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75
atfect Finsbury in the same degree as some other boroughs.
(3) Again, in the central districts particularly, there are high rents,
due, as has been already pointed out, to the prosperity of London
and the value of land near the centre. This leads to a keen
competition between business premises and dwelling houses which
must inevitably result in a marked rise in the rent of the latter.
Yet the poverty of the inhabitants, or, in other words, the relation .
borne by the wages they receive to the rents they have to pay, leads
to overcrowding. (4) In central districts, also, there is a lack of
adequate means of transit. The slowness and inconvenience of
communication is a well-known characteristic of London, and until
such is remedied it will be impossible for many of the working
classes having their work in or near the centre to reside on the
outskirts where land is cheaper and rentals less. (5) Further, it
cannot be doubted that the clearance of dwelling houses, for insanitary
reasons or for building business premises or railway
stations, in central London has up to the present very materially
increased overcrowding in the zone of dwelling houses immediately
surrounding the cleared area. For even in cases where dwelling
houses have been erected for an equal number of persons to those
displaced, owing to the rents many of the displaced have been
unable to live in them, and consequently have crowded into the
already congested surrounding houses.
The effects of overcrowding are also now fairly well known.
Small cubic space is bad in itself, but it invariably means in addition
lack of ventilation and of light, which bring in their train all manner
of evil.° It has been proved over and over again that overcrowding
raises the general death rate and increases the chance of infection.
But there is a great deal of suffering, especially amongst children
in overcrowded districts, that does not appear in the death rate at
all. Evidence was furnished at the Royal Commission in 1884
*Carnelly, Haldane, and Anderson in their investigations in Dundee found
(i) that the smaller the tenement the greater was the impurity of the air as
shown by the increase of carbonic acid gas, micro-organisms, and organic
matter; (2) that the death rate increased in like manner especially among
children ; and (3) that in comparing one-roomed with four-roomed houses the
general death rate was doubled and the death rate at ages below live years was
quadrupled. The increase was most marked in diarrhuea, measles, whooping
cough, bronchitis and pneumonia.