ENGLAND’S BLACK SPOTS.

Grey River Argus, 13 January 1927, Page 3

ENGLAND’S BLACK SPOTS.

— ■SLUMS OF THE GREAT CITIES. traveller s observations. (By J. O'Shaughnessy in “N.Z. Her Md.”) One coming from New Zealand to the Motherland and moving from one I large city to another in this land that .is crowded with cities far exceeding in! and population any cities in New Zealand is forcibly struck by the awful conditions that prevail and under which the poor of the cities live ami die. ‘*A hideous, tumbly-down derelict place, crying aloud for rvmovM, v. hose litter of leaves and rotten apples ■•• umbers the very doorways of this cathedral.” This is how the Rev B. Roach, priest vicar of the Anglican Southwark Cathedral in London, describes the borough market of Southwark in a sermon which has aroused great discussion. 1 ‘ Southwark, ’ ’ he added, ‘‘is a poverty-stricken, sordid, squalid locality.’’ Southwark is only one of many black spots in Britain. Its filthy backyards, littered with broken pots and pans, its two-roomed tenements, into which are herded families of seven and eight people, its sordid homes, so dark that gas has to be burned till day, its bar! alleys where rats .feed on refuse an ) scamper unafraid, can be paralleled in every city in this land. During m\ travels from one city to another, 1! . have kept my eyes open, and have retained never-fading memories of the conditions that pertain in the poorest quarters of these cities. HOUSES OR THE MIDDLE AGES. ■ Edinburgh's face is her fortune. 1 But, associated with her historical show spots, which people from all over I tin* world come see, are civic “black spots” of an extraordinary kind. There are people living to-day in the very houses, alTout tne Royal Mile, which were occupied in the Middle Ages. Some of the ancient pi* • perties have been closed under compulsory order, but there is a remarkable colony of tenement “ squat to; s. ‘ who slick to the condemned houses because they cannot pay rent or rate-. There are old tenements of seven storeys, and tlo‘ population of a single stair is, in some cases, as many as 2 ; >o souls. One-roomed houses were- toure; | to be occupied by (1) man and wife | and four sons, ranging from 18 to 1" I years, and lodger and wile and tout, children under 10. The lodger and | family slept in a dark Hed-closei. (2 Tenant and wife, live sons, from 18 to live weeks old, anil live daughter' from 15 years to 2'. years. Rig Mum I clearance schemes have been unc i j taken bv the inunii ipalily and two [ilose Have cost marly <500,000. t'i | ]>[ \(I U 1 ’ A itol'E TO (iO 10 BED. Liverpool has nearly 200 or.e-roomed houses ami over 1290 houses with lut two rooms, while, according to H"' medical officer of health, there aie more than 2000 houses in a state so] dangerous or injurious to iiealth as. to be unlit for human. habitation. in thse hovels overcrowding is rife. In one house, in a narrow alley off Soho Street, live families under one roof am! r>... I. Jdi • n sleep m 1! ‘" same rooms as their jrtirenU. Instances are common families of six, seven ami eight occupying one or two rooms. In on" lum.-m tlie occupants i-bmb to their bedroom with the aid of a rope. Hut there is promise ot mlint has ts ~i in the past being remedied in til." near future, according to the lonising schemes pul forward by tne meal autliorit is conccnied. I Manchester Ims for some years been m-eil in a crusade against slum proli. Ay. ami has elf'.-cted a big transtornmtmn. The corporation Ims removed whole streets of slums and Ims ionnil new Imuses for the people. Next to West Harn, Salford is said to be. Hie most denselv populated area m tin,llt,v. 11l its 52b2 acres there nre over 50,000 Imuses, besids in ilium-ruble factories ami business premises. 1 lie population is steadily increasing, ' )ul there seems to be m> more room for building, tile eitv being tightly hemmed in mi all sides.

BIRMINGHAM'S FAIR NAME. Sir John Robertson, Birminglmm medical officer ol hcmitli, lecenth ln-oiight forward, an important scheme for clearing tile whole -it-, in rm exceptionally emigrate I an a m the Ney Summer Street area in St.. Manys Ward, which Ims been deseribim as ‘a on the fair name of tlm mty. ’ In this area there are 517 houses. or 511 to 'the acre. On the new building est-iles. I tin- Imuses are to be erected in the propnrti.m of 12 to th" acre. The total population of this district i-s equal to 5.23 persons per house, There are ..miy S( mm 30 self-contained hem-es, the remainder being oi flu' w-u .1 Engif.ih sfvle. of tlie lm?-k to .riel.; variety, .some of them frith no separate w: ter I supply. I The conditions in eerlnin d ,-t’wti- in the Potteries is as bad -is mmd b " 1 imagined. No fewer limn 1 I areas ‘have been noted by the ;.ii Imr.i ms as unhealthy. comprising 4200 holism and mvor 20,000 people. Over VffiO Imuses re overcrowded, the mu lia r of |.i«.|'liinvolved being 11.-1 per cent ’i tire j, ipulafion. As fully 2200 marriages !u ■ reported to take place eceir yiui in the city, and as the number of ho .-os being erected is stated to be inliuit esimal, it can easily be seen that the situation every yar grows -worse. A CITY WlTllOl’T Ni. CMS. Th- claim that Cardiff '.as rm sums, made by Mr A. J. Howell, the chair man ' the Housing Committee, is subjstanti -ed by a visit of inspection But wi -0 it is said that Cardiff Ims m ‘slums, ibis does not mean that there jure no lirtv houses, with condition.' such as Io not exist in New Zealand Cardiff is a very cosmopolitan city, am all races are housed there. A caretu survi’v of the city reveals not mon than seven or eight hous-s unlit fol habitation. But it also rrcmls imt's amis of houses that would not lie t" 1 crated in New Zealand. Cardiff luipe: to have built by the end of 1927 3,501 houses, built Illis time with due regsr. to sanitation and health. Leeds is an overcrowded city Situ ated in the centre of the teeming m dustrial North, it is a monunicnt ,( -

the lack of town-planning ideas. Narrow foopaths and narrower streets lend | a dingy air to the town. All the houses in the working-class quarters are built to the same design in a brick that has become black, not alone with age, but with th grime from tee air. Each house is built hard against the next, and r ow after row of these budd ings extends all over the i ity. Ihe houses rise sheer from the fool path. Gardens are conspicuous by their absence. The tidy little girdns in ironl and in the rear of New Zealand workers’ homes arc not found in this city of smoke. A lawn-mower agent could 1 hardly live in Leeds. There is no need for lawnmowers. In Leeds there are over 65,900 hotels ’ built back to back, the larger portion 1 of which have one common conveni- ' once to a block. These disgraeefu! ’ habitations are packed together ut the ’ rate of nearly seventy to the. acre,. 1 The evil and the criminal effect of al ' lowing these, hovels to exist can be seen from the fact that last year, arL cording to official figures, of the total deaths in Leeds over 65 per cent took place in thse back-to-back houses. F / it any wonder that the medical officer ' for health in Leeds has said: “It is 1 useless to hope for any improvement. in the health of the city until these 'insanitary conditions are removed!” ' And the story of Leeds is the storv of ) all the large cities of England..