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27
enactment placed by Parliament in the hands of the Local
Authority, which would enable it to deal with this great
evil.
The Commissioners, in their investigation into the condition
of the class among which overcrowding is prevalent, discover
that the average weekly wage in certain quarters amounts to
twenty shillings a week; in others, sixteen; again, in others,
twelve; and in some even ten shillings. Forty-six per cent.
of this section of the community pay from one-fourth to
one-half of their income in rent, 83 per cent. more than
one-fifth; only 12 per cent. pay less than one-fifth.
On the other hand, in the course of an inquiry extending
throughout the poor quarters of the Metropolis, embracing
an investigation into nearly 1,000 cases, the sum of 3s. 10¾d.
is found to be the average weekly rental of the single-room
tenement.
The rent-paying capacity and the income of the labourer
bear a definite relation one to the other. The recipient of a
weekly wage of twelve or fourteen shillings, whatever be the
number of his family, is unable to secure upon the present
scale of rent-chargcs the occupancy of a greater space than a
single room provides. To him the application of the 35th
Section of the Sanitary Act is ineffective. Guilty of an
offence against an Act with which he has not the means
to comply, the labourer may be driven from tenement to
tenement.
A witness before the court of enquiry bears evidence to
this effect: "The result of the enforcement of the parish
regulations was that persons who did not like to submit
to them, or for whom there was no room without overcrowding,
had to leave the district and go to others where
the Local Authority allowed people to live in whatever
condition they pleased." The conception of this Act as a
remedial measure in conditions of overcrowding is evidently