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35
HOUSING ACCOMMODATION FOR THE POOR.
On receipt of a letter from the Vestry of St. Saviour, calling
the attention of the Board to certain remarks made by His
Honor Judge Addison, of the Southwark County Court, and
reported in the newspapers, as to the great and increasing
difficulty experienced by the poor in Southwark in obtaining
suitable lodgings, and suggesting that the Board should take
steps to alieviate the overcrowding by the erection of artisans'
dwellings, The Board, on the motion of Mr. Henry J. Fry,
appointed a special committee to consider the question. The
powers for the erection of such dwellings in the Metropolis being
vested exclusively in the London County Council under the
provisions of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890,
the Committee caused a letter to be addressed to the Council as
follows:—
Emerson Street, Bankside,
Southwark, S.E.,
22nd April, 1898.
Sir,—In the year 1891 this Board was in correspondence
with the London County Council with the object of
inducing the Council to exercise its powers under the
Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, for the erection
of artisans' or workmen's dwellings in Southwark, but such
correspondence proved abortive, the Council and the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners being unable to agree as to
the price to be paid for a suitable plot of land.
Since then the matter has been in abeyance, but the
necessity for additional housing accommodation of the kind
suggested has greatly increased.
This state of things has been induced by various causes,
e.g., the erection, in consequence of the central position of
the district, of a large number of warehouses and factories,
and a corresponding increase in the number of persons
employed in the neighbourhood; the pulling down of houses
in order to make room for the erection of such warehouses
and business premises; railway extensions necessitating the
destruction of a vast number of dwelling houses formerly
occupied by the labouring class, and the clearance of sites
which has resulted from the operation of the Public Health
Act of 1891.
The attention of the Board has again been called to the
matter in consequence of certain remarks made by Juge