as to set other men thinking and working in
the same direction.

The renovated house in Charles Street,
Drury Lane, consisted formerly of three
lodging-houses of the worst description. A
lease was taken of them for twenty-eight
years at forty-five pounds rental. Eleven
hundred and sixty-three pounds were spent
upon their conversion into a single wholesome
building, a well-ventilated lodging-house,
with proper living rooms and
dormitories, a bath-room, lavatory, and all
other things necessary for the accommodation
in a wholesome way of two-and-
eighty single men. The charges are precisely
what they used to be, and what they are
still in other wretched lodging-houses in the
neighbourhood. After deducting all expenses,
interest on capital, rent and taxes,
cost of a superintendent and assistant, fuel,
light, &c., this renovated house, which has
been about four years in existence, has been
found to be the most profitable of the
society's undertakings, yielding, as we have
said, annual gains of no less than fifteen or
sixteen per cent.

The success of this experiment encouraged,
of course, further operations of the same
kind, and has led to the present design for
the renovation of Wild Court. Here also
the original character of the buildings and
the original rents will be preserved, with the
difference that families will generally get for
their money two rooms in the place of one.
The profits of the undertaking do not admit
of question, for not only is the principle of
action sound, but this particular experiment
is made under most favourable circumstances.
The houses in Wild Court, wretched as they
now are, were in the first instance well built,
apparently as supplementary chambers for
the lawyers of Lincoln's Inn. The rooms
are tolerably large and lofty, though they
are all in sore need of ventilation, and the
beams, joists, and bearing timbers, are of
English oak, and sound at heart. So,
notwithstanding that the very house-walls are
at present letting daylight in, there is reason
to expect from the hands of the reforming
architect excellent results from an outlay by
no means extravagant. When Wild Court
is reformed, a porter's or superintendent's
lodge will be built at the entrance, and there
will be healthy homes furnished and kept
duly in order for a large number of people.

The success of these experiments, and of
others that we trust will follow, ought to
suggest to owners of unwholesome house
property what duties lie before them. While
town populations are increasing, there must
of course be no small number of new houses
built. Building works must go on, but many
a man who builds would probably do better
to speculate in works of renovation. Owners
who live upon the rents of houses in which
tenants cannot live, or can live only subject
to the worst influences upon health and
morals, have an obvious duty to perform.
Let it once be made manifest that such
dwellings yield after renovation ample percentage
upon capital, and no selfish word
can be said that shall have power to prevent
a law compelling all house owners to raise
their property up to the level of a certain
standard. Even now—let pocket-interests
be what they may—it is the duty of the law
to forbid any man to fill a leprous house
with tenants. The leprosy of this country
is typhus fever. By the law of Moses the
owner of a house in which men became
infected went to the priest, saying, "It seemeth
there is, as it were, a plague in the house."
The priest then commanded the house to be
emptied, and went in to see it; and if it was
discovered to be foul, he shut it up, caused it
to be scraped, and other stones to be brought
and other mortar taken, that it might be
plastered. If after all attempts to purify it
a plague still clave to the dwelling, then it
was ordained to the priest that "he shall
break down the house, and the stones of it,
and the timber thereof, and all the mortar of
the house; and he shall carry them forth out
of the city into an unclean place." Good
churchmen, advocates of sanitary reform, have
called attention to this part of the Mosaic
law, and have asked for some ordinance in
England also against leprous houses.

Every house in which tenants die of typhus
fever should be held suspect, examined by
authorities, and, if need be, like a foul graveyard,
summarily closed until it has been put
into a wholesome state. Many small owners
no doubt could not afford the immediate
expense of renovation; but a principle
already introduced as part of sanitary
discipline might be extended: an efficient
Board of Health might be empowered to
effect all necessary alteration, and distributing
its charge on each house-owner over thirty
years, saddle him with no more than a
small terminable tax upon his premises. By
the adoption of a policy like this, carried out
strictly and carefully, how much might be
done in the course even of a single generation
for the cure of our towns—done too
at no real cost to the nation, by the mere
guidance of house-owners into a path of
justice profitable even in the most worldly
sense to themselves, and by lending them
such power to fulfil necessary injunctions as
they may not have immediately at command.

We do not urge it as at all essential, but
of course it is worth while to consider that
drainage and improvement works cost less
and are better done, when they are carried
out under one contract for a group of
houses than when each house in the group
is treated as a separate affair. Houses
pay dearly for such independence, and are,
after all, not served so well. As we have
already shown, the Metropolitan Board of
Commissioners of Sewers, now expiring or
expired, impeded drainage works by refusing