View report page

57
The permanent hospital on the Joyce Green estate, is now making rapid progress to
completion, at an estimated cost of £336,568. This estate, it may be mentioned, comprises an
area of 300 acres, irrespective of intervening lands connecting it with the hospital ship at Long
Reach.
It thus appears that the Metropolis is endowed, in possession, or in prospect, with accommodation
for 6,074 patients in "fever" hospitals, a number more than double that recommended by
the Royal Commission, in 1882; irrespective of thousands of beds at Gore Farm, Long Reach, and
Joyce Green, which should be generally available for convalescents in the abeyance of small-pox.
For small-pox, when it prevails epidemically, the accommodation will exceed by 1,440 beds the
maximum recommendation of the Royal Commission, and be equal to any imaginable requirements,
seeing how much more effectually the disease has been controlled since the practice was adopted
of removing the sick out of London for isolation and treatment, initiated upon my advice in
May, 1881, and perfected by the Managers in 1884; since when they have ceased to use the town
hospitals for small-pox, removing direct, from their homes to the ships, all patients suffering
from this disease, with beneficent results, as the statistics of mortality eloquently testify.
The housing of the working classes.
No subject during the year received greater attention from the sanitary authorities of
London than the housing of the working classes. Hitherto, what has been done under "Schemes"
framed under the various Acts by the late Metropolitan Board of Works, and, since 1889,
by the County Council, has scarcely touched the fringe of this most difficult of sanitary
problems; the principal result of the operations of these bodies having been the eviction of
the indigent poor, by the pulling down of their wretched abodes, to provide space for the building
of more or less elaborate "Dwellings," let at rents beyond the means of the previous inhabitants.
The most ambitious of the schemes carried out, so far, by the Council—"The Boundary
Street Scheme," was fully described in my annual report for 1900 (page 60). Obviously
a great local improvement was effected; comfortable homes were provided for nearly
as many persons as were evicted; but none of these unfortunates are to be found
amongst the occupants of the flats. What has become of them? One asks in vain.
But it may safely be assumed that many have gone to increase overcrowding in other already
overcrowded slums. Hitherto, it has always been so. The late Metropolitan Board of Works
carried out some 22 schemes of a similar sort; 59 acres of land were acquired and cleared, on
which accommodation was provided for upwards of 38,000 persons. The amount expended
exceeded a million and a half sterling (about £40 per head), this amount being irrespective
of the outlay on dwellings erected on some of the cleared sites by associations like the Peabody
Trustees. The Board, after taking steps for giving effect to eight additional schemes, stayed
proceedings on account of the tremendous cost to the ratepayers that would have been involved
in carrying them into effect. it was alleged that a third part of the cost of acquiring sites
was due to excessive valuation of house property so bad that demolition was the only possible
remedy for the evils to which it gave occasion.
When referring to the Boundary-street scheme in 1890, i said it was to be feared that
the cost would be even greater, relatively, than that of the aggregate of schemes carried through
by the Metropolitan Board, and so it proved; the cost of purchasing the slum properties, including
the land, was £333,000, or about £60 per head of the displaced population (5,566). The
families evicted were 860; the expenditure on properties and land was therefore equal to £387
per household. For a smaller outlay, as i remarked in 1890, "freehold cottages and gardens
might be provided, a little way out of London, and handed over, as a gift, to the dispossessed
people, whose travelling expenses, to and fro, would amount to less than they now pay in rent
for the dens in which they rot, and will have to pay for the rent of rooms in the new 'Dwellings'—
should they ever set foot therein." But, as already said, the old tenants did not return. The
"scheme," admirable in itself, contributed in no appreciable degree to the solution of the difficulty
of housing the poorest, a difficulty never likely to be effectually dealt with under Part i. of the
Act of 1890, but which might, possibly be to some extent solved under the provisions
of Part iii., should Parliament see fit to enable the Borough Councils to acquire slums at their
proper value—that is, the value of the land, as housing sites, plus the value of the materials
of the buildings thereon. There is the more reason for a drastic measure of this sort, as it would
appear that the County Council, alarmed at the cost of acquisition of properties, is not: likely
to undertake other such large and expensive schemes. As stated below, the Council would
not entertain the request of the late Vestry to deal with our "Special Area" (no "slum"!)
under Part iii., though there was every reason to believe that the properties proposed to be
acquired as lodging-houses, might have been purchased on terms to yield a good profit in rent;
and although the death-rate of the district exceeded that of the Boundary-street area—40 per
1,000—a rate which was deemed to justify the gigantic outlay 011 the scheme, made at the charge
of the Metropolis generally, mainly for the benefit of Bethnal-green and Shoreditch.