Chapter XV: Part II: The Practice of Horticulture (13)

_Insanitary Areas._--The operation of the Housing Acts is more
susceptible of being stated in figures, though no fully comprehensive
information is available. The original Shaftesbury Act of 1851 for
erecting municipal lodging-houses appears to have been practically
inoperative and little or nothing was done for a good many years. In
1864, however, Liverpool obtained a private act and entered on the
policy of improvement by the demolition of insanitary dwellings on a
considerable scale, following it up in 1869 by re-housing. In 1866
Glasgow, also under a private act, created an Improvement Trust,
administered by the city council, and embarked on a large scheme of
improvement. These seem to have been the earliest examples. The
Torrens Act of 1868, which embodied the improvement policy, did not
produce much effect. According to a parliamentary return, during the
years 1883-1888, proceedings were only taken under this act in respect
of about 2000 houses in London and four provincial towns. More
advantage was taken of the Cross Act of 1875, which was intended to
promote large improvement schemes. Between 1875 and 1885 23 schemes
involving a total area of 51 acres and a population of about 30,000
were undertaken, in London; and 11 schemes in provincial towns. By far
the most important of these, and the largest single scheme ever
undertaken, was one carried out in Birmingham. It affected an area of
93 acres and involved a net cost of L550,000. Altogether between
L4,000,000 and L5,000,000 were raised for improvement schemes under
those acts. After the Housing Act of 1890 the clearance policy was
continued in London and extended in the provinces. During the period
1891-1905 loans to the amount of about L2,300,000 were raised for
improvement schemes by 28 provincial towns in England and Wales. The
largest of these were Leeds (L923,000), Manchester (L285,000),
Liverpool (L178,000), Sheffield (L131,000), Brighton (L112,000). The
Leeds scheme affected an area of 75 acres, which was cleared at a cost
of L500,000. In London the area cleared was raised to a total of 104
acres; the gross cost, down to March 31, 1908, was L3,417,337, the net
cost L2,434,096, and the number of persons displaced 48,525. Glasgow
has under its Improvement Trust cleared an area of 88 acres with a
population of 51,000. At the same time the policy of dealing with
houses unfit for habitation singly or in small groups by compelling
owners to improve them has been pursued by a certain number of local
authorities. In the six years 1899-1904 action was taken each year on
the average in respect of about 5000 houses by some 400 local
authorities large and small outside London. Representations were made
against 33,746 houses, 17,210 were rendered fit for habitation,
closing orders were obtained against 4220 and demolition orders
against 748. These figures do not include cases in which action was
taken under local acts and Public Health Acts. In Manchester, between
1885 and 1905, nearly 10,000 "back-to-back" houses were closed and
about half of them reopened after reconstruction. Hull, an old seaport
town with a great deal of extremely bad housing, has made very
effective use of the method of gradual improvement and has transformed
its worst areas without appearing in any list of improvement schemes.
In recent years this procedure has been systematically taken up in
Birmingham and other places, and has been strongly advocated by Mr J.
S. Nettlefold (_Practical Housing_) in preference to large improvement
schemes on account of the excessive expense involved by the latter in
buying up insanitary areas. In the six years 1902-1907 Birmingham
dealt with 4111 houses represented as unfit for habitation; 1780 were
thoroughly repaired, 1005 were demolished; the rest were under notice
or in course of repair at the end of the period. Among other towns
which have adopted this policy are Liverpool, Cardiff, York,
Warrington and two London boroughs.

_Building._--On the constructive side the operation of the Housing
Acts has been less extensive and much less general. In London alone
has the erection of working-class dwellings by municipal action and
organized private enterprise assumed large proportions. Philanthropic
societies were first in the field and date from a period anterior to
legislation, which however, stimulated their activity for many years
by affording facilities. Fourteen organizations were in operation in
London prior to 1890 and some of them on a large scale; others have
since been formed. The earliest was the Metropolitan Association for
Improving the Dwellings of the Industrial Classes, whose operations
date from 1847; it has built 1441 tenements containing 5105 rooms. The
largest of these enterprises are the Improved Industrial Dwellings
Company (1864), which has built 5421 tenements containing 19,945
rooms; the Peabody Fund (1864) with 5469 tenements containing 12,328
rooms; the Artisans', Labourers' and General Dwellings Company (1867),
with 1467 tenements containing 3495 rooms, and 6195 cottage dwellings;
the East-End Dwellings Company (1885) with 2096 tenements containing
4276 rooms; the Guinness Trust (1889) with 2574 tenements containing
5338 rooms. The Artisans' Dwellings Company alone has housed upwards
of 50,000 persons. In addition to these there are the Rowton Houses
(1892), which are hotels for working men, six in number, accommodating
5162 persons. So far as can be estimated, private enterprise has
housed some 150,000 persons in improved dwellings in London on a
commercial basis. The early activity of the building companies was
largely due to the policy of the Metropolitan Board of Works, which
adopted extensive improvement schemes and sold the cleared sites to
the companies, who carried out the re-housing obligations imposed by
the law. Since the London County Council, which replaced the Board of
Works in 1889, adopted the policy of undertaking its own re-housing,
their activity has greatly diminished. The buildings erected by them
are nearly all in the form of blocks of tenements; the Artisans'
Dwellings Company, which has built small houses and shops in outlying
parts of London, is an exception. The tenement blocks are scattered
about London in many quarters. For instance the Peabody Fund has 18
sets of dwellings in different situations, the Metropolitan
Association has 14; the Artisans' Dwellings Company has 10; the
Guinness Trust has 8. In 1909 an important addition to the list of
philanthropic enterprises in London was put in hand under the will of
Mr W. R. Sutton, who left nearly L2,000,000 for the purpose of
providing improved working-class dwellings. The erection of tenement
blocks containing accommodation for 300 families was begun on a site
in the City Road. In only a few provincial towns has private
enterprise contributed to improved housing in a similar manner and
that not upon a large scale; among them are Newcastle, Leeds, Hull,
Salford and Dublin.

