SLUM WORKER DEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 203, 28 August 1935, Page 7

SLUM WORKER DEAD.

EARL JELLICOE'S COUSIN. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, August 27. The Rev. Father Basil Jellicoe, a cousin of Karl Jellicoe, formerly Gover-nor-General of New Zealand, died on Saturday, aged 37. He had been prominently associated with experimental housing and other reforms in Somers Town, a poor district of London, north of St. Pancras station. This work attracted attention both at home and. overseas. Father Jellicoe organised the Public Utility Society, which rehoused a large number of slum dwellers in flats with gardens and other amenities at rents not higher than those formerly paid by the tenants. These flats gave a return on the capital subscribed by practical philanthropists of 2i per cent on loan stock and 3 per cent on ordinary shares. Father Jellicoe was curate of the parish until he was moved last year to the curacy of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.

One of the greatest driving forces which London has experienced in the movement for better housing of the slum population, the late Father Jellicoe, in his brief career, wrought a wonderful change in the formerly appalling area of Somers Town, St. Pancras. Deciding that he would not rest until the homes of Somers Town were houses, not hovels, he started the St. Pancras House Improvement Society, when children of the district showed enormous appreciation of a hot bath service erected for public patronage. Demolishing disgraceful residences and erecting decent homes for scores of families, the society succeeded in paying a yearly dividend of 3 per cent by means of rents to Father Jellicoe had his headquarters at Anchor Inn, Stibbington Street, where he provided hot meals at suitable prices in a cheery, social atmosphere. An incongruous figure in belted gown and biretta, Father Jellicoe would sit among his "flock" and join in the general conversatk -.