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99
Housing Conditions in these Areas in Detail.
(1) Strand area.—This area abuts on the City of London, which it
closely resembles in the number of business premises. A typical example
is Bush House, composed of office suites, containing more than 2,000
rooms, a magnificent modern structure with spacious lay-out. It also
contains historic public buildings, such as Somerset House, Royal Courts
of Justice, Royal College of Surgeons, and many Government offices.
Education is represented by King's College, commerce by Covent
Garden Market and many large printing and publishing establishments.
Social life is catered for by at least 20 theatres and cinemas and
many large hotels and restaurants. There is a total of 243 restaurants
and other places where food is prepared and sold to the public in this
district. Some thousands come into Westminster every day to the
railway terminus at Charing Cross. It is worthy of note that there is
a progressive tendency, particularly in this area for the large hotels to be
replaced by business premises, a notable example being the Hotel Cecil.
This immense hotel has been demolished and its site cleared for the
erection of large offices.
Industrial Dwellings.
It will be gathered from the preceding paragraph that working-class
dwellings do not predominate in the Strand area. They are confined
roughly to an area within a radius of a quarter of a mile of Covent Garden
Market and comprise industrial dwellings, a common lodging house
and some tenements over shops. The Industrial Dwellings are the
Peabody Estates, Wild Street and Bedfordbury, L.C.C. dwellings,
Sheridan, Fletcher, Beaumont, Siddons and Stirling Buildings, Sandringham
Buildings in Charing Cross Road, and Mercer Chambers ; housing a
total of 904 families in separate flats, with a population estimated at 2,860.
These industrial dwellings require very little attention from a sanitary
inspector as regards structure and fittings. Visits mainly concern cases
of overcrowding, infectious disease and cleansing. As regards overcrowding,
7 cases have come under notice during 1930. As in the first
place, families are allocated flats according to the number of persons, it
follows that those few cases have occurred as the number in family
increased.
Houses let in Tenements.
There are only 12 houses let in tenements or lodgings. They house
44 families, numbering 132 persons. In addition to these, there are 87
tenements in connection with or over shops or business premises. In
these tenements there may be estimated 394 persons. Five cases of over