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let in lodgings contained in Byelaws made under the Public Health
(London) Act, 1891 and Section 6 of the Housing Act, 1925. These
Byelaws laid down the minimum amount of free air space to be
allowed for each person occupying the rooms and required that so
far as practicable no two persons over the age of 12 of opposite sexes
and not living together as man and wife should occupy the same
sleeping apartment.
The 1935 Housing Act, which is consolidated in the Housing
Act, 1936, provided the first general standard for measuring overcrowding
and fixed the maximum equivalent number of persons
permitted to occupy a dwelling based on the number and floor
areas of rooms contained therein. For the purpose of enumerating
the occupants a person over 10 years of age is counted as a unit, a
child between the age of one and ten years as half a unit and children
under one year of age are disregarded.
This Act also required each local authority to carry out a
survey of their district in order to ascertain the number of dwellings
therein which were overcrowded on this standard and during 19351936
a survey was made of the borough, when of the 60,899 dwellings
visited 2,651 (or approximately 4 per cent.) were found to
be overcrowded.
The number of overcrowded dwellings would have been considerably
higher had it not been for the low standard for measuring
overcrowding which permitted rooms to be used for both living
and sleeping purposes and, except in the case of a one-room letting,
made no provision for separation of sexes. It was however pointed
out in Memorandum B on the Housing Act, 1935 that the standard
did not represent any ideal standard of housing, but the minimum
which was in the view of Parliament tolerable while at the same
time capable of immediate or early enforcement.
Whilst it is not possible to calculate accurately the extent of
the increase which would have resulted from measuring overcrowding
on a bedroom basis, a rough estimate can be obtained by taking
the rehousing standard contained in Section 37 of the Housing Act,
1930 and relating it to the equivalent populations and permitted
numbers revealed by the 1935 survey. On this basis it is found
that if the bedroom standard had applied the number of dwellings
overcrowded in 1935 would have been nearer 9,000 (or approximately
15 per cent.).
During the next four years a considerable amount of accommodation
for the abatement of overcrowding was provided by
both the Borough Council and London County Council and between
the completion of the survey and the end of 1939 no fewer than
2,969 families were rehoused. During the same period, however,