BASEMENT DWELLERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21462, 8 April 1933, Page 20

BASEMENT DWELLERS

LIFE IN LARGE CITIES HEALTH IN CONSTANT DANGER Britain has a quarter of a million twilight dwellers, people who live in basements that are either without light or only half lit. London alone has 100,000 of these people of the twilight, ranging from the occupants of comparatively pleasant—but still only half lit garden plots" to the dwellers in

the slums.

In almost every case poverty is the cause. The upper floors cost more money whether in a slum or the West End of London.

Children from basements when they go to school suffer, according to official figures, twice as severely from diphtheria and colds as do their more fortunate playmates. Rheumatism attacks both old and young. No fewer than 45,000 people a year die from rheumatism and it costs approved societies £2,000,000 a year in benefit payments. Bristol is one of the worst cities in England for rheumatic diseases among children, and it is significant that it has also a high proportion of basement dwellings. Liverpool, on the other hand, is one of the best cities from both points of view. Babies reared in the perpetual twilight of -the basements grow up sickly and weak for lack of sunshine. Medical figures for rickets show an alarming difference between the children of the basements and the children of upper floors.

Thousands of these basements are rotten with damp, the outer walls made hideous by great patches of moisture. In some parts swarms of mice, and eve:n rats, have to be fought by the luckless tenants. Once the occupants of basements and cellars were envied. They were the dugouts into which the tenants' friends poured during the air raids of the war.

It is not only the flotsam and jetsam that has gone to ground to live. There are old folk who have known better days, whose incomes have fallen below the £3 mark. In the twilight of their lives they are forced to dwell in twilight conditions. Such are the conditions in most large cities to-day. Municipal authorities are powerless to cope with the housing problem without Government help.