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59
objectionable if equally distributed, practically indicates that in a certain proportion of
houses there is great and serious over-crowding; the extent of the injurious overcrowding
may therefore—(assuming the sizes of the houses, one with another, to be the
same)—be taken to be indicated by the magnitude of the average. Now neither in
Holborn, nor in the Strand, nor in St. Martin's, can I find any large area tenanted
with 14.3 persons to each house, as is the case in South St. Giles. Some parts of
Holborn, indeed, were nearly as thickly inhabited as this, at the census of 1851, but
the subject of over-crowded houses has since then attracted much attention in this
district, and applications have often been made to the magistrate with success, for the
diminution of the number of tenants in extreme cases. To such precautions I do not
doubt, that the high position of Holborn among other districts, last year, was in great
measure attributable.
In like manner, the different parts of our own district differ from one another,
the over-crowded localities being especially scourged by disease. There is no doubt
that large tracts of the district, several of the ten sub-divisions I have adopted, are
occupied by as many as 16 or 18 persons to the house. In one street, of which I
have a census, there are above 1,700 inhabitants in 80 seven-roomed houses. As I
have before insisted, the high average of persons in a house, involves the prevalence
of much more serious crowding in the particular instance; hence it will not be
astonishing that in this street there are to be found 36 persons living in one of the
houses, and frequently 8 persons living day and night in one small room.
One cannot often analyse the causes which operate to produce disease in a
community. It is only occasionally that one can get evidence of a single condition,
operating in one locality and not in another, with all circumstances else being fairly
similar.
I happen by a piece of good fortune to have obtained an illustration of this
sort, regarding the particular condition of over-crowding. (See two following pages.)
I cannot conceive anything more absolute and startling than this comparison,
though it is made for one year only. This enormous death-rate, this amount of
zymotic disease, and this frightful mortality among children, which are exhibited to us
in the one street, and not in the other, appear to own as their cause solely the
existence of over-crowding, with its attendant evils.
Since this investigation was instituted, a return has been made by the District
Surveyor, showing how far the kitchens of Dudley Street are legally habitable; it
appears that there is scarcely one which, even in a majority of particulars, conforms to
the requirements of the Act of Parliament.
Other sanitary defects, many of them the immediate results of the over-crowded
state of dwellings, have received ample attention from the Board and its officers; but
hitherto the condition of over-crowding itself, I believe the most important sin against
health of our district, has practically remained unnoticed.
To diminish over-crowding is not only to ensure purer air to be inhaled, but it
gives a possibility of cleanliness and of decent self-respect, which would prevent the
neglect and misuse of other appliances for health. In a street with 1,700 inhabitants,
in a house with 36 inmates, with the front door and stair-case at every man's command,