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52
The remaining 37 families were specially recommended to the
London County Council for preferential treatment. Of this number,
5 families did not accept the accommodation offered to them, 8
families were rejected by the County Council as being unsuitable,
24 families were offered and accepted accommodation.
Excerpts from the letters of application and in other instances
the circumstances of the families are set out in detail hereunder.
They show that the housing problem is as acute as ever and reveal
the very distressing conditions under which some of the residents
in Finsbury live. In the course of the investigations several
interesting facts emerged : these are subjoined:—
1. The affection which many residents had for their squalid
homes and the streets and neighbourhood where they lived. This
was made manifest in the extreme reluctance with which they left
for their new country homes and the oft expressed desire to return
when the Borough Council had built the new houses in Mantell
Street. One family removed to Becontree into an excellent cottage
with 3 bedrooms, a box room, a living room, water-closet, bath
room and separate scullery for 14s. 4d. per week, reduced later to
13s 8d. per week. The family consisted of the parents and 5
children. Later, the family returned to a 2-roomed tenement in
Finsbury, giving as the reason that "they all felt so lonely in
Becontree."
2. The frequency with which families living already under
crowded conditions sublet parts of their holdings or took in lodgers
even when these matters were expressly forbidden in the contract
for letting. A man and his wife occupied a one-roomed tenement
in a so-called model building of massed tenements. The wife's
sister, within a few weeks of her confinement, and her unemployed
husband had been ejected from their home for non-payment of rent
and came to live with their relatives in the "models." There were
now 2 families living in one room, the one openly, the other clandestinely.
The second husband and wife used to come and go out
of the "buildings" secretly and furtively after dark in order to
avoid the scrutiny of the caretaker.
3. When families sublet a portion of their small crowded
holding or take in lodgers, they nearly always desire to take their