_Municipal Building_ has been more generally adopted. The following
details are taken from Mr W. Thompson's _Housing up to Date_, which
gives comprehensive information down to the end of 1906. The number of
local authorities which had then availed themselves of part iii. of
the Housing Act of 1890, which provides for the erection of
working-class dwellings, was 142. They were the London County Council,
12 Metropolitan Boroughs, 69 County Boroughs and Town Councils, 49
Urban District Councils and 12 Rural District Councils. The dwellings
erected are classified as lodging-houses, block dwellings, tenement
houses, cottage flats and cottages. Lodging-houses have been built by
12 towns, of which 8 are in England, 3 in Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen
and Leith) and 1 in Ireland (Belfast). The total number of beds
provided was 6218, of which Glasgow accounts for 2414, London for
1846, Manchester and Salford together for 648. Four other towns have
built or are building municipal lodging-houses for which no details
are available. The other municipal dwellings erected are summarized as
follows:--

+------------------+-----------------+-------------+
| Kind of Dwelling.|No. of Dwellings.|No. of Rooms.|
+------------------+-----------------+-------------+
| Blocks | 12,165 | 27,523 |
| Tenement Houses | 2,507 | 6,068 |
| Cottage flats | 2,004 | 5,747 |
| Cottages | 3,830 | 17,611 |
+------------------+-----------------+-------------+
| Total | 20,506 | 56,949 |
+------------------+-----------------+-------------+

It appears from these figures that municipal building has provided for
a smaller number of persons in the whole of the United Kingdom than
private enterprise in London alone. The principal towns which have
erected dwellings in blocks are London (7786), Glasgow (2300),
Edinburgh (596), Liverpool (501), Dublin (460) and Manchester (420).
The great majority of such dwellings contain either two or three
rooms. Tenement houses have been built in Liverpool (1424), Manchester
(308), Sheffield (192), Aberdeen (128), and in seven other towns on a
small scale. Such tenements are generally somewhat larger than those
built in blocks; the proportion of three- and four-roomed dwellings is
higher and only a small number consist of a single room. Cottage flats
have been built in Dublin (528), West Ham (401), Battersea (320),
Plymouth (238), East Ham (212), and on a small scale in Liverpool,
Birmingham, Newcastle and seven other places. The majority of the
cottage flats contain three or more rooms, a considerable proportion
have four rooms. Cottages have been built in 67 places, chiefly small
towns and suburban districts. Of the large towns which have adopted
this class of dwellings Salford stands first with 633 cottages; three
London boroughs, all on the south side of the Thames, have built 234;
Manchester has 228, Sheffield 173, Huddersfield 157, Birmingham 103.
The number of rooms in municipal cottages ranges from three to eight,
but the great majority of these dwellings have four or five rooms.

Some further details of municipal housing in particular towns are of
interest. In London, the work of the London County Council down to
March 31, 1908, not including three lodging-homes containing 1845
cubicles, is given in the official volume of London Statistics,
published by the Council, as follows:--

_Buildings Erected and in Course of Erection._

+----------+--------+--------------+----------------+
| No. of | No. of | Cost of Land | No. of Persons |
|Dwellings.| Rooms. | and Building.| in Occupation. |
+----------+--------+--------------+----------------+
| 8,373 | 22,939 | L2,438,263 | 26,687 |
+----------+--------+--------------+----------------+

With regard to the cost, it is to be noted that the actual cost of the
land purchased for improvement schemes was very much greater than that
stated, having been written down to an arbitrary figure called
"housing valuation." The financial accounts of L.C.C. dwellings for
the year ending March 31, 1908, are thus summarized:--

_London County Council Dwellings, Accounts 1907-1908._

+--------+--------------+-------------+-----------+--------+
| Gross |Deductions for| |Expenditure| Net |
| Rental.| Empties, &c. |Net Receipts.| including |Returns.|
| | | | Interest. | |
+--------+--------------+-------------+-----------+--------+
|L180,169| L19,455 | L160,714 | L157,141 | L3,573 |
+--------+--------------+-------------+-----------+--------+

It appears from this that if the actual commercial cost of the land
were taken the housing of the Council would be run at a considerable
annual loss. The occupations of the tenants are stated in the
following proportions: labourers 789, clerks 312, policemen 251, shop
assistants 202, warehousemen 183, printers 182, charwomen 182, tailors
155, cabinetmakers 146, canvassers 122, cigarette makers 118, widows
116, tram drivers 110, postmen 107, packers 97, engineers 87,
dressmakers 41, coachmen 31, motormen 26, milliners 19. These
proportional figures show that though a considerable number of
labourers have been housed, the great majority of the occupants of
London municipal dwellings are of a superior class. The mean weekly
rent in London County Council dwellings is 2s. 10(1/2)d. per room
against 2s. 4d. in dwellings erected by other agencies. The most
important feature of the County Council's policy in recent years has
been the acquisition of suburban sites for the erection of cottages.
There are four such sites, two on the south, one on the north and one
on the west side of London; the total area is 349 acres, and the total
accommodation contemplated is for 66,000 persons at an estimated cost
of L3,105,840; the present accommodation is for about 8000. In
addition to the housing provided by the County Council, fourteen
London Borough Councils and the City Corporation had at the beginning
of 1909 erected or adapted 3136 dwellings containing 7999 rooms.

