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Administrative County of London under the Act, would, in my
opinion, require to give its consent prior to any local Lambeth
scheme being adopted. The opinion, therefore, of the Medical Officer
of Health of the Borough on the point should be definitely stated for
the consideration of the Borough Council, and this I propose to do
at this stage of the Report.
Speaking generally, the securing of a building site or sites for the
erection of new Workmen's Dwellings is not recommended within
the confines of the Borough, certainly not within the Inner Wards.
An exception may, perhaps, be made in the case of one of the outer
Wards, situated on the outskirts of the Borough, viz., Norwood
Ward, where there are, as a fact, three suitable sites available for
such a purpose, viz. :—Portobello House, Holderness House and
St. Gothard's Road estates, which, though comparatively small,
would be sufficient for purely Lambeth needs, if the London County
Council, or the London County Council and the Lambeth Borough
Council concurrently, would erect new dwellings thereon like the
Briscoe Buildings (Brixton Hill), or to some other design. This
single exception does not disprove the general rule, viz., that any
such scheme should be carried out outside, or, at least, on the very
outskirts of, the Borough, so as to encourage people to live away from
the business centres, provided satisfactory means of transit thereto
exist. Take, as an example, the area of Bishop's and Prince's
Wards, the large district lying between Kennington Road and the
Albert Embankment. There are within that district the wellknown
Doulton's Potteries and the more or less contiguous rubber,
glass, motor, engineering, gas and mineral water works, railway
junctions and permanent ways, dust yards and destructors, flour
mills, box makers' manufactories and, last but not least, numerous
rag and bone and bottle and jar dealers. Despite the greatest care
in managenemt —and even were the newest appliances installed in
connection with such businesses —the surrounding air must become,
more or less, vitiated or polluted and unsuitable, in consequence, for
workers to spend their nights in as well as their days. In the past,
large tenemented buildings—the well-known " Blocks " —have
been erected from time to time in the very midst of this manufacturing
and business area, e.g., Guinness's Buildings, Murray Buildings,
Model Dwellings, Surrey Lodge, Albert Buildings, Vauxhall Mansions,
Granby Buildings, Cromwell and Shaftesbury Houses, Clayton