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8
Social Conditions.
While the social conditions in which the inhabitants of the
Borough live do not appear to alter materially from year to year,
yet over a period of years in retrospect the changes seem far
reaching. The older type of cottage dwelling, self-contained with
a small yard packed as many to the acre as possible, is disappearing,
especially in the older parts of the district. Blocks of five-storeyed
tenements are taking their place, which while providing the
amenities of life absent in the cottages are in themselves lacking in
certain respects those indefinable amenities of privacy which make
the Englishman's home his castle. The common staircase, the common
playground, the sharing with neighbours of everything outside
the flat door, and even the inability to keep a cat or dog, are factors
in the life of the new inhabitants of block dwellings to which many
are entirely unaccustomed. The cottage home life in which the
older inhabitants grew up is being surrounded by circumstances
in which the opportunities of self expression are limited to a great
extent for both adults and children. In the new buildings each
family is so much more exposed to the eyes of its neighbours that
the freedom of relaxation possible in the cottage yard, however
small, is out of the question. As a consequence the gardens reserved
for adults are seldom used, no greater degree of decorum in dress or
habit being required for the much more attractive parks and public
gardens. Children also, whose parents both in upbringing and
behaviour wish to maintain above the level in the common playground,
are kept more indoors, as unlike the school playground,
there is no master's eye on the watch. Toddlers and infants, too,
especially, are in the open air far less than their counterparts in
the cottage, in part for greater safety, and in part because family
pride will insist upon a degree of tidiness, quite unnecessary for the
informal back yard, which limits the outing to a time when the
household work can be left.
These considerations are apparent defects in the present policy
of rehousing, apart from the proven increase in risk from the
zymotic and other infectious diseases to which the inhabitants of
tenements are exposed. Considerations of finance, together with
many other factors which make central rehousing necessary, are
responsible for the policy of block dwellings, but whether good or