In Liverpool, down to 1907, about L920,000 had been spent in clearing
insanitary areas and building new dwellings; the demolition of about
8000 houses and purchase of land cost about L500,000; and the erection
of 2046 dwellings, containing 4961 rooms, cost about L350,000. The
size of the dwellings and the number of each class are: 1 room, 193; 2
rooms, 965; 3 rooms, 719; 4 rooms, 167. The great majority are in
tenement houses of three storeys. The mean weekly rent is 1s. 6(1/2)d.
per room, but a large number are let at less. The net return on the
total outlay is just over 1%, on the building outlay it is 2(2/3)%.
The principal classes of persons occupying the dwellings are labourers
675, carters 120, charwomen 103, firemen 93, porters 80, hawkers 64,
sailors 45, scavengers 40. These all belong to the poorest classes,
living by casual or irregular work. Liverpool has, in fact, succeeded
more than any other town in providing municipal dwellings in which the
really poor can afford to live.

In Manchester 956 dwellings have been built at a total cost for
building and improvement of L451,932; of the whole number 420 are in
blocks, 308 in tenement houses and 228 in cottages. The rents are much
higher than in Liverpool; in the tenement houses the mean weekly rent
is about 6d. per room more than in Liverpool. The gross profit on the
block dwellings is 1(1/3)% on the capital outlay, on the tenement
houses 3%, on the cottages 2(2/3)%. "The total loss during the last
seven to ten years, including loan charges, has amounted to about
L54,240" (Thompson).

In Glasgow the corporation has built under improvement schemes 2280
new dwellings containing 4013 rooms and 241 shops. The dwellings,
which are all in blocks and centrally situated, are occupied chiefly
by artisans; only 28% have been reserved for the poorest class of
tenants. The total amount taken from the rates on this account in 30
years is L600,000. Dwellings valued at L400,000 for building and
L300,000 for land give a net return of 3.06% on outlay; dwellings
valued at L280,000 for land and building return 3.03% on outlay;
leaving the sinking fund charges to be defrayed out of rates.

In Edinburgh insanitary areas have been bought for L107,023 and new
dwellings containing 1032 rooms have been built for L87,970. Nearly
all the dwellings are of one or two rooms only. The rents charged
average about 2s. a week per room; actual rents received average 1s.
4d. per room and they have to be subsidized out of the rates to the
extent of 2s. 3d. per room to meet the cost of site.

In Dublin provision has been or was in 1909 shortly to be made for
housing 5394 families or 19,000 persons; of which 1041 families, or
about one-fifth, are housed by the Corporation, the rest by companies
and private persons. Altogether it was estimated that L500,000 would
be spent under the act of 1890. Fifteen streets, containing 1665
houses, have been declared unhealthy areas by the medical officer, and
between 1879 and 1909 more than 3000 houses were closed as unfit for
habitation.

_Co-operative Building._--Municipal and philanthropic housing by no
means exhaust the efforts that have been made to provide working-class
dwellings outside the ordinary building market. Their special function
has been to substitute better dwellings for pre-existing bad ones,
which is the most costly and difficult, as well as the most urgent,
part of the problem in old towns. But in the provision of new
dwellings alone they have been far surpassed by organized self-help in
different forms. Down to 1906 there had been built 46,707 houses by
413 co-operative societies at a cost of nearly L10,000,000. They are
most numerous in the manufacturing towns and particularly in the
north-western district of England. Of the whole number 8530 were owned
by the societies which built them; 5577 had been sold to members, and
32,600 had been built by members on money lent by the societies. These
figures do not include the particular form of co-operative building
known as co-partnership housing, which will be mentioned later on, or
the operations of the so-called building societies, which are really
companies lending money to persons on mortgage for the purpose of
building. The difference between them and the co-operative societies
which do the same thing is that the latter retain the element of
co-operation by lending only to their own members, whereas the
building societies deal in the open market. Their operations are on an
immense scale; at the end of 1908 the invested funds of the registered
building societies exceeded L72,000,000. An agency working on this
scale, which far exceeds the operations of all the others put
together, is obviously an important factor in housing. The number of
houses built must help to relieve congestion, and since they are built
to suit the owners or tenants they cannot be of the worst class. They
also represent a form of thrift, and deserve notice on that account.

The Small Dwellings Acquisition Act of 1899, which has not previously
been mentioned, was intended to facilitate the building or purchase of
small houses by their tenants by means of loans advanced by local
authorities. Down to 1906 about L82,000 had been so advanced by 5
county boroughs, 17 urban councils and 1 rural district council.

