OVERCROWDING IN DUBLIN.

Western Star, Issue 965, 18 July 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

OVERCROWDING IN DUBLIN.

A Dublin correspondent says:—Dr Oam°ron—-who, it is believed, will shortly be knighted—has issued a report of the state of; the, tenement houses in Dublin, which contains some startling disclosures. The statistics which Dr Cameron gives are appalling. It has been ascertained that’ of the 31,211 inhabited houses in Dublin 7234 are occupied by two or more families; and that of the 54 735 families in Dublin, no fewer than 32,202 live in the 7234 houses, which contain 48,116 rooms, thus giving a room and a half on an average to each family, some of whom are twelve in number. The rents received for the rooms are almost incredible. The tables show that in four Dublin streets there are 1074 families occupying 1482 rooms in 175 houses, for which taey pay a yearly rent of £B3ll Us, while the houses are valued at £8677 10s. Tor one house, valued at £B, the eight fa»i%a who occupy it pay £B2 a year

rent. Dr Cameron speaks of Dublin as a decayed city, not in the Idist resembling Liverpool, Msncheser, Glasgow, and most other British cities, the working classes living chiefly , in decayed old houses, erected formerly for the nobility and landed gentry classes. In no city in the Empire have so many unhealthy houses "been closed under the Public Health ;Act. Four hundred and thirty cellar dwellings aad tenement rooms in clamp houses have been closed up. Stables in lanes behind fashionable squares and streets have been converted into dwelling-houses, and the huddling together of both sexes and all ages in a single apartment is attended- by obvious evils. D r Cameron states that a large number of the tenement houses are owned by gentry living in England and abroad, whose -houses are lease to middlemen, who sublet; the rooms and make large profits. -