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111
REPORT of the MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
on the
SURVEY OF THE BOROUGH, 1931—2.
To the Chairman and Members of the Housing Committee.
The expansion of London during the past 100 years has been remarkable.
The old parish of Battersea was a semi-rural neighbourhood and
even so late as 1857, a period within the lifetime of some of its inhabitants,
the population was only 15,000. Its growth to its present position as
one of the more considerable and important Metropolitan Boroughs
was therefore, rapid. This rapid increase of the population has given
rise to a two-fold problem—the provision of new houses for the growing
numbers of its families and the replacement of old, worn-out and otherwise
unsatisfactory houses, by new ones. In Battersea the latter has
been even a more acute problem because there is no further building
land available.
The situation after the War, in common with other industrial
centres, became more and more difficult. New Acts of Parliament were
passed into law to enable the Government and Municipal Authorities
to devise measures to deal with the situation and hundreds of thousands
of houses have been built during the past twelve years to meet the universal
shortage of houses.
It will not be out of place here to describe the housing situation
in Battersea immediately after the War, and to outline the steps which
have been adopted to deal with it.
If the building trade in London and other industrial centres had
expanded in proportion to the growth of population, it should have been
possible to meet the gradually increasing demand for houses during the
long period which led up to the Great War, and to have made it comparatively
easy for arrangements to have been made to deal with the problem
of the removal of families from old, worn-out property. Unfortunately,
while there were years of great activity in the building of new houses,
there were also lean years of output. From 1900 onwards, there was
a sudden decline in the housing boom and after 1907 up to the outbreak
of War there was a great decline in the annual output of houses. The
causes responsible for this were the speculative nature of the business
and at the outbreak of War the building of houses in Battersea had
practically ceased, at least as far as working class dwellings were concerned.
During the War years, the scarcity of housing was not immediately
felt, owing to the absence of men in the services. In 1919, rapid demobilisation
was bringing thousands of men back to houses in many instances
already overcrowded. The marriage and birth rates suddenly increased,
with the result that there became a sudden demand for housing accommodation,
leading in many cases, to appalling conditions of overcrowding.
The Rent & Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Acts prevented some of the
profiteering in rents, but in spite of these Acts exorbitant rents are being
paid for housing accommodation in rooms and parts of houses.
The problem of insanitary property had become serious in Battersea
at the beginning of the century and owing to the limitation of their
powers to deal adequately with the worst class of dwelling under the
Public Health (London) Act, 1891, the Council in 1907 adopted by
resolution the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890. This Act
(Section 32) was found useful in securing the repair and reconditioning
of old, defective and worn-out property in respect to small groups of
houses or individual houses. Very useful work was done under these
powers before the War, and many insanitary houses were represented
to the Council by the Medical Officer of Health for Closing Orders, and