_Housing by Employers._--No comprehensive information is available on
this head, but it has not been an important factor in towns, being
chiefly confined to agricultural, mining and suburban manufacturing
districts. The former two belong to the subject of Rural Housing,
which is separately discussed below; the third has an interest of its
own on account of its connexion with "model settlements." The building
of houses for their workpeople by industrial employers has never been
widely adopted in this country, but it has attracted considerable
attention at two different periods. Sir Titus Salt was a pioneer in
this direction, when he built his woollen mills at Saltaire, on the
outskirts of Bradford, and housed his workpeople on the spot. That
plan was maintained by his successors, who still own some 900
excellent and cheap cottages, and was adopted by a few other
manufacturers in the same neighbourhood. Saltaire was a model
settlement with many institutions for the benefit of the mill-hands,
and as such it attracted much attention; but the example was not
generally followed, and the interest lapsed. Recently it has been
revived by the model settlements at Port Sunlight, near Liverpool,
started about 1888, Bournville near Birmingham (1895), and Earswick,
near York (1904), which are of a much more elaborate character.
Elsewhere, employers setting down works in some new locality where no
provision existed, have had to build houses for their workmen; but
they have done so in a plain way, and this sort of housing has not
assumed large proportions.

_Conditions in 1909._--It has been said above that great improvements have been effected, and of that there is no doubt at all. Both quantity and quality are more satisfactory than they were, though both are still defective. The conditions vary greatly in different places, and no general indictment can be sustained. The common practice of citing some exceptionally bad cases, and by tacit inference generalizing from them to the whole country, is in nothing more misleading than in the matter of housing. Local differences are due to several causes--age, population, occupations and means of the people, public opinion and municipal energy. The first three chiefly determine the difficulty and extent of the problem, the last two influence its treatment. The difficulty is greatest in towns which are old, have large populations and a high percentage of poor. Such pre-eminently are the large seaports, where much casual labour is employed. London, Liverpool, Glasgow, the Tyne, Hull, Sunderland are examples. Old inland towns having a large trading as well as an industrial element present the same features. Such are Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford. In all these, and some others like them, the past has left a heavy legacy of bad housing by malconstruction and dilapidation, which has been increased by growth of population and overcrowding. They have attacked it with varying degrees of energy according to the prevalent local spirit and with varying results.

_Overcrowding._--The one condition which permits of precise and comprehensive statement is overcrowding. A standard has been officially adopted in England based on the number of persons to a room in each dwelling; and the facts in relation to this standard are embodied in the census returns. It is a much better criterion than that of "density" or number of persons per acre, which is very deceptive; for an apparently low density may conceal much overcrowding within walls and an apparently high one may be comparatively guiltless. The room-density is the important thing in actual life. Some light is also thrown on this question by the number of rooms contained in each dwelling, and that is also given in the census. The standard of overcrowding is more than two persons to a room. In 1901 there were in England and Wales 2,667,506 persons or 8.2% of the population living in a state of overcrowding according to this definition. Their distribution is extremely irregular and capricious. In rural districts the proportion was only 5.8%, in urban districts 8.9%; but these summary figures give no idea of the actual state of things in different localities. In both rural districts and in towns the proportion of overcrowding varies in different localities from less than 1% to over 30% of the population. The towns are the most important and we shall confine attention chiefly to them. A list of 84 having a population of 50,000 and upwards, exclusive of London, is given by Mr Dewsnup. The overcrowding ranges from 34.54% in Gateshead and 32.42% in South Shields to 0.97% in Northampton and 0.62% in Bournemouth. Of the whole number exactly one-half have less than 5%; 15 have less than 2% and 22 have 10% or more. Neither size nor character has much to do with the variation. Bournemouth, at the bottom of the list with 0.62%, is a residential place and health resort with a population of about 50,000; so is Tynemouth, which is nearly at the top, with 30.71%. The two largest towns, Liverpool and Manchester, are 26th and 32nd on the list, with only 7.94% and 6.28% respectively, or considerably less than the average; and on the other hand none of the first 17 towns with the highest proportion of overcrowding are of the largest size. Again, with regard to character, Leicester and Northampton, which are almost at the bottom of the list, with 1.04% and 0.97% respectively, are both purely industrial towns. The most striking facts are that the six towns, which alone have more than 20% of overcrowding, namely Gateshead (34.5), South Shields (32.4), Tynemouth (30.7), Newcastle (30.4), Sunderland (30.10), Plymouth (20.1) are all old seaports, that four of them at the head of the list are on the Tyne and the fifth on the Wear. This points strongly to special local conditions and it is borne out by the facts with regard to rural districts. Northumberland and Durham show a great excess of overcrowding over other counties; and some of their rural districts even surpass any of the towns. The highest of all is the district of Tynemouth, with 38.18% of overcrowding. The explanation lies in a special combination of large families and small houses prevalent in this area. All the rural districts are seats of coal-mining, and miners are the most prolific section of the population. They also live in small houses of a traditional and antiquated character, often of one storey only or built back to back. Many are built by colliery proprietors. Large families and small houses also prevail in the towns. Some of them contain coal-pits and the rest of their industrial population is engaged chiefly in engineering and shipbuilding works, occupations also usually associated with a high birth-rate. The men live as near their work as possible and the practice of living in flats or occupying part of a house prevails extensively.

