ABSTRACT
As discussed in Chapter 2, much of the original legislation dealing with poor housing conditions emanated from sanitary or public health legislation. Such legislation became necessary as a result of the great economic, social, and environmental changes taking place from the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century. There was increasing urbanisation and industrialisation, resulting in the movement of people into the towns where they often lived in crowded, sprawling, and insanitary settlements. While the “miasma” theory - that foul air caused diseases we now know to be caused by waterborne bacteria - might have been wrong scientifically, it did mean that those in more powerful positions in society and higher up the social scale felt that something had to be done about the squalor of the slums and places where the working classes were crowded together. Many reformers were motivated to call for changes in approach, particularly when the effects of the insanitary conditions spread to the middle and upper classes and because the causes of such diseases as cholera and typhoid were becoming more clearly identified.
