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2. House to House Inspection is a second means for
attaining the ultimate object of sanitation in house property.
By this arrangement houses, whether registered or not, are
periodically inspected and a complete sanitary survey thus carried
out. Each inspector undertakes this work in his own sanitary
district. When sanitary defects are present notices are at once
served for their repair. The facts obtained are entered in the
House Record Book. In this register are particulars as to owner,
mode of occupation, cubic space, conditions of sanitation, drainage,
&c. This record is constantly of service in the work of the
Department, and of considerable permanent value. During 1904
the systematic house inspections thus made numbered 1,548. These
houses were situated in the streets shown in the table opposite.
3. Overcrowding.—In the third place, regular work is
being done in the reduction, as far as known and as far as practicable,
of any nuisances arising by reason of overcrowding. The
prevalence of overcrowding in Finsbury was considered in some
detail in the Housing Report issued in 1901 by the Medical Officer
(see pp. 57—(57), and it will therefore be unnecessary to enter into
the facts there set forth. Since the publication of that Report the
Census Report for 1901 has been issued (in 1902), and contains
figures and facts concerning the degree of overcrowding existent in
Finsbury.
The number of houses is 9,280, and hence the number of persons
per house is 10.9. This is only a relative figure on account of the
"model dwellings," for which the census enumerators return
"separate blocks" as houses. But even with adjustments, the
return of persons per house comes out at 9, as compared with the
London average of 7.8 per house. The Borough of Finsbury
unfortunately occupies the unenviable position of being one of the
most "overcrowded" in London. The explanation of this will be
found in relation to house property (the increase of commercial
premises over dwelling-houses) and the transition stage in which
Central Districts, and particularly Finsbury, find themselves.
Finsbury is characterised more than any other Borough in
London by tenement dwellings of less than five rooms. As many
as 14,516 persons live in single-room tenements (14.3 per cent, of the