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109
OVERCROWDING.—In 1909, the total number of cases of
overcrowding discovered was 88, of which 46 were in registered
houses.
The problem of overcrowding is a most difficult one and is intimately
bound up with the questions of poverty, unemployment,
drink and thriftlessness. The cases are difficult of discovery and
the conditions very often difficult to amend or abate save by
recourse to the Poor Law. The people are in a dilemma. On the
one hand they are being urged by State Officials, learned divines,
and eminent men to increase and multiply—for the birth rate has
fallen and is falling. On the other hand, the poor know and know
only too well that the possession of three or four children in the
family may render it difficult, nay almost impossible, for them to
secure sufficient and comfortable accommodation. A few landlords
in the district insist on having a written statement as to the
number of children in the family in a prospective tenant before
letting their rooms. And cases have been brought to the Health
Office where the tenants have wilfully understated these numbers.
So that the responsibility—the legal responsibility—may be with
either the landlord or the tenant.
But even when the overcrowding has been discovered the
difficulty is not solved. It is impossible, from considerations of
humanity alone to eject these tenants into the open streets at a
minute's notice. The practice in Finsbury has been to allow the
most ample time to get rooms elsewhere.
The air space demanded is, where a room is used solely as a
sleeping room, 300 cubic feet for each adult and child over 10
years, if used for living and sleeping 400 cubic feet. Children
under 10 years are allowed half these amounts in each case.
Sometimes the overcrowding may be slight in degree.
Slight Illegal Overcrowding.—It sometimes happens, when
the cubic space of a room has been calculated and the number of
occupants known, that the actual space falls short of the full legal
requirement by a small amount.