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43
HOUSING.
General Housing Conditions in the District.
The last detailed survey of housing accommodation
was at the Census of 1911, and the results obtained are
summarised in the subjoined table.
Since the 1911 Census the change in the number
and description of the inhabited buildings has not been
of any great magnitude. There has been an undoubted
and definite tendency for dwelling houses to be converted
into workshops, either wholly or room by room.
This transformation is a feature of an area such as
Bethnal Green, which is a centre for cabinet-making,
boot-making and tailoring. Such changes are, in my
opinion, most undesirable, and most inhabitants of the
Borough concur in this view. We want no more factories
in our overcrowded and smoky Borough, which
should remain residential and made fit for this purpose.
The proper place for further industrial development is
in the country or on the outskirts of London. Whatever
structural changes may be made in a dwelling house, it
can rarely be transformed into a satisfactory workshop,
and the overcrowding, already desperate, is accentuated
by the needs of the population displaced from the converted
buildings.
The population of the Borough at the 1911 Census
was 128,183, and it was estimated by the RegistrarGeneral
to be 110,085 in the middle of the year 1919.
The decline in population is most marked, and it is
important to ascertain its causes. These we cannot
define accurately until the Census to be taken in 1921.