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74 HOUSING.
The slight increases reported above occurred mainly outside the Clarendon Street Area,
and are in part due, it is thought, to allowing cases to remain oyer in past years. More
stringent instructions have been given for the current year and it is hoped that the proportion
of overcrowding will decrease in future years.
The Inspector in special charge of the Clarendon Street Area and the district on the
opposite side of Harrow Road* reports that in the whole (combined) district there were 2,545
registered tenements (in the whole district only 31 houses are exempt from registration)
occupied by 8,839 persons, including 2,807 children under 10. He found 63 overcrowded
tenements at the annual cleansing, occupied by 280 persons, or 2.5 per cent. of tenements and
3*2 per cent, of the inhabitants. There were 391 tenements occupied by single persons and 560
by childless couples. The following comparison of the figures for 1908 and 1909 shows that
some improvement in the housing of children has been effected.
1909.
1908.
Children in homes of one room 64.3 653
two rooms 2,412 2,482
three „ 949 893
four „ 116 115
five „ 20 8
Vital Statistics.—The morbidity rate for the " Registered Streets " (14.62 per 1,000, see
Table 48) was rather more than 2 per 1,000 above the rate for 1908 (12.58), and nearly
three times the 1909 rate for the "Rest of the Borough" (5.06). Last year's rate for "Registered
Streets " showed an increase of 16 per cent, above that for 1908, while that for the " Rest
of the Borough" a decrease of 11 per cent. In the "Registered Streets" erysipelas alone
showed a decreased morbidity last year, while in the " Rest of the Borough " diphtheria was
the only disease with an increased morbidity.
The mortality rate in the "Registered Streets" increased from 23.55 to 26.32, but the
ratio of the rates for the two years to those of the "Rest of the Borough" was very little
changed, the former rates being in each year a little more than twice the latter. (Actual ratios:
1909, 2.3: 1 ; 1908, 2.1: 1).
The most noteworthy contrasts in the rates are furnished by the higher mortalities
from measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and diarrhoeal diseases in " Registered Streets "
in comparison with the lower rates in the " Rest of the Borough." On the other hand
decreased mortalities were recorded from phthisis, accidents and disease of parturition and
suicide in the former group and increased in the latter.
The infantile mortality in the "Streets" was 166 per 1,000 births, while that in the
" Rest " was 71, the corresponding rates for 1908 having been 148 and 91 respectively.
Clarendon Street Area.—The number of one-room tenements found in occupation at the
"annual cleansing" last year was 787, occupied by 1,889 persons of all ages, including 501
children under 10 years old. The numbers reported in 1908 were 835 tenements with 1,973
inhabitants, and in 1901, 662 with 1,556 inhabitants. Those figures represent averages of 2.4
persons (irrespective of ages) per room in 1909, and 2*3 in 1908 and 1901. The "annual
cleansing " is the only occasion when all the tenements are visited in turn. In the course of
that work 57 tenements, equal to 3.4 per cent, of all tenements, were found to be
overcrowded, the occupants numbering 237 (3.9 per cent, of all inhabitants), of whom
8.5 (4.2 per cent, of all) were children under 10 years.
* The boundaries of this district are—The Canal, G.W.R., Torquay (late Marlboro') Street and Harrow Road.