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APPENDIX III.
REPORT ON THE HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES.
(Vide Page 61.)
To the Public Health Committee of the Borough Council.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
In accordance with the instructions of your Committee, an inquiry has been
made "into the nature and extent of overcrowding in the borough." The names of 25 streets
selected for the purposes of the investigation are set out in Addendum B (page 130), the form
prepared for the use of the six district sanitary inspectors, with a view to uniformity of information,
in Addendum C (page 132). Houses occupied by single families, a few cottages excepted,
were excluded from the inquiry.
To a large extent, especially in the north, Kensington is a modern-built city. The
streets are of statutory width, the houses of moderate height. Very generally they have a fairsized
open space at the rear. Courts and alleys there are none; nor back-to-back houses. With
here and there an exception, the houses have through ventilation—restricted in many instances
by "slip" rooms, which also interfere with the lighting of the passages and the lower flights of
stairs. Basement rooms are general; but the use for habitation of such as come within the
definition of "underground rooms" is prevented. Of " cellar dwellings," in the ancient sense of
the expression, there are none.
Of the 905 houses inspected, 709* (=78.3 per cent.) are registered under the Council's
by-laws: 441 have resident occupiers and are sublet in lodgings†; the remaining 464 are wholly
let in tenements.
Addendum B shows the average number of rooms in the houses in the several streets;
the total number of rooms in all of the houses being 6,925.
The tenements inspected numbered 3,563; the inhabitants 11,673 (=13 to a house),
of whom 6,248 were above, and 5,425 under 12 years of age.‡
The one-room tenements, 1,796 (=50.4 per cent. of the entire number), were occupied by
4,026 persons; 3,127 above, and 939 under 12.
The two-room tenements, 1,074 (=30.1 per cent.), were occupied by 4,318 persons; 2,594
above, and 1,724 under 12.
The three-room tenements, 388 (=10.9 per cent.), were occupied by 1,807 persons; 1,170
above, and 637 under 12.
The tenements of four or more rooms, 305 (=8.6 per cent.), were occupied by 1,522
persons ; 1,087 above, and 435 under 12.
Irrespective of age, the average number of persons to a room was; in one-room tenements,
2.24; in two-room tenements 2.01; in tliree-room tenements 1.53; and in four or more room
tenements 1.25.
At the Census of 1891 (no later information is available) 70,718 persons (42.5 per cent.
of the population) were in occupation of 20,052 tenements of less than five rooms; viz., in
6,398 one-room tenements, 13,655, an average of 2.13 per room; in 6,965 two-room tenements,
26,020, an average of l.86 per room ; in 4,115 three-room tenements, 18,119, or 1.47 per room;
* In the borough as a whole, the registered houses number 1,700.
† In some cases the resident occupier lives almost or quite rent free; and, usually, he obtains his)
own two, three, or four rooms for much less than he charges his lodgers for similar accommodation.
‡ For the purposes of the Council's by-laws for houses let in lodgings or occupied by members of
more than one family, two children under 12 count as one adult.