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8
In some, planned with a central kitchen, the
house drains run beneath the house, and at
least once last summer diphtheria appeared to be
connected with this arrangement.
(c) Houses inhabited by the working classes.
Some very old cottages are found built without
"passages," and "front rooms." These afford
cheap and wholesome accommodation to those who
are content with them, and it is seldom that their
inmates suffer from infectious disease. Not a few of
these old cottages are surrounded by a little ground,
which is sometimes cultivated. Others, of more
recent date, but built before the time of building
bye-laws, are in "terraces," "rows," "places," and
"squares," or "alleys," and are, perhaps, the most
undesirable in the district. Dark and insufficiently
ventilated, they are surrounded by no proper open
space, and some are without forecourt, or backyard.
They are occupied by the most uncleanly part of
the population, and furnish a large proportion of the
patients of the Isolation Hospital. They are,
however, solidly built and, for technical reasons, it is
but seldom that any can be pronounced "unfit for
habitation" in the legal sense. It is to these houses
that the working man with a large family is too
often compelled to turn, or it is in them that
poverty sometimes compels the introduction of
lodgers, and, hence, legal overcrowding.
There are in Barnes certain houses of an inferior class
built largely of wood but there is reason to hope that the
demolition of some of them will shortly be witnessed.