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the working class and keep them under their direct supervision.
This Council has also erected dwellings on another portion of this
vacant land. The County Council has built extensive buildings on the
Millbank site, and have cleared a considerable area of houses abutting
upon Millbank. Though a large number (probably about 5,000) have
had to move, yet the returns made under the Equalisation of Rates
Act (printed in my Annual Reports) show the actual decrease in population
since 1900 is 2,122* in the whole of St. Margaret and St. John's
Wards. Experience has shown that very few of the people displaced
find rooms in the dwellings erected under such schemes. Of the abovementioned
5,000 a proportion went into the workhouse, and some
left the district altogether, going chiefly to Battersea and Wandsworth,
but a large proportion having either work or interests in the neighbourhood
moved into the streets near by, causing overcrowding and other
insanitary conditions in houses which were not built to be used as
one or two-room tenements. Eventually the invaded street either
rapidly deteriorates or it gradually gets rid of the intruders who
go further afield. In getting out the number of deaths and deathrates
for the various districts these influences can be distinctly traced.
In view of this result and the considerable displacement of
population which has taken place and is likely to take place in the near
future through the operations of the Syndicate, the Public Health
Committee have hesitated to take steps which would result in the
•closing of other property and the further displacement of their
inhabitants, except where the owners declined to put the houses into a
reasonable state of repair. It has rather been the aim by constant
inspection to maintain the houses that were left in a proper sanitary
condition. In certain streets in which the houses are old it is only by
continual expense that their condition can be maintained. Many
of the tenement houses in this ward have too many people in
them although the numbers may comply with legal requirements.
It is laid down in the by-laws for houses let in lodgings that 300 cubic
feet of free air space is to be allowed for each person over 10 years of
age and 200 for each person under, in a room used exclusively as
a sleeping apartment, and for a room used both for sleeping and living
the limits are -100 feet and 200 feet respectively. That assumes, however,
that the houses are suitable for such a mode of usage. In the various
* The population of St. John's Ward (which covers an area of 210 acres) was only
8,375 in 1801. It gradually increased up to 1871 when the inhabitants numbered 38,478.
Since then each census has shown a decrease, thus in 1881 there were 3,000 less, in
1891 the population was 34,106, in 1896, 31/130, and in 1901, 29,914. Last year the
resident population was estimated to be 28,100 (exclusive of persons in workhouses, &c.),
but this year the returns of inhabited houses show considerable increase, so that the
resident population is probably now not less than 29,100.