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Ewald Road, Estcourt Road, Foskett Road, Francis Street, Grimston Road,
Hurlingham Road, Hugon Road, Inverness Terrace, John Street, Mund
Street, Lanfrey Place, Peterborough Road, Stephendale Road, Suffolk
Street, Townmead Road; but a great amount of work remains to be done
in this respect.
Drainage Work.
A very large amount of work has again been done in connection with
defective drainage, and the drains of 715 houses have been entirely reconstructed
in accordance with the regulations of the Vestry, and in addition to
these the several large factories and laundries, the North End Road Board
School, as well as the Earls Court Exhibition —where about a mile and a
half of drainage was relaid—have been drained under the supervision of
your Sanitary Department.
I have given a brief resume of the work done by your Sanitary Department
during the year, and from it I think it is clear that steady progress is
being made, and looking back through the five years that have elapsed
since the Public Health (London) Act was passed, the sanitary authority
may fairly claim that they have succeeded in effecting material improvements
in the condition of the district, but they must remember that, as I showed in
the report for 1893, a considerable proportion of the population of Fulham—
at that time probably some 25 per cent. —are living in chronic poverty, and
therefore must, under existing social conditions, suffer from a want of proper
house accommodation, equally with that of the other commodities of life.
As Sir J. Simon has remarked, " Be done what may under the sanitary Acts
to banish from the dwellings of the poor all worst degrees of uncleanlines
and overcrowding, the condition remains that scanty earnings can buy but
scantily of the necessaries and comforts of life, and that where the strictest
frugality has to be exercised with regard to necessary food and clothing,
where, indeed, but too often, severe privation in these respects has to be
endured, only very humble purchase of dwelling space, and still humbler
means of comfort and cleanliness within the space, can be afforded."
The factor which, after all, underlies many of the conditions which tend
to shorten life is poverty, and the consequent problem, which is beyond the
power of the sanitary authority to deal with, is "how to make the poor
less poor."
A matter well worthy of the future consideration of the Vestry, in view
of the large working class population resident in Fulham, and the excessive