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103
Housing.
The housing question in Battersea, so far as it relates, at least,
to working-class dwellings, is still acute, and numerous cases of overcrowding
continued to come to the notice of the Department
during the year. In some of the lower wards congestion and
even serious overcrowding exist to an extent that is a menace to
health. The reports of the Health Visitors working in these areas
refer to the overcrowding existing in many houses visited systematically
during the epidemic prevalence of measles in the last quarter
of the year as a contributory cause of the spread of this and other
diseases of child life. In fact, one Health Visitor, working in one
of the most densely populated districts of the Borough, probably
correctly, attributes the unduly high mortality from measles and
respiratory complications amongst the younger children-not to
lack of care on the part of the mothers who, she finds, are on the
whole excellent nurses—but to the serious lack of air-space in these
homes, leading to reduced resistance to infection and to a rapidly
fatal issue. There can, of course, be no question that the mortality
from measles, whooping-cough and other common infections of
childhood tends to increase under insanitary housing conditions and
the vitiated atmosphere of overcrowded rooms.
In the present unhappy circumstances when the housing
shortage is so universally prevalent, it is of necessity impracticable
to put into force the statutory powers of the Council for the prevention
of overcrowding. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the
new Housing Bill which is promised in the coming year will be found
to contain adequate provision for the erection of working-class
dwellings to an extent which will with reasonable expedition be
capable of remedying the present unfortunate position. In Battersea
there is, as pointed out in previous annual reports, no ground
available for building houses, and relief, therefore, from the sanitary
and social evils resulting from the housing shortage, so far as this
borough is concerned, can only be secured by the adequate provision
of working-class dwellings elsewhere in the County of
London, the rents charged for such dwellings to be within the
means of the persons requiring them. During 1923 the Council
by the acquisition of the disused Chatham Road Fire Station, provided
12 additional tenements for working-class families, and these
were occupied immediately on the completion of the repairs, &c.,
required to fit them for habitation.
Overcrowding.
The extent of the overcrowding prevailing in Battersea was
discussed in last year's Annual Report. It is only necessary to
state, therefore, that there is no sensible diminution in the congestion,
and, in some of the lower wards of the Borough, even serious
overcrowding referred to in previous reports.