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hesitated to condemn such property. The houses are mostly
small, three or four-roomed dwellings, which are largely
occupied by single families, or at most a couple of families.
They have yards or small gardens, which are of great
service to the inhabitants in conducting small businesses or
trades, and in fact on such grounds are largely occupied by
costermongers and persons of that class; and further, notwithstanding
their unsavoury appearance and apparent
over-population, we have found that preventible diseases
prevail no more in them than in poor houses of a better
class, and considerably less than they do in neighbouring
tenement houses. The reasons, indeed, which have deterred
me from condemning them are:—1st, that they are not the
special haunts of unhealthiness; 2nd, that though they tend
to be dirty and untidy, and to fall into disrepair, they are
from their size and their surroundings better suited for the
kind of tenants occupying them than tenement houses would
be ; and 3rd, that their ventilation and sanitary arrangements
are really better than at first sight one might suppose. I
have, over and over again, asked those dwelling in them
whether they would rather live in them or remove to
tenement or model lodging-houses; and almost without exception
the reply made to me has been to the effect, that
they prefer their own houses, because they have them to
themselves, they have the use of a garden or yard, and
the rant is less than would be that for equivalent accommodation
in any form of tenement house. I may add, that
I have several times made enquiry of clergymen and medical
men, whose duties take them largely into these localities,
and have found them taking very nearly the same view of
the case that I have done. I am free to confess that the
demolition of all such property as that to which I refer
would remove a load of anxiety and responsibility from my
shoulders.