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number of tenement dwellings on an estate under development in
the Borough. It may be asked by some persons what the objection;
are to such rooms. I can best answer this question by stating
what I observed on one of my visits.
In one particular tenement occupied by a family I was shown
the different rooms of the tenement, four in all. In one of these
was a young boy in bed, suffering with measles. This room was
one of those in question, without a fireplace or flue, but provided
with a sash window and a hole in the wall for extra ventilation.
The mother informed me she had stopped up the hole in the wall
and in order to warm the room had lit an oil stove. The room and
the adjoining passages at the time of my visit reeked with the fumes
from the combustion of oil. The effect of this vitiated air upon
the boy must have been extremely detrimental to his recovery.
This particular case illustrates the objections to bedrooms unprovided
with fireplaces or flues.
The occupants of flats containing one or more of these rooms
recognise their uselessness. If the tenant can afford to keep a
servant "living in" the room in question is allotted to her as bedroom.
The ventilating hole is promptly blocked up on the first
appearance of a cold day, and she sleeps at night practically in a
closed box through which there is no circulation of air. If the
occupier has a family, one or more of the children are put to sleep
in the room, the hole in the wall is blocked up, and the same results
follow as in the former case; but, being younger, the children
suffer more severely from the vitiated air. Sleeping under such
conditions would, no doubt, predispose to disease.
The curious point about the construction of such living rooms
is that it is perfectly legal. In the Building Acts for London there
is no mention of bedrooms. Rooms are designated by the title
"inhabited rooms" or "living rooms." The term "inhabited"
as applied to a room is defined in the London Building Act, 1894,
as "a room in which some person passes the night" (or which is