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by-laws, a ready general rule has been adopted in the Local Government
Board Model By-laws, as well as in the by-laws of nearly all sanitary authorities,
which requires 300 cubic feet for each adult dwelling in rooms occupied solely as
sleeping rooms, and 400 cubic feet for each adult dwelling in rooms which are
used as living and sleeping apartments, and half these amounts for each child
under ten years of age. These limits vary somewhat in different districts,
although they have been generally adopted in London.
In discussing the census returns, however, it is not possible to judge the
overcrowding on these lines, because the necessary data are not given in them;
and, consequently, I am forced to fall back on the definition of "overcrowding"
which Dr. Ogle gave in the "General Report" on the Census of 1891,
but which is, in my opinion, too stringent for legal purposes, although for the
purpose of considering the general question it might be applicable. It ran as
follows:—
"It is plain the number of rooms and occupants is not in itself an
absolutely sure guide, because rooms differ largely from each other in
size. Still we may be tolerably certain that the rooms in tenements
with less than five rooms will not, in any but exceptional cases, be of
large size, and that ordinary tenements which have more than two
occupants per room, bedrooms and sitting rooms included, may be
safely considered as overcrowded."
At the census of 1901 it was ascertained that there were 38,645 inhabited
houses in the borough, and that they contained 79,129 tenements. This was
an increase of 770 houses and of 6,477 tenements on the returns for 1891.
The number of persons living in each house, it was also ascertained, numbered
8.6 as against 8.4 ten years previously. From these figures it might be fairly
assumed, even if there had been no special return with respect to tenements,
that more houses were now let out in tenements than had been the case in
1891.
This is, in fact, the case. Indeed, at the present time there is no metropolitan
borough which contains so many tenements as Islington. The
borough that approaches nearest to it in this respect is Lambeth, wherein
there are 70,887 tenements, of which, however, only 44,495 contain less than
five rooms, as against 55,801 in this borough.
A comparison between the number of one to four-room tenements in
Islington, as enumerated at the last census, and at that of 1891 shows that
one-room tenements have increased by 99, two-room tenements by 2,218