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130
house-to-house inspection 2,092 families occupied 5,402 rooms, or
2.57 rooms per family. Of the total number of rooms inspected
5.4 per cent. were empty. This shows that the crowding is not
due to lack of available accommodation.
It is difficult sometimes to appreciate the stress on room
accommodation that is experienced in the poorer quarters of the
borough. By way of illustration, the rooms, occupants, cubic
space, and disposition for sleeping purposes are given below in a
house in St. Luke's. Some sociological details are added by way
of general interest. The house has three floors—ground floor,
first and second floors, and accommodated two families on each
floor, 30 occupants. Each family occupied a set of two rooms
back and front, placed on the right and left of the common staircase.
The combined rents amounted to 35s. per week.
Ground Floor Right—Back and Front Rooms.—Occupied by
the father, mother, boy 6, and girls 4 and 2 years. The family
all slept in two beds in the back room. The weekly rent was
5s. 6d. The father was a carman earning 25s. a week and a
reservist. He rejoined his regiment on the outbreak of war.
Ground Floor Left—Back and Front Rooms.—Occupied by the
father, mother, boy 6, girls 5 and 2 years. All slept in one bed
in the back room. The weekly rent was 6s. The father worked
for a gas company and earned 30s. a week. He enlisted at the
commencement of the war.
First Floor Right—Back and Front Rooms.—Occupied by the
father, mother, daughter 40 years, and son 25 years. The weekly
rent was 6s. The mother and daughter slept in the front room;
the father and son slept in the back room. The father was a road
sweeper earning 28s. a week. The son was an odd man who
swept the roads occasionally. The daughter was a cardboard box
maker earning 12s. a week.