WHY PUBLIC STAIRCASES AND PRIVATE
HOUSES FALL.
Tux terrible catastrophe at the Victoria Theatre, followed so quickly by that at the Polytechnic, has provoked the inquiry— What are the causes of such frightful accidents in public build- ings? A number of human beings are brought together for the purpose of instruction or amusement, and they are sent away with the awful sight of death before their eyes and the cries of the dying in their ears. In the last case, the accident is dis- tinctly traced to the want of sufficient approaches, and the insuf- ficiency belongs to a prevalent fault in London buildings gene- rally, which we have had occasion to point out before. It is not limited to public buildings ; there is many a home where death sits in waiting, as it does over numbers at the exhibition or theatre.
The surveyor's report upon the accident at the Polytechnic has disclosed various deficiencies of arrangement, but we have to do with the effective cause of death. The ingress was by a winding stair, and that stair gave way under the incumbent weight of the visitors to the building : why did it give way ? The edges of the steps, from long use had worn away and needed repair. Several modes were suggested; that chosen consisted in cutting away the upper surface and replacing it by an iron trelliswork let into the " tread " of the stairs. Notching is well known to weaken stone, especially stone of certain qualities, and in this case it was ascertained that the stairs had actually broken at the notches. There appears to be some idea amongst the architects, that the "joggle joint," by which each stair was rested upon the one be- low, was imperfectly constructed ; at all events, the notching of the stones had weakened each piece of stone, and therefore the whole construction of the staircase. Why it should have lasted so long and then have broken at last is a question of no great im- portance. It is well known that if a strain be placed upon a weak point by the imposition of great pressure, a comparatively Slight concussion,—such, for example, as the sudden passing of a visitor up or down near the edge of the stair,—would be sufficient to snap it off at the weakest point. . But the Polytechnic, we have said, is by no meitna the sole ex- ample of constructions which fail through simple insufficiency. We not unfrequently hear of houses falling down while builders are engaged ofi the one adjoining ; and the common enough cause is, that " shores " have not been employed—those great timber props which are used to hold up one part of a set of buildings while the other is under repair. This precaution is sometimes neglected in cases where the house is " under-pinned" ; that is, where the earth -under the old wall is dug away for the purpose of putting in a new footing of bricks and cement, the better to sustain the wall above. The object is to save, although in sparing outlay the builder is conscious that he runs a risk. It is, as it ware, a pitting of life insurance against building savings ; and we suppose that on the whole the thing answers commercially. But the builder would not thus pinch if he were not first placed under a pressure ; it is to the original employer that we trace the vice. A. house or public building is to be erected ; tenders are sent in, with the well-known rule that the lowest is generally ac- cepted; but the builder must get his profits' and if he cannot take it out of the money allowed to him, he must take it out of the bricks, the cement, the timber, the shores, or the wages. Thus he is tempted to use bad bricks, cement, and timber, and to employ bullying foremen who will urge incompetent workmen to finish the labour and get the payment as quickly as possible. Nor is the abuse new ; it belongs to whole districts in London, and to an epoch which we should gladly see terminated. There are numberless houses which are old in health though not in years. A wide district from which we have seen landscape sketches in 1808 is now a kind of semi-fashionable resort ; and there the houses, built to last fifty-years, are now-about due. But the fashion continues ; we have from time to time had to record the falling of warehouses, shops, private houses, or even walls in the actual process of building ; and this week we have the disaster at Kentish Town. " Regent Street rubbish" was a term understood by the workmen employed in erecting that Georgian improvement, and the term is still intelligible. In a modern house of the kind, thirty cracks have been counted on one well; but bad as "Regent Street rubbish" is, it has been out- done.
" In the report upon the recent disaster, architects express a hope that Government will introduce a bill rendering it imperative upon builders, whether employed upon private or public struc- tures, to make their work sound, under penalty in case of neglect. Perhaps some such compulsion might be useful ; but let us ob- serve that the severer penalty, and the one most certain to fall upon the workman and contractor, is enforced by the person giving the contract. If a man must get business, under the crude kind of competition encouraged now-a-days, he must undertake the work for prices that prevent him from making it sound. No one of the parties concerned will allow a "margin." It is a bad system, and if sometimes, when the visitor at theatre or museum is killed,*
if a shop falls upon its customers or a house upon its builders,— we think that the penalty falls upon the wrong person, we ought to remember that society, which is the sufferer, is also the author of the evil, at least by acquiescence and connivance.
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