View report page

39
THE HOUSING OF THE POOR PROBLEM.
Although in Stoke Newington we have not to face the problem
in its more acute phases, yet, more especially in the Southern portion
of the Borough, there are several thousand of the poorer classes
occupying two or three rooms in houses which, although originally
built for one family, have become tenemented to their utmost permissible
limits. Structurally considered, the houses are for the most
part satisfactory, but the evils of all this crowding require to be dealt
with by a very frequent house-to-house inspection. In a few instances
in the Borough there are groups of dwellings which are not far
removed from slum property—and if we failed to exercise all our
powers as a Sanitary Authority in regard to these they would very
quickly degenerate into the very worst forms of slums. There are
many families in Stoke Newington who occupy but two rooms, and in
my opinion it is often impossible for them to live under these conditions
with proper regard to healthiness or decency. This state of things is,
of course, far more in evidence in most other London Boroughs than
it is in Stoke Newington, and small wonder, therefore, that our townbred
population is deteriorating to such an extent that scarcely onehalf
of the males conform to the low standard of physique required in
our service recruits.
It is now impossible for a poor family to obtain two or three rooms
in London for the same sum which would have procured them a small
house of their own a few years back, and thousands are literally
starving themselves to pay extortionate rents.
The local authority can do much to promote the most satisfactory
standard of sanitation and decency procurable in these highly-tenemented
houses, but the standard is one which does not satisfy the least
fastidious in scores of cases, and the Nemesis must inevitably follow
of a progressive physical and moral deterioration of our London poor.
When insanitary conditions, such as we can deal with, arise on these
premises, one's natural impulse is not to spare the owner who is
responsible for the circumstances which have led to such nuisances,