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Furnished Rooms.—Of these houses 158 are let in furnished rooms, the usual charge per room
being 1s. per night or at the rate of 6s. per week, since lodgers who stay for more than 7 days make
no payment for Sunday. A certain number of the tenants of furnished rooms belong to the
genuine working classes, and have occupied the same lodging for one or two years, or even longer
periods. Others are of the common lodging house type and only stay for a few nights. By
constant inspection and the service of notices considerable improvement has been effected during
the year in the bedding supplied to the tenants, but the furniture with which the Council have no
power to deal remains scanty and dilapidated. In response to notices, bedding was cleansed in
114 rooms and 24 beds were destroyed.
House to House Inspection.— The duty of causing systematic inspections to be made
with a view to ascertaining whether any dwelling house in their district is unfit for human
habitation is imposed on local authorities by Section 32 of the Housing of the Working Classes
Act, 1890. The number of house to house inspections made during the year was 4,163. Some of
the basement rooms and mews dwellings in the Borough are unsatisfactory, and a certain number
of houses are without back yards. On the other hand, narrow streets or courts, blind alleys, and
houses huddled together on insufficient space are conspicuous by their absence.
Overcrowding.— During the year 56 cases of overcrowding were abated in response to
notices served by the sanitary inspectors. For the most part the cases dealt with were trivial and
arose from the occupation of rooms by families containing one or two children in excess of the
number allowed by the Council's bye-laws. Gross overcrowding is probably rare, if it be
permissible to judge by the results of an inspection of the furnished rooms in the Bolton Road
which was carried out between 5 and 7 a.m. on March 23rd, 1910. In 141 tenements visited
47 cases of technical overcrowding (that is to say, of rooms containing one or two more than the
number of persons permitted) were discovered, but in no instance was a family found to be taking
in adult lodgers and in no instance were two families found to be occupying the same room.
Underground Rooms.—Seventeen underground rooms were found to be illegally occupied during
the year. In each case the illegal occupation ceased on the service of a notice, and in no instance
was it found necessary to take proceedings.
Customs and Inland Revenue Acts.—Under these Acts 10 certificates were issued by the Medical
Officer of Health during the year, in respect to 31 tenements in ten houses containing a total
number of 51 separate dwellings.
Common Lodging Houses.—The common lodging houses in the Borough number 24, and
contain accommodation for 701 persons. From the following table it will be seen that more than
20 of these houses are situated in the Norland Ward.