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33
as consumption and diseases of the lungs, of which
I have before spoken. In 1867 I took the opportunity
of calculating the extent of the over crowding
of this district, for the purpose of carrying out the
"Regulations" for Lodging Houses, under the
Sanitary Act of 1866. I then said that, in order to
carry out in your Parish the "Regulations" with
regard to cubic space, that at least 7000 persons
must have been removed from their homes. Nor
would this have been the whole of the evil, for if
these 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.
They must, therefore, have gone to the
surrounding parishes, to have increased the overcrowding
there, or have been expelled to suburban
districts, where it would have been impossible for
them to carry on their occupations. It is in this
way that, I believe, a large amount of pauperism
has been caused in London, by persons being driven
from the locality in which they were capable of
earning a maintenance, to districts where they have
no means of employment. It seems then to me
that till the time comes when it shall be seen necessary
to erect proper dwellings for the poor in this
and other parishes of London, that we must submit
to overcrowding, with all its physical degiadation
and moral pollution, as a lesser evil than driving
men, women, and children into the streets, and to
places far away from their work, and the exercise of
that industry by which alone they can be kept from