In London the number of persons living in overcrowded conditions in 1901 was 726,096 or 16.0% of the population. The proportion varied from 2.6% in Lewisham to 35.2% in Finsbury, but in 23 out of the 29 boroughs into which the county is divided it exceeded the urban mean for the whole country, and in 9 boroughs having an aggregate population of 1,430,000 it was more than double the mean. Conditions in London are evidently untypical of English towns.

In the light of the census figures it is clear that no large proportion of the English industrial population is living under conditions of serious overcrowding, outside the special districts mentioned and that the expression "house famine" cannot be properly applied to England or English towns in general. In the House of Commons, on the 16th of August 1909, the president of the Local Government Board, Mr John Burns, gave a list of the number of unoccupied houses and tenements in each of the London boroughs and in the eight largest provincial towns, including Glasgow; the total was 104,107. By a further analysis of the census returns Mr Dewsnup shows that a great deal of the overcrowding is of a comparatively mild character and that it is due to a relatively small excess of population. Bradford, for instance, is credited with 40,896 overcrowded persons, representing the high percentage of 14.61 of the population; but in the case of nearly 20,000 the excess over the standard is very slight, and the proportion of gross overcrowding comes down to 7.55%. Moreover, this serious overcrowding is produced by no more than 2.79 of the population, so that its cure presents no insuperable difficulty. The argument is confirmed by the very substantial diminution which actually took place between 1891 and 1901. The facts are so striking that they deserve to be presented in tabular form:--

_Percentage of Population Overcrowded._

+------------------+--------+--------+
| | 1891 | 1901 |
+------------------+--------+--------+
| England and Wales| 11.23 | 8.20 |
| | | |
| Gateshead | 40.78 | 34.54 |
| Newcastle | 35.08 | 30.47 |
| Sunderland | 32.85 | 30.10 |
| Plymouth | 26.27 | 20.19 |
| Halifax | 21.31 | 14.49 |
| Bradford | 20.61 | 14.61 |
| Huddersfield | 19.89 | 12.88 |
| London | 19.70 | 16.01 |
| Leeds | 16.46 | 10.08 |
| St Helens | 15.72 | 10.86 |
| Birmingham | 14.27 | 10.32 |
| Burnley | 12.74 | 7.14 |
| Sheffield | 11.58 | 9.50 |
| Bolton | 11.22 | 6.50 |
| Liverpool | 10.96 | 7.94 |
| Oldham | 10.13 | 7.42 |
| Salford | 9.39 | 7.54 |
| West Ham | 9.34 | 9.27 |
| Wolverhampton | 9.31 | 4.67 |
| Swansea | 9.25 | 5.57 |
| Stockport | 8.50 | 4.98 |
| Manchester | 8.25 | 6.28 |
| Bristol | 8.03 | 3.55 |
| Hull | 7.86 | 6.12 |
| Blackburn | 7.05 | 3.92 |
| Birkenhead | 6.80 | 5.02 |
| Norwich | 4.91 | 3.34 |
| Brighton | 4.56 | 3.07 |
| Cardiff | 4.31 | 2.92 |
| Preston | 4.13 | 2.64 |
| Nottingham | 3.62 | 3.65 |
| Croydon | 2.76 | 2.74 |
| Derby | 2.69 | 1.18 |
| Leicester | 2.22 | 1.04 |
| Portsmouth | 1.74 | 1.19 |
+------------------+--------+--------+

To what is this remarkable movement due? It is far too general to be attributed to the operation of the Housing Acts; for, though they have helped in some cases, a great diminution has occurred in many places in which no use has been made of them. Towns of all kinds and in all parts of the country exhibit the same movement in some degree; those which had little and those which had much overcrowding, the worst and the best. In London the percentage fell by 3.7, and the number of persons overcrowded was reduced by 103,669 in spite of an increase of population of 324,798. In Gateshead a fall of 6.2%, in Newcastle one of 4.6% took place; while at the other end of the scale Leicester and Derby reduced their already very low proportions by more than one-half. Nottingham is the only exception in the whole list. And in 28 out of the 35 towns the decrease of overcrowding was absolute as well as relative in spite of a large increase of population. London has been cited. The other large towns may be tabulated with it, thus:--

+------------+------------+------------+
| |Increase of | Decrease of|
| Town. | Population.| Overcrowded|
| | | Persons. |
+------------+------------+------------+
| London | 324,898 | 103,669 |
| Liverpool | 166,978 | 2,381 |
| Manchester | 38,504 | 7,545 |
| Birmingham | 44,091 | 14,290 |
| Leeds | 61,463 | 17,252 |
| Sheffield | 56,550 | 1,388 |
| Bristol | 107,367 | 6,105 |
| Bradford | 63,406 | 3,696 |
+------------+------------+------------+

