouses and a hospital for his workers. He laid out strict rules for his workers, like the workers weren't allowed to join unions.
• Octavia Hill:

  Hill bought run-down artisans' cottages and renovated them to ensure they were repaired, cleaned, decorated, connected to sewers and provided with clean water. She let them at low rents to poor people and by the mid-1870s, she had more than 3000 tenants.
• Ebenezer Howard:

  Howard wrote 'To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform' in 1898, where he developed the theory that people should live in harmony with nature in towns where there was light, space, fresh air and an emphasis on good public health. This began the garden city movement that supported the building of Letchworth in 1903 and Welwyn in 1920.
• William Lever:

  Lever found a new site for his soap-making business and had a model village built for his workers. Between 1899 and 1914, some 800 houses were built at Port Sunlight on the Wirral, Merseyside, with a cottage hospital, schools, a concert hall and a church. He also introduced welfare schemes and provided entertainment.
• Some towns and cities had their own private Improvement Acts that empowered them to have some control over new building, sewerage connections and cellar dwellings. This included:

  • Leeds and Liverpool 1942
  • Manchester 1844 - 45
  • Nottingham and St Helens 1845
  • Burnley and Newcastle 1846
• The Metropolitan Building Act 1844 (in London) required all newly constructed buildings built within 30 feet of a common sewer had to be connected to it. But, without a building inspectorate, hundreds of new buildings didn't conform to the regulations.
• The Local Government Act 1858 set out model laws for buildings and 10 years later 568 towns were using them. However, even though localities developed their own variants, there was still a problem of enforcement. The Public Health Act 1875 set out clearly what the powers of local authorities were, in regard to building regulations, which led to standard local government by-laws being laid down in 1877. These sought to regulate things such as the width of streets, height of buildings and systems of drainage.
• Birmingham began a huge slum clearance programme under their mayor, Joseph Chamberlain. The town council bought 4 acres if slum houses and tumbledown workshops in the city centre, which they turned into new law courts and a shopping centre. However, there was no provision for the compulsory housing of those made homeless by slum clearance. It wasn't until 1890 (for London) and 1909 (for the rest of the country) that councils were obliged to rehouse at least half of the people evicted in their slum clearance programmes.