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66
It will be seen from this table that since 1906 there has been a very great
increase in the number of children who escape vaccination, the figures having
risen from under a hundred to over a thousand, and the percentage sixteenfold.
The effect of this is seen in the reduction of the percentage of children
successfully vaccinated from 68 to under 46 since the same year. This change
is, no doubt, a consequence of the Vaccination Act, 1907, which provided for
the substitution of a statutory declaration as to conscientious objection for the
certificate of the Justices. As a result, the immunity to small pox of the
population of the Borough, and particularly of the younger members, must be
much less than six years ago.
DWELLING HOUSES.
The outstanding feature of the housing problem in St. Pancras is that the
great majority of the houses are let to more than one family.
This is brought out by the 1911 census returns, which show that in that
year there were 52,310 "private 'families (or tenements)," comprising 200,735
persons, and living in less than 25,451 dwelling houses. (In arriving at this
estimate of the number of dwelling houses, an ordinary dwelling-house which
is sub-let is counted as a single house, but every flat in blocks of flats is
counted separately).
No doubt this is due to these three inter-dependant causes, viz.: (1) That
most of the St. Pancras houses were built for families who could then afford tooccupy
six or more rooms; (2) That the rental value of the houses has, for
various causes, risen greatly since they were built, and (3) That the average
population of the Borough is less well-to-do than it was formerly.
The effect of the sub-letting (apart from overcrowding) is that a large part
of the population of the Borough have to live without private yard, watercloset,
dust-bin, or scullery accommodation. Such conditions have a marked
tendency to discourage proper domestic cleanliness, and incidentally call for
much supervision by sanitary inspectors and health-visitors.
Food Storage.
Experience shows also that by reason of living in rooms which were evidently
intended originally to form only part of a house, many families in the Borough
are without adequate food-storage accommodation, in many cases living and
sleeping in the same room as that in which all their food is stored. This is
very prejudicial from the point of view of public health, and probably has the
effect of increasing the incidence of and mortality from intestinal diseases,
especially in infants. There is no doubt that every tenement ought to
be provided with a suitable food-cupboard, ventilated when possible to the
open air, and affording complete protection from dust and flies to the food
stored therein. Section 16 of the London County Council (General Powers)
Act, 1909, enacts that such accommodation for food-storage shall be provided
in tenement houses, but only in the case of houses which were not sub-let
before the framing of the Act. This proviso makes the Act practically inoperative
in St. Pancras at the present time.