The very divergencies make the uniform diminution of overcrowding the more remarkable. The large increase of population in Liverpool and Bristol no doubt means extension of boundaries, which might have the effect of reducing the proportions of overcrowding, but it cannot account for the actual decrease of overcrowded persons. The change seems to be due to three factors all of which have been in general operation though in varying degrees. They are (1) the centrifugal movement promoted by improved locomotive facilities, (2) the declining birth-rate, (3) public health administration. (1) The first is the most important and the chief element has been tramways, of which a great extension accompanied by electrification took place in the decade. Thus the process of urbanization has been modified by one of suburbanization. Bristol is a prominent case; its overcrowding has been reduced by more than one-half without any large and costly municipal interference, mainly through the operation of ordinary economic forces. Tramways have made the outskirts accessible and builders have utilized the opportunity. They have built good houses, too, under supervision, and Bristol, though an old seaport and industrial town with much poverty, has the lowest general death-rate and the lowest infantile death-rate of all the great towns. (2) The birth-rate and the size of families are conditions which affect overcrowding in a very marked degree, though no attention is paid to them in that connexion. The case of the mining districts and the towns on the Tyne has been mentioned above; the same thing is seen in London, where all the most overcrowded districts (Finsbury, Stepney, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green) have high birth-rates, ranging from 31.3 to 36.4 per 1000 in 1902-1906. The necessity imposed on poor parents of putting several children into a cheap and therefore small dwelling accounts for a large proportion of overcrowding, which automatically diminishes with a falling birth-rate. The ultimate advantage of this method of reducing overcrowding is a question on which opinions may differ, but there is no doubt about the fact. (3) Public health administration is the third general cause; it attracts no notice and works very gradually, but it does work. The last annual report (for 1907) of the medical officer to the London County Council says of overcrowding: "There is reason for thinking that in recent years greater attention has been paid by sanitary authorities to the abatement of the nuisance, and Dr Newman states that in Finsbury there has been an enormous reduction in overcrowding, the reduction having been effected mainly in the years 1901-1905." The medical officers of the metropolitan boroughs reported in 1907 2613 dwellings overcrowded in 23 boroughs and 3216 such dwellings remedied in 27 boroughs. It should not be forgotten that a good deal of overcrowding is voluntary. Families which have not enough room for their own members nevertheless take in lodgers; and in some places, of which London is the most conspicuous but not the only example, foreigners herd together thickly in a very small space.

The improvement shown by the statistics of overcrowding is confirmed by those relating to the size of dwellings. Between 1891 and 1901 the percentage of the population living in very small dwellings appreciably diminished thus--in 1-roomed dwellings, from 2.2 to 1.6%; in 2-roomed dwellings, from 8.3 to 6.6%; in 3-roomed dwellings, from 11.1 to 9.8%; while the proportion living in dwellings of 5 rooms and upwards increased from 54.9 to 60.1%. This again is referable to the suburban movement and a higher standard of requirements. Six-roomed houses with a bathroom tend to replace the old four-roomed type. The general report accompanying the census says: "However the tenement figures for England and Wales are compared it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the comparison affords satisfactory evidence of distinct improvement in the housing of the people during the ten years 1891-1901." In short, the problem of quantity is only acute in a few places and steadily becoming less so.

The foregoing facts apply only to England and Wales. In Scotland the
state of things is much less satisfactory. No statistics of
overcrowding are available, but the following comparative table shows
how different the housing conditions are in the two countries:--

_Size of Dwellings, England and Scotland, 1901._

+-----------------+-------------------------+
| |Percentage of Population.|
| Dwelling. +------------+------------+
| | England. | Scotland. |
+-----------------+------------+------------+
| 1 room | 1.6 | 11.1 |
| 2 rooms | 6.6 | 39.5 |
| 3 rooms | 9.8 | 19.9 |
| 4 rooms | 21.9 | 9.1 |
| 5 rooms and over| 60.1 | 20.4 |
+-----------------+------------+------------+

Over 50% of the population of Scotland live in tenements of one or two
rooms; only 8.2% in England. A comparison of the largest towns in the
two countries gives the following result:--

_Percentage of Population._

+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| Scotland. | England. |
+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+--------+
| Town. |1 Room.|2 Rooms.| Town. |1 Room.|2 Rooms.|
+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+--------+
| Glasgow | 16.2 | 38.9 | London | 6.7 | 15.5 |
| Edinburgh | 8.9 | 32.4 | Liverpool | 2.7 | 5.9 |
| Dundee | 11.3 | 51.7 | Manchester| 0.8 | 4.01 |
| Aberdeen | 6.1 | 33.2 | Birmingham| 0.3 | 2.4 |
| Greenock | 11.3 | 47.6 | Sheffield | 0.4 | 4.0 |
| Kilmarnock| 18.9 | 43.3 | Bristol | 1.6 | 5.7 |
+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+--------+
| Mean | 12.7 | 42.4 | Mean | 1.8 | 6.7 |
+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+--------+

The conditions in Scottish towns where very tall tenement houses are
common, resemble those in other countries, in which overcrowding is
far greater than in England. All these matters are comparative, and
the superiority of conditions in England ought to be recognized. Yet,
in Scotland, too, great improvements have been effected. In 1861 there
were 25,959 houses without windows; in 1901 only 130. These facts
throw light on the long standing of the housing question, the change
of standard and the improvement effected.

In Ireland there is more overcrowding than in England, though probably
less than in Scotland, with the possible exception of Dublin, which
has a larger proportion of one-roomed dwellings than any Scottish
town, namely, 24.7%. The percentage of population living in
overcrowded conditions in the principal towns is--Dublin 40.6,
Limerick 31.7, Cork 23.4, Waterford 20.6, Londonderry 16.7, Belfast
8.2.

