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119
In Battersea the average size of families is shown as 3-82 in
1921, as compared with 4.17 in 1911, the corresponding figures for
the county being 3.79 and 4.15 respectively. The total number
of private families is 42,988. There are 3,899 families of one person
8,755 of two persons, 9,511 of three persons. There are 931 families
of ten or more persons, and 10 of fifteen or over. In the latter group
there is one family of fifteen persons occupying three rooms.
The return of the dwellings occupied by private families in
Battersea shows there are 11,385 (about 25 per cent.), families living
in three rooms, 9,958 (22.3 per cent.) living in four rooms (approximately
half the private families occupying three or four rooms).
Twenty-five per cent, of the families occupy one or two rooms, and
the remaining 25 per cent, occupy five or more rooms. The census
returns further show that there has been a marked increase during
the decade in the number of families occupying less than five rooms
each. In 1911, 70.4 per cent, of families were living in less than
five rooms each, while in 1921 the number of families occupying
four rooms or less was 75.3 per cent, of the total families.
The average density in Battersea, as measured by the number
of rooms per person (a more reliable index of overcrowding) is .96,
and is exactly equal to the average for the county. The density
varies, as might be expected, in the different wards, ranging from
.73 in Winstanley Ward to 1.4 in Broomwood. Following Winstanley,
Nine Elms Ward shows next highest density (.78), and then,
in decreasing ratio, Church (.82), Park (.88), Latchmere (.90), and
Shaftesbury (.97).
It will be noted, therefore, that a comparison of the census
returns for 1921 for the county and for Battersea shows that, taken
as a whole, overcrowding, while not so acute as in some of the
Eastern Boroughs, nevertheless exists, but is, in the main, confined
to the lower wards and to a varying degree in these wards.
Particulars relating to house inspections carried out during
1922-23 of nearly 1,000 houses in North-West and East Battersea
are of interest in their bearing on the existence and extent of the
overcrowding at present prevailing in certain areas of the Borough.
Taking the "rooms per person" ratio, the density is found on these
1,000 houses to be .74 rooms per person, which is about equal to
that in the Winstanley Ward as recorded in the census returns.
There is little doubt, therefore, that the housing question is
still very acute in the Borough. It is difficult on existing data to
compare the conditions recorded in other Metropolitan Boroughs
with those prevailing in Battersea. For example, in Finsbury the
deficiency of rooms is shown to be greatest, but, on the other hand,
the number of private families of one person each is greatest in that
borough". Again, it has been already mentioned that in St. Pancras
and Islington where the housing pressure measured by terms of
families per dwelling might appear to be heaviest, the dwellings
are larger and the families smaller than in the rest of the county.