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subservient to the great retail shops of St. James's has
caused a gradual process of extrusion with regard to
the worst houses and the dirtiest of the inhabitants. A
question for the consideration of the Vestry is whether the
time has not arrived for quickening this process of extrusion
by opening up a new street on the eastern side of, and
parallel to, Regent Street.
Reference to the map will show that in this way the
betterment of the eastern section of St. James's would be
secured in combination with a great Metropolitan improvement.
Starting from the south, and going north by north-west,
such new street might be run in alignment with Waterloo
Place, or with the Haymarket, or with Suffolk-street, or with
Whitcombe Street. Taking the Haymarket as the southern
base, a new street running straight through to Poland Street
would be of very great use, both to the local property and to
the Metropolis. It would also add largely to the value of the
extensive site on which the old workhouse now stands. At
present, the poor of the Westminster Union are consigned
to a deplorable existence, and I earnestly ask whether a
small receiving house in St. James's, with a comfortable
and cheerful new workhouse in the country, would not be a
great mercy to these aged people and a great saving to the
ratepayers. The wretched and dingy courtyard in which
these aged people now hopelessly sit and walk—in an atmosphere
grimy with the smoke of London—might be exchanged
for pleasant fields and plots of garden ground in which the
inmates could occupy themselves with the cultivation of vegetables
or flowers. Several acres of most valuable ground in St.
James's, with frontages on the new street, wTould be released
for a splendid block of workmen's model dwellings, to which
might be appended small workshops in which gas, water,
steam or electrical motor power could be let to the skilled
artizans whose livelihood depends upon their proximity to the
retail shops of St. James's. It is not necessary, for me now to
elaborate this proposal; it was suggested by me in 1875, but
opinion was then adverse and it was allowed to rest. Now that