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52
In these 25 houses, there were found living in
the various rooms 549 persons, or on an average
22 persons in each house. When it is remembered
that these houses were originally constructed for
the accommodation of only one family, it will at
once occur to every one how wretched, deficient, and
degrading must be the accommodation when four,
five, or even six families are crowded into the same.
On measuring the rooms in which these families
lived it was found that if the cubic space required
by the "Regulations" were insisted on, that the
above houses would only accommodate 198 persons,
shewing that 350 persons would, in these 25
houses alone, have to be turned into the streets.
This, however, was not the whole question, the
25 houses were but a specimen, and I have
calculated that there are at least 500 other houses
equally overcrowded in the Parish. It will be thus
seen, that in order to carry out the "Regulations"
with regard to cubic space, that at least 7,000
persons must have been removed from their houses.
Nor would this have been the whole of the evil,
for if those 7,000 persons had been, for the sake
of their health, compelled to get rooms somewhere
else, they would have been obliged to leave the
Parish altogether, as there is no new building
going on in St. James's, or its neighbourhood.