Health and housing in Victorian London.

I In January 1908, the council of the London borough of Islington met to consider a report from the Medical Officer of Health which indicated that the level of infant mortality was the same as in the 1840s, 146 per 1,000. A resolution was moved that three paid health visitors should be appointed as part of a campaign to reduce this heavy toll; also before the council was a protest from the Holloway and District Ratepayers Association against such a scheme. The motion was lost by 36 votes to 17. "The spectacle before them", remarked Alderman Mills, "was that of a Council haggling with a grizzly skeleton while they clutched at the money bags to see if they could save a sovereign".1 This minor incident in the council chamber of one North London borough raises a major issue concerning the relationship between health and housing, for housing had two identities which could come into conflict in their impact upon urban health. A house was not only a place of residence that might be more or less salubrious, it also provided the basis of the system of local-government finance and hence a large part of the income for improvements in the urban environment which were designed to make London more healthy. Rates fell particularly heavily on the owners of house property. A merchant or a solicitor or shopkeeper paid rates on the office or store from which he ran his business, but this sum was not directly related to income or turnover, and might form a small proportion of his total costs. It was different for a landlord who was paying a tax directly related to his income.2 There might therefore be a tension between increasing rates to finance better sanitation, and a mounting fiscal burden on rented houses. The incidence of the rates might fall upon the owners, so squeezing their profit margins and making them disinclined to keep property repaired or to provide additional accommodation; or the incidence might fall upon the tenants, in which case