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From a return of the lodging-houses, which was kindly made to mo by
the police in 1861, the number was only 117, in which were 2,620 beds.
Since 1861, the number of beds in these houses has been nearly
doubled. We may, therefore, presume that the business of a lodging
house keeper is of a lucrative nature. Each person pays a sum varying from
3d. to 5d. per night for his lodging, including bed, firing for cooking, hot
water, and the use of crockery; and every lodger who remains for 7 days in
the same lodging-house is only charged for six days, no payment being
required for Sundays. The police pay frequent visits to these houses—occasionally
night visits are made, and special attention is given to the cleanliness
of the bedding, the floors, passages, and walls, to the condition of the ceilings
of the rooms (which arc required to be limewhited twice every year), to the
state of the water receptacles, and to the cleanliness of the privies; attention is
likewise paid to the pavement of the back yards, and to the airing of the
rooms, the police insisting upon the opening of all the windows after tho
bed-rooms have been vacated. All this work appears to me to be well done,
and the contrast between the present and past condition of these common
lodging-houses, as regards their sanitary arrangements, is most striking to
those persons who know them before the passing of the Act in 1851, and tells
very favorably to the conduct of the police, for the manner in which they
carry out their instructions.
There are, however, several defects of a sanitary nature which require
some attention; and the most important of these is the overcrowding. It
appears that the rooms are measured by a surveyor, who fixes the number of
persons who may be permitted to sleep in each room; but the space allowed
for each bed is too small, for in very few, if any, of these sleeping rooms, is
the cubic space more than 250 feet. In one of these common lodging houses,
ia a room having the cubic dimensions of about 4,500 feet, there were 21
beds; this allows only a cubic space of 214 feet to each; and in another
lodging house the cubic space allotted to each bed was only 200 feet. Now,
however competent a surveyor may be to discharge all the duties of his profession,
he is not the proper authority to fix the number of persons who can,
with a due regard to health, be allowed to pass seven or eight hours at night
in a room, the ventilation of which can be at any time so interfered with as
to prevent, to a great extent, the entrance of fresh air, and the exit of the
foul air which is generated by the congregating together of so many persons
in a limited space. In short, a surveyor is legally incompetent to give
an opinion upon the matter. This important subject ought to be entirely
under the direction of the Medical Officer of Health for the District. But I
may here observe that many of the houses which are used as common lodging
houses, are totally unfit for that purpose, they are so old, dark, ill-constructed,
and slightly built, that the ventilation of them cannot be much improved
without endangering the stability of the building. In some of these houses
every available space is used for increasing the number of lodgers; the