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sanitary dwelling. Such a room is constantly occupied
day and night; is used for sleeping and living,
the storage, preparation, and eating of food; the
cleansing of the person and washing and drying of
clothes; it is the one little space where children are
born and live, are sick and die, and where decency
is as impossible of attainment as healthy living.
The real difficulty is the remedy.
I have shown that the newer Willesden of the
last decennium is automatically reducing the proportion
of tenements of one and two rooms. Those
that remain are not the outcome of house famine
operating in Willesden as a whole. Improvement
of transit within the borders of Willesden itself will
remove the local causes of congested areas, and we
may well hope that the improvement now manifest
will then be accelerated.
There will remain, however, even if unhealthy
crowding should disappear, many insanitary and
unsuitable houses. There are, especially in South
and Mid. Kilburn, houses into which a ray of sunlight
never penetrates, on which the winds of
heaven never blow. Situated in squalid courts reeking
with the filth of animals, walled around by houses
more than twice their height, incapable of