_Sanitary Conditions._--With regard to the quality of existing housing reference has already been made to the effect of the Public Health Acts and the general improvement in sanitation. The only numerical measure is afforded by the death-rates, which have fallen in England from 20.9 per 1000 in 1871-1875 to 15.4 per 1000 in 1903-1907 and in the United Kingdom from 21.3 to 15.7 per 1000 in the same period. The condition of the dwelling must be credited with a considerable share in this fall. There have, in fact, been great changes and all in the direction of improvement. The rise and development of sanitation, of house and main drainage and sewage disposal, the purification of water and provision of a constant service in the house, the removal of refuse, the segregation of infectious illness, sanitary inspection--all these, apart from the demolition of the worst housing and the provision of better, have raised the general healthiness of the dwellings of the people. In face of these facts and of the vital statistics, to say that the people are physically deteriorating through the influence of bad housing is to talk obvious nonsense, for all conditions have been improving for more than a generation. If physical deterioration is going on, of which there is no proof, either it is not caused by bad housing or there is less than there was. Deterioration may be caused by the continued process of urbanization and the congregating of an ever larger proportion of the population in towns; but that is a different question. If the town has any injurious influence it is not due to the sanitary condition of the houses, which is in general superior to that of houses in the country, but to the habits and occupations of the people or to the atmosphere and the mere aggregation. But much misapprehension prevails with regard to towns. The most distinctive and the most valuable feature of English housing is the general predominance of the small house or cottage occupied by a single family. Only in London and a few other towns do blocks of large tenement houses of the continental type exist, and even there they are comparatively few. In England and Wales 84% of the population live in dwellings of 4 rooms and upwards, which means broadly separate houses. Now the prevalence of small houses involves spreading out and the covering of much ground with many little streets, which produce a monotonous effect; a smoky atmosphere makes them grimy and dull skies contribute to the general dinginess. The whole presents to the eye a vast area of dreary meanness and monotony. Thus the best feature of English national housing turns to its apparent disadvantage and the impression is gained by superficial observers that the bulk of our working-class populations lives in "slums." The word "slum" has no precise meaning, but if it implies serious sanitary defects it is not applicable to most of our town housing. There are real slums still, but the bulk of the working class population do not live in them; they live in small houses, often of a mean and dingy exterior but in essential respects more sanitary than the large and often handsome blocks to be seen in foreign towns, which are not put down as slums because they do not look dirty. A smoky atmosphere is injurious to health, but it must be distinguished from defects of housing. Ideal houses in a smoky place soon look bad; inferior ones in a clean air look brighter and deceive the eye. The worst of the old housing has disappeared; the filthy, dilapidated, airless and sunless rookeries--the real slums--and the underground dwellings have been swept away in most cases, and what remains of them is not so bad as what has gone. But reform has been very regularly applied. Some towns have done much, others little. The large towns, in which the evil was most intense and most conspicuous in bulk, have as a class done far more than smaller ones in which the need perhaps was less great, but in which also a less healthy public spirit prevailed. The worst housing conditions to-day are probably to be found in old towns of small and medium size, in which the ratepayers have a great disinclination to spend money on anything, and the control of local affairs is apt to be in the hands of the owners of the most insanitary property. Nor is this state of things altogether confined to old places. Some of recent growth have been allowed, for the same reason, to spring up and develop without any regard to sanitary principles or the requirements of public health. There is therefore abundant scope for further reform and in not a few cases urgent need of it. On the other hand, we have a number of towns, particularly manufacturing towns, both large and small in the midlands and the north of England, which have already reached a good general standard of housing in all essential requirements, and only need the regular and steady exercise of vigilance by the public health service to remove such defects as still remain or may reveal themselves with the lapse of time.

_Rents._--Rent is a matter of great importance from every point of
view, and that is now being realized. A quantity of official
information on the subject has been collected and made available by an
elaborate inquiry ordered by the Board of Trade in 1905 and published
in 1908 (Cd. 3864). It relates to working class dwellings in the
principal industrial towns in the United Kingdom, 94 in all: namely,
77 in England and Wales, 11 in Scotland and 6 in Ireland. The
following tables give in a condensed form the chief statistical
results obtained in October 1905:--

_Predominant Range of Weekly Rents._

+----------+--------------------------+------------+------------+
| | England and Wales. | | |
| +-------------+------------+ Scotland. | Ireland. |
| | London. | Provincial | | |
| | | towns | | |
+----------+-------------+------------+------------+------------+
| One room | .. | .. | 2/- to 2/6 | 1/6 to 2/6 |
| Two rooms| 4/6 to 7/6 | 3/- to 3/6 | 3/10 to 4/3| 2/6 to 3/6 |
| Three " | 6/- to 9/- | 3/9 to 4/6 | 5/2 to 6/5 | 4/- to 5/- |
| Four " | 7/6 to 10/6 | 4/6 to 5/6 | .. | 5/6 to 6/9 |
| Five " | 9/- to 13/- | 5/6 to 6/6 | .. | .. |
| Six " | 10/6 to 15/6| 6/6 to 7/9 | .. | .. |
+----------+-------------+------------+------------+------------+

Rents are lowest in Ireland and next lowest in English provincial
towns, considerably higher in Scotland and highest of all in London,
for which further special details are given. It is divided into three
zones (1) central, (2) middle, (3) outer, which have the following
mean weekly rents:--

_London Mean Weekly Rents._

+----------+---------------------------+
| | Zone. |
| +---------+--------+--------+
| | Central.| Middle.| Outer. |
+----------+---------+--------+--------+
| One room | 4/6 | 3/9 | .. |
| Two rooms| 7/- | 6/- | .. |
| Three " | 8/9 | 7/6 | 6/6 |
| Four " | .. | 9/- | 7/9 |
| Five " | .. | 11/- | 9/6 |
| Six " | .. | 13/- | 11/- |
+----------+---------+--------+--------+

