View report page

30
A statement prepared by the Borough Treasurer shows that,
assuming a loan of £8,800 can be obtained for the building works at
3§ per cent., repayable by equal annual instalments in 60 years, in the
year 1927 the net annual rental of the Buildings will be sufficient to
meet the instalments and interests due on this loan (£8,800) and on the
loan of £2,300 for the land (£2,300 at 3½ per cent. for 60 years). The
Buildings subsequent to the year 1926 will become year by year
increasingly remunerative. The total estimated deficiency for the years
1908-1926 inclusive is £1,153, equivalent to an average annual sum of
£61. which will be a charge on the general rate of the Borough.

The Council appointed Mr. G. Farmer, Clerk of the Works, at a
salary of £4 4s. per week, Mr. Farmer having been employed in a
similar capacity at Sir Thomas More Buildings; and the contractors
commenced work on the 4th December, 1905.

Taking the number of persons per house as 6, 282 persons have
been displaced during 1905 as the result of demolitions.
The houses Nos. 1-9, Camera-cottages, were closed by order of the
Magistrates as unfit for human habitation, my attention having been
specially called to the condition of these houses by the occurrence of
two cases of enteric fever in one of the houses in the spring. The
following description of the houses is of interest as representing a type
of dwelling formerly very common, but now gradually being improved
out of existence.
Camera-cottages is a court entered by an archway from Little
Camera-street, and contains 15 houses. The eight houses on the West
side are one-storeyed, two-roomed cottages, back-to-back with the paper
factory in Park-walk, and in consequence hav.e windows on one side