IN LONDON SLUMS.

Bruce Herald, Volume LV, Issue 63, 18 August 1919, Page 5

IN LONDON SLUMS.

THREE MILLIONS OVERCROWDED

25 IN EVERY HOUSE IN ONE STREET. Some amusing statements regarding the slums of London and the provinces were made in the House of Commons when the Housing Bill came up for discussion. Dr Addison took a few minutes short of two hours to explain the measure. During the war our arrears of new houses, he said, had mounted up to 350,000; and in an investigation which embraced' only about a quarter of the country it was found that there were 370,000 houses classed either as unfit for habitation or seriously defective. About 3,000,000 of our "people arc living in. overcrowded conditions, two in a room, 755,000 of these being in the London County Council area. An analysis of an East London street was given to show how a slum develops. It was Essex street, Shoreditch, the home originally of tradesmen or fairly well-to-do people, now a street of tenement dwellings. In one house there are six tenements, 31 people living there, witli one water-tap down in the back-yard and otic w.c Altogether 29 houses in that street shelter 733 people. 'This is only a typical case,' Dr Addison said. "There arc scores of others like it.' The effects of those conditions, social, and industrial, could hardly be exaggerated. The medical officer of Finsbury found that among 42S persons suttering from consumption 352 were either sharing their beds or their bedrooms with other people. In some cases four or six persons slept in the same room as the consumptive. 'lsn't it futile,' Dr Addison appealed to the House, 'to spend money on dealing with tuberculosis when conditions like this exist?' What these j houses cost the public was shown by i the fact that from 1912 to V.)IV j £8,500,000 was spent under the -Insur- [ ancc Act in lighting tuberculosis alone.

One curious .social feature on which Dr'Addison laid his finger is that those living in these insanitary dwellings arc not hc'er-do-wclls, but-people in regular employment. The explanation? The people had lived all their lives in the neighbourhood, and liked to keep near their work. 'Until we have got a vastly increased system of transport and a much greater factory development outside our cities this problem (Iho crowded slum) will be urgent and acute in our great centres of population.' Very little was done as regards housing schemes by local authorities during tlic war, but since then their activities have -been speeded up, and in the last four weeks nlono 275 schemes have been submitted. Mr J. E. Davison, the Labour member who defeated Miss Pankhurst,

made his maiden speech. Speaking from liis experience as a sanitary inspector in the Midlands, he showed that the Midlands have slums quite as dreadful as any in London, quoting tho case of a father and mother and six children whom ho found living in one room- He warned the House that the working classes would not tolerate a continuance of the old housing conditions, even if they had to resort to extreme means to bring about an improvement. From tho Rhondda Valley Major W)atts Morgan brought the same story of squallor and overcrowding in the housing conditions, and said people there were puzzled and annoyed at tho delay in remedying them. Colonel Pownall, of Lewisham, thought the Bill ought to be enlarged to assist tho needs of tho middle-class by encouraging tho conversion of large, unlettable houses into flats. Ho instanced a houso of £l4O rateable value, empty for a long time, now being converted into roomy flats which were letting readily at 3 to 3% guineas.

The issue of national housing bonds at 4 per cent., free of income tax, was suggested by Sir John Bctholl. Mr Leslie Scott, one of tho housing authorities in the House, spoke of the difficulty of building houses for the rural labourer at an economic rent, and suggested that rents should bo increased slightly each year until the rent was at an economic level. What farmers could not stand was a sudden call for a rise in wages.