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147
and fresh air can reach them. The whole of the area is populated
by a very poor class, many of the inhabitants occupying cheap
furnished rooms.
The Grotto Place area, which comprises some 1½ acres, lies to
the west of Southwark Bridge Road, and includes a number of badly
arranged courts most of which are culs de sac, and some houses in
Great Suffolk Street. The area contains 138 houses, all of which,
except those fronting on Great Suffolk Street, are one or two storeys
in height. The houses with few exceptions are quite worn out, and
the inhabitants, who number 567, are of the poorer class.
The Crosby Row area, which is situated on the eastern side of
Crosby Row between Snowsfields and Long Lane, Bermondsey, is
is about one acre in extent and contains 88 houses occupied by 474
persons, most of whom are very poor. The houses in Crosby Row
are two and three storeys in height and a few have basements.
Nearly all the other houses on the area are two storeys in height
and contain two, three and four rooms. These latter houses are
situated in courts approached either by narrow archways or
passageways from Crosby Row. The courts are some feet below the
level of the pavement of Crosby Row. The houses generally are
worn out, are surrounded by high buildings, and have insufficient
space about them. Many of them show signs of dampness or are
matchboarded in such a way as to conceal the dampness.
The average yearly death rate from all causes of mortality in
the Tabard Street area during the five years 1904-8, was 36.8 per
thousand, or more than twice that of the Metropolitan Borough of
Southwark, which was, in the same period, considerably above that
of London as a whole. The death rate from phthisis in the area
was nearly twice that of the borough and nearly three times that of
London. The death rate from the principal epidemic diseases was
more than two-and-a-half times that of the borough and more than
three-and-a-half times that of London.
The Grotto Place and Crosby Row areas are small for the
calculation of reliable death rates, but the figures obtained show that
in the former area the death rate from all causes was more than
twice, that from phthisis more than three times, and that from the
principal epidemic diseases nearly one-and-a-half times that of
Southwark. The death rate from all causes in the Crosby Row area