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67
Hutments.—In my Annual Report for 1934 I reported on an agreed threeparty
Scheme between the owners of certain hutments, the London County Council
and the Council, for the re-housing of the tenants of Eltham hutments and for the
demolition of the hutments.
The first of the dwellings were ready for occupation on the 1st September of
that year, and at the end of 1935, the total number of hutment families so re-housed
was 350.
Other hutments in Eltham and Plumstead are being demolished, and it may
be said that they are now rapidly disappearing. They were originally put up as
temporary dwellings for the duration of the war, but they continued to be used
as such much longer than anybody expected. It has been said that these hutments
were healthy and sanitary dwellings, but they have always been subject
far too much to extremes of temperature and to daily intermittent dampness
(condensation). In recent years they have not been wind and weather proof, and
extensive disrepair and settlement have been apparent.
Two years ago I investigated the vital statistics of these dwellings over a
period of ten years, and the following rates are not without interest in this connection.
There were originally just under two thousand hutments in the Borough.
The population has never been known because they were never grouped as census
units by the Registrar-General. In the absence of accurate estimates of the hut
population it was necessary in order to study the vital statistics to consider the
ratios of each cause of death to the total deaths, a method which is occasionally
used, particularly in studying mortality of olden times. When the statistics were
so examined it was found, as will be seen from Table No. 25, that the percentage
of deaths from tuberculosis in the huts was nearly 40 per cent. higher than in the
houses, and it will be noted in Table No. 26 that, from all diseases, people died
at earlier ages in the huts than in the houses.