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86
Overcrowding.
The number of dwelling rooms found to be overcrowded during the year was 85.
Because the conditions resulting from overcrowding are so harmful to health
generally, more especially in the case of children, every effort is made to get rid
of it.
Unfortunately, however, it is generally so difficult for those who overcrowd to
obtain the only suitable remedy, viz., extra accommodation, that the results are often
dishearteningly unsatisfactory.
Too often the person who is served with a notice for overcrowding merely
moves out of the house occupied at the time into another, which in its turn becomes
overcrowded, and no permanent remedy is obtained. Sometimes the remedy
provided is to send some of the members of the family to the house of a friend or
relative, and though this may produce some improvement in one home it cannot
really be regarded as a satisfactory remedy. The family life is broken up, and the
conditions in the house in which the additional accommodation is found are rarely
improved.
In every case discovered a notice was served and in all a remedy was found.
In finding a remedy the inspector who discovered the nuisance gave all the
assistance possible.
Many of the cases of overcrowding, it may be mentioned, were brought to light
as a result of complaints, the majority of which were made by the Visitors of the
St. Marylebone Health Society or School Care Committees. Some of them, as
usual, were anonymous and quite clearly spiteful. A considerable number of
complaints of overcrowding proved on investigation to be without foundation.
Underground Rooms.
The total number of underground rooms dealt with in 1912 was 199.
The total number of notices served was 94. Of these 51 were occupied
separately in contravention of Section 96 of the Public Health (London) Act, 1891,
while the remainder were illegally used as sleeping rooms, not being in accordance with
the regulations made by the Council under Section 17 (7) of the Housing, Town
Planning, etc., Act, 1909.
All were discovered as a result of the work of the house-to-house inspector,
and a report with regard to each was submitted to and considered by the
Public Health Committee before notices were served.
During the year a case in which closing orders were made by the local authority
on five underground rooms illegally used as sleeping rooms was taken before a
magistrate and an order obtained which directed the defendant to comply with the
closing orders and discontinue occupation of the rooms for sleeping purposes.
Being the first case of its kind a certain amount of interest attaches to it.
All the rooms were situated on the same premises and formed the sleeping
apartments of the staff of servants in a large private hotel in a street near the
Marble Arch. Many of the rooms were badly lighted and insufficiently ventilated