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It is in these houses that we find a man, wife, and five or six
children crowded together into one small back room of 700 cubic
feet space ; or the front kitchen a little larger, but with less than
1000 cubic feet space, where there are not more than 100 to 150
feet for each person. A dog or two are often kept under these
conditions.
The following cases from my notes are illustrations:—
No. 12 Bouverie Street—man, wife and 5 children in front kitchen,
770 cubic feet space; the beds, cupboards, chairs, tables, &c. reduce the
cubic space less than 100 cubic feet to each person; the man is a journeyman
butcher out of work. In the same house, first floor front, is a man
(plumber and glazier) with his wife and 7 children, with cubic space of
1200 feet only. No. 56 Cirencester Street, was a man, wife and 5 children
in a front room, choked up with furniture, and articles of wet linen hung
all over the room; 2 fine children were suffering- from severe Whooping
Cough, and 2 had died the previous week of same disease. At No.—,
was found a small dirty back room, where some people kept 2 dogs, the
man, and wife earning £ 3 a-week, and spending it in drink. No. 22
Cirencester Street, three instances of over-crowding in one house—
14 persons in excess. No. 46 in the same street, 16 persons in excess—
front kitchen 6, back parlour 4; second floor back 6. No. 23 Netley
Street, front parlour contains 5 persons; second floor front 7 persons.
No. 2 Alfred Place, Harrow Road, 5 persons, with a cubic space of
560 feet. In Clarendon Street, nearly 100 persons have been displaced;
and 17 persons were dislodged from pne house.
In some of the kitchens and basements people may be said to be like
Esquimaux, in underground cave dwellings—places with impure air, want
of light, admitted only through a grating in front, the upper sash of the
window being often out of repair, or nailed up.
The Sanitary Officers are continually serving notices to
abate overcrowding in single rooms (as the orders of the last few
weeks fully testify), and it is to be regretted that in the newly
built houses of Mews (in the Chippenham Road and Amberley
Road District), rooms are beginning to be thickly populated
with a pauperised class of persons, many of whom have
removed from the worst part of other parishes, and from less
cleanly dwellings in other places. These houses were originally
constructed for the requirements of one middle class family
only, while frequently there are now congregated in them 4, 5,
and 6 families of artizans, labourers, &c. (for which they are
unfitted). Hence the necessity for supervision.
In tenant-house property of this kind, there is not the
essential accommodation of a dwelling; no one looks after the
accumulation of dust or offensive garbage, or sees that the
closets are cleaned or drains kept trapped, or to attend to the
general cleaning and ventilation of passages, stairs or rooms-
Serious evils of a physical and moral character, are found to
afflict the population of these over-crowded houses. The want
of fresh air, habitual uncleanliness, bad washing accommodation,
with other unsanitary conditions, favor the spread of contagion.