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8
subjected to a uniform nightly inspection, and as I see no prospect of the
boroughs agreeing to any common course of action, the London County
Council appears to me to be the only authority capable of dealing
effectively with this matter.
The southern portion of the borough has a respectable residential
population, the chief portion of which during the daytime works away
from home. The houses in the streets are well built and convenient.
The tenement most sought after is in the house of two storeys, each
tenant occupying a floor. Large numbers of these houses are found
in the southern portion of the borough, and afford splendid accommodation
for the families occupying them.
In a poor and densely populated borough as Southwark there must
be a considerable number of cases of overcrowding, although rents have
gone down very much within the last few years. The chief feature is the
increasing poverty of the bulk of our inhabitants, and their careless and
untidy habits.

The Registrar General's estimate of the population of the Borough
at the middle of 1908 was 210,442.