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There is great need for new housing accommodation for the
working classes (new additional houses). Houses and tenements, let at
weekly rentals, are becoming fewer in numbers, as the result of
business premises being built or enlarged on sites which formerly
were covered with dwelling-houses, e.g., the Stamford Street and
White Hart Street areas, which are being transformed from residential
areas into business areas.
The last published 1921 Census Returns show that the RegistrarGeneral's
decreasing Lambeth population (estimated from previous
censuses) requires amendment—the present population being an
increasing one. The Lambeth Housing Needs require also consequential
amendment, and the Lambeth Housing Survey (published
in 1919) has accordingly been amended, so as to bring it up to date,
to show Lambeth's Housing Needs of to-day, in so far as workingclass
dwellings are concerned, houses or flats (vide also Appendix
to this Report). There are suitable building sites available within
the Borough.
It is the Inner Wards or Districts that require special attention
at the present time, and the cheaper the houses are to rent, the
better, subject, of course, to such houses being sanitarily and constructionally
fit and large enough for people with families.
DISINFECTING DEPARTMENT, 1923.
Details of work done in connection with the Disinfecting
Department are subjoined: 3,695 cases of infectious diseases,
notified compulsorily by medical men, were dealt with, including
cerebro-spinal fever and post-basic meningitis (7), acute poliomyelitis
and encephalitis (10), acute primary pneumonia (169), acute
influenzal pneumonia (55), acute encephalitis lethargica (2), malaria
(4), ophthalmia neonatorum (60), measles (1,103), german measles
(147), and tuberculosis—pulmonary (459) and non-pulmonary
(108), whilst the following diseases were, in addition, reported by
school teachers and others, viz.: measles (340), chicken-pox
(820), cancer (105), whooping cough (441), and others not classified
(379)*. 342 verminous houses (372 rooms) and 2,142 verminous
articles, viz.: bedding 1,584, and clothing 558, were also dealt
with.
* Scabies, ringworm, diseases not stated, etc.