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94
room. The top floor back room is occupied as a living
and sleeping room by a man, wife and baby and the
ground floor front room as a living and sleeping room by
an elderly man and wife.
(3) This house is a downstairs flat and contains 3 small rooms,
2 of which are used as bedrooms. There is one family
consisting of 7 persons, 5 adult males and 2 adult females
(man, wife and 5 children).
(4) This house contains 5 rooms, 3 rooms on upper floor and
2 rooms on bottom floor. The two bottom floor rooms are
living rooms and the 3 upper rooms are sleeping rooms.
There are 2 families with a total of 11 persons in the
house. There are man, wife and 2 children under 12
sleeping in 1 room and 3 adult males, 3 adult females, 1
child under 12 years sleeping in the other 2 bedrooms.
Both these families are relatives.
There are no large empty houses, so that the problem of overcrowding
in Woolwich largely resolves itself into the provision
of more houses. It is not possible to redistribute the population
within its present houses, except in a few exaggerated cases.
108. Causes. The Chief Superintendent, Ordnance Factories,
Royal Arsenal, states that the average number of employees in
the Royal Arsenal before the War was 16,000. At one time the
number employed rose to 112,000. Most of these of course were
housed outside the Borough, and some no doubt were residents
who were engaged on munition work during the War, but from
this source there was a large influx of population into the Borough
owing to the desire of workers to live near their work. When
work at the Royal Arsenal began to diminish, and men were paid
off, the difficulty in obtaining accommodation elsewhere meant
that the vast majority continued to reside in the Borough.