RAPIDLY CHANGING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19474, 26 April 1933, Page 2

RAPIDLY CHANGING

LONDON’S HOME LIFE. It is one of the curious changes in London life that as the offices grow more and more spacious and luxurious, the homes grow smaller and simpler (writes James A. Kilpatrick in the “Daily Mail”). Does this mean that business is becoming a more important and engrossing interest to both sexes and that home life is deteriorating? In twenty years the social life of London has undergone a revolution. One by one the great houses of Mayfair are being swept away, hotels and flats are taking their place, and | middle-class home life is rapidly changing because of the vast army of women who are plunging into commercial pursuits. There are 100,000 more women engaged in business and the professions in London to-day than there were two decades ago, and thousands more are being absorbed in the vast commercial premises that are springing up all over the metropolis. Life is becoming fuller, more vivid, more intense, but something of the old picturesqueness is being lost. With the vanishing of the stately London mansions has gone the great retinue of servants that maintained the dignity and stateliness of fashionable life. The old family butler is tottering to his doom; the gaily uniformed footmen are almost extinct. Maisonnettes and Flats. But it is not only the great town residences like Devonshire House Grosvenor House, Lansdowne House, and the rest of that gallant company that have been demolished. There has been a continuous drop in the number of all houses of eight or more rooms. Those occupying the largest houses have now diminished to a mere 4000 families: and in twenty years the 42.000 families who lived spaciously in homes of ten or more rooms have shrunk to 21,000. In fact, there are now 50,000 fewer families (roughly 170,000 persons) living in houses of six *rooms and upwards. and the process of reduction goes on uninterruptedly. Maisonnettes and flats are displacing the nice old Georgian houses with little gardens that were once the charm and surprise of London life, and along with them are passing \some of the domestic qualities for which they stood. In ten years the residents of the larger homes in Kensington have decreased by nearlv 10.000. in Hampstead by 7000. in Wandsworth by 6000. and in Westminster by 3000. Hamp- ; Ftead has the largest proportion of residents living in big houses —over 10 per cent.; in Chelsea it is 8 per cent., and in Westminster 7.3 per cent. Among all classes the character of social life is changing. Hotels and restaurants now take a place in our domestic economy that was never dreamed of twenty years ago. It is becoming more convenient (as well as more economical) for people of fashion to take a suite of luxurious rooms in | a hotel for the London season than ! to maintain a town house and enterI tain on anything like the lavish scale I of earlier days. Dining-Out Habit. i Then the dining-out habit has | grown tremendously. The middle-class . house-holders, still in difficulties about I domestic service, find it simpler to en- ; tertain their friends (and even feed ' themselves) at restaurants. ! 'Pens of thousands of young women lof the class who formerly applied ! themselves to household duties in their ; parents’ homes are now absorbed in ■ business and professional careers and i obviously cannot combine these with i domestic work. The stay-at-home girl is regarded as the Cinderella of the j family—a role out of favour with the | independent, ambitious, and enterpris--1 ing daughters of to-day. Whatever may be the ultimate effect I of these changes, they certainly df> not ! indicate decadence, but rather increased virility of character, for the 1 general intensification of life and work | for both sexes has already produced 1 one remarkable result. It has added : four or five years to the normal ex- ; pectation of life and has made the i too-old-at-forty cry of a generation j ago sound ridiculous.