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146
factory one?—I cannot see how you can avoid it, and how you
could exclude them. Why should they be branded as men unworthy
to be elected to take part in the administration of local
affairs because they happen to be owners of house property?
If so the Marquess of Northampton himself would not be
eligible as a member for the local board, or Captain Penton, or
anybody else.
17,771. Are they members of the local board?—No, unfortunately
they are not; I wish they were ; but they will not
condescpnd to it, and therefore we must come to the next best
class of men that we can get, namely, those who have the next
largest stake in the parish. I would rather have a man on the
board who is worth £10,000 in house property than I would
one who had not a penny to call his own.
17,772. You said very early in your examination that you
scarcely knew what overcrowding meant; has not your attention
been directed of late years to tho very frightful evils that
result from overcrowding without requiring any definition?—
If I have said in my evidence that I did not know what overcrowding
meant I trust that answer will be struck out. I never
said so intentionally.
17,773. (Mr. Mc Cullagh Torrens.) You meant to say that you
did not know what was meant by overcrowding?—Yes. Some
people may consider one thing overcrowding, and some may
consider another thing overcrowding.
17,774. (Mr. Godwin). I have not understood you to evince
that dislike and almost terror which some of us have manifested
on hearing of the actual condition of rooms in Clerkenwell. We
hear, say, of a house with four rooms with six or seven persons
living in each room, and you do not seem to express that dislike
for such a state of things which I should have desired to
hoar from an officer in your position?—If it is to be understood
that six or seven people sleep and live in one room only, and
that a comparatively small one and without divisions in it, I
should most decidedly object to it. I should call that overcrowding
which ought at once to be abated.
17,775. You would feel certain that it would lead to immorality
and to bad health ?—Certainly.
17,176. And, therefore, you would not defend those men who
permit such things to go on year after year in your parish?—If
a great number of people like that were living in one room and
there was no division, and it led to anything approaching indecency
or immorality, I should be one of the first to condemn
it.