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4
What is the net result to the District of this great increase in the Sanitary
Staff of the Board ? It is impossible to set out in Tabular Form all the
present benefit—but it is evident from a glance at the work carried out
during past years as set out each year in Table P of the Appendix, that in
the aggregate the District has become vastly improved. Consider the total
amount spent on new and improved house drainage, where ventilation of
drains has been provided, and the means of inspecting and cleansing them
has been arranged for ; reflect that all the Schools within the District have
been or are being treated in this manner, and it will not surprise you to be
told that the general death rate has diminished, and that the mortality of
infants under the age of one year to 1,000 registered births, is for our
District lower than it is for any other East End District.
During the year 1897 about £5,000 has been spent in this way by the
owners of house property in the District. This estimate does not include
new houses. I am of opinion that these improvements would have been
still more pronounced but for the unfortunate circumstance that overcrowding
through newly erected buildings is permitted by Act of Parliament.
When there was no available vacant building land in the Whitechapel District,
and when almost every house within it was a dwelling-house, the
population was less than it is now. At the present time large areas are
covered with Warehouses, Stores, Schools, &c, so that the increased
population are housed to an enormous extent in huge barrack buildings
which sometimes are constructed so as to allow light and air to permeate
the rooms, and sometimes not. The effect of this modern invention is to
increase the density of population to a damaging degree. I am aware that
some gentlemen (more particularly architects) argue that the movement of
air, constantly taking place, naturally provides all the fresh air which is
required to prevent anything like injury resulting from aggregating large
numbers of people upon a limited space, but I would ask such gentlemen to
compare sickness and death rates in two districts occupied by the similar
classes of comparable ages. It could be easily proved that where the
greatest density was present, there would be found scrofula, consumption,
and allied diseases, out of all proportion to the number of cases which would
appear in the neighbourhood where the density of population was restrained
within reasonable limits. This matter was brought to my notice more
especially in the summer when I collected some statistics for a special
Committee appointed by the Jewish Board of Guardians to enquire whether
consumption had increased of late amongst the Jews in East London. As
probably the result of the deliberations of that Committee will eventually
be published, I refrain now from giving details of my own evidence—but I
would simply state that I formed the opinion that the answer to the Inquiry
would probably be an affirmative one.
That the direct influence of these barrack dwellings upon the health of
their occupants—more especially of the children—is adverse I have not the
slightest doubt. I have reason, moreover, to believe that the spread of
zymotic diseases is aided by the general plan of construction adopted in
dwellings of this class. A staircase leading to a corridor which affords
access to many rooms more easily facilitates the spread of disease than
in the case of tenements which are more separated. It may also be said
that as the staircases and passages frequently have to constitute the playground
of the children, another factor is imported to account for the spread
of disease. I have collected evidence which supports my opinion that both
scarlet fever and diphtheria evince a marked tendency to appear in families
who occupy rooms which are adjacent to other rooms where the disease has
already appeared. Small houses, with rooms which can be entered from
independent staircases commend themselves to my mind as far preferable
from many points of view, as dwellings for the working classes; it is