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UNDERGROUND ROOMS. 23
"(1) Any underground room which was not let or occupied
separately as a dwelling before the passing of this Act,
shall not be so let unless it possesses the following requisites;
that is to say :—
(a) Unless the room is in every part thereof at least
seven feet high measured from the floor to the ceiling, and
has at least three feet of its height above the surface of the
street or ground adjoining or nearest to the room: Provided that,
if the width of the area hereinafter mentioned is not less
than the height of the room from the floor to the said
surface of the street or ground, the height of the surface
may be less than three feet, but it shall not in any case
be less than one foot, and the width of the area need not in
any case be more than six feet.
(c) Unless there is outside of and adjoining the room and
extending along the entire frontage thereof and upwards from
six inches below the level of the floor thereof an open area
properly paved at least four feet wide in every part thereof," &c.
Other requisites, occupying altogether eleven clauses, are also
specified for—dryness, lighting by window area, access to water
closet, &c., all which are very proper and practicable. But the
two clauses (a) and (c) require the underground room to have its
ceiling three feet above the level of the pavement, and also to
have an area four feet wide in every part from six inches below
the floor of the room. Now these requisites are very good for
Battersea and some other purely suburban newly built-over disdistricts.
But if we take the floor as 12 inches above the ceiling,
it follows that the ground floor can only be reached from the pavements
by a flight of six eight-inch steps. Anyone walking down
Kegent Street or Piccadilly or other parts of St. James's will see
that none of the houses are entered by six eight-inch steps. Therefore
this one regulation would throw out of use all the basement
kitchens in the ohler parts of Central London. This
would amount to a confiscation of from 20 to 25 per cent, of
the lodging house accommodation in St. James's, and would
enormously intensify the pressure upon lodging house accommodation
in just those centres where such lodgings are most
urgently needed by the working classes.
Sub-section (3), however, goes on to provide as follows:—
(3) The foregoing provisions shall at the expiration of six
months after the commencement of this Act extend to underground
rooms let or occupied separately as dwellings before
the passing of this Act, except that the Sanitary Authority . . .
may dispense with or modify any of the said requisites which
involve the structural alteration of the said building, if they are