In central London--which extends to Stepney in the East, Lambeth m the
South, Islington in the North, and includes Westminster, Holborn,
Finsbury, Marylebone, Shoreditch, most of Bethnal Green, Southwark and
Bermondsey--the rent of a single room may be as high as 6s. or even
6s. 6d. (Holborn) a week. It is here that overcrowding is greatest,
and block-tenements, philanthropic and municipal, most numerous. The
rentals of the block dwellings have not been taken into account in the
foregoing official statistics; they range as follows: 1 room, 2s. 6d.
to 5s.; 2 rooms, 5s. to 8s.; three rooms, 6s. 6d. to 11s. The lowest
rent for which a single room can be obtained in this area is 2s. 6d. a
week. In no English town are rents nearly so high as in London. If 100
is taken as the index number for rent in London the nearest towns to
it (Croydon and Plymouth) only reach 81, and one town on the list
(Macclesfield) is as low as 32. The index number of twenty-one towns
out of the whole is 50 or under, and these include a number of
important industrial centres--Hull, Leicester, Blackburn, Northampton,
Warrington, Coventry, Crewe and others. The index numbers of the great
towns are: Liverpool 65, Manchester and Salford 62, Birmingham 59,
Leeds 56, Sheffield 55, Bristol 53, Bradford 59, Hull 48; that is to
say the level of rents in these towns is little more than half that in
London. This is one more proof of the untypical character of London,
and of the fallacy of generalizing from it to the rest of the country.
Even in the overcrowded towns on Tyneside rents do not run to
three-fourths of the London level. When the towns are divided into
geographical groups the index numbers run thus: London 100, Northern
Counties 62, Yorkshire 56, Lancashire and Cheshire 54, Midlands 51,
Eastern Counties 50, Southern Counties 61, Wales and Monmouth 60.
Rents are always highest in capitals, and Edinburgh complies with the
rule; but it is very slightly in advance of Glasgow, and in Scotland
generally the range is much smaller than in England. Dublin, on the
other hand, is differentiated from the other Irish towns as widely as
London from English ones.

A general and progressive rise in rents has been taking place for many
years. The following index numbers for the great towns are given in
the second series of memoranda published by the Board of Trade in 1904
(Cd. 1761):--

_Relative Working-Class Rents._

1880 86.6 | 1890 89.9
1885 90.1 | 1900 100.0
1895 96.3 |

The tendency to rise is attributable to increased cost of labour, due
to higher wages and less work, increased cost of materials and higher
rates. Weekly working-class rents generally include rates which are
paid by the landlord. Housing reform has contributed to the rise, both
directly and through the rates, on which it has thrown a heavy burden
in various ways. When slums are cleared away and replaced by superior
dwellings the new rents are generally higher than the old and this
fact has proved a great difficulty. Most of the improved housing is
beyond the means of those who need it most, and they seek other
quarters resembling the old ones as nearly as possible. The example of
Liverpool, which has the largest proportion of casual and ill-paid
labour of all the great towns, and has been the most successful in
providing new dwellings of a fair quality, centrally situated and not
in blocks, at really low rates, shows that the problem is not
insoluble; but as a rule too little attention is paid to the question
of rent in housing reform, especially in building undertaken by
municipalities. It is not ignored, but the importance attached to it
by the poor is not realized. To them it is the first consideration
after four walls, a roof and a fire-place; and 6d. a week makes a vast
difference in their calculations. Reform which aims at raising the
lowest classes of tenants by improving their dwellings defeats itself
when it drives them away.

_Rural Housing._--Little has hitherto been said about rural housing. It is of less importance than urban housing because it concerns a much smaller proportion of the population, and because in rural life the influence of inferior housing on health is offset by other conditions; but it has recently attracted much attention and was made the subject of inquiry by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1906. The report laid stress chiefly on the inaction of local rural authorities under the Public Health and Housing Acts, and on various obstacles in the way of improving existing houses and of providing more and better ones at rents which agricultural labourers can afford to pay. The available facts with regard to rural housing are scrappy and unsatisfactory. The word "rural" has no precise meaning and it includes several very different sections of the population; for instance, the inhabitants of suburbs, mining villages and mill villages as well as the real agricultural population. Complaint is made of both the quantity and the quality of rural housing. With regard to quantity it is said that in spite of migration to the towns there is a dearth of cottages through dilapidation and demolition without rebuilding. That may happen in particular localities, but there is no evidence to support a general allegation. Inquiries issued by the Board of Trade to agricultural correspondents brought the following replies: insufficient 56, sufficient 111, more than sufficient 32. Similar inquiries of land agents and owners resulted thus: insufficient 9, sufficient 11, more than sufficient 4, variable 6. From which it appears that insufficiency exists but is not general. The official evidence with regard to overcrowding is that it is much less acute than in the towns. The proportion of the rural population in England living in overcrowded conditions in 1901 was 5.8%; if the rural mining districts, the exceptional overcrowding of which has been noted above, be eliminated, the rest cannot be very bad. Moreover, the percentage has appreciably diminished; in 1891 it was 8.46. The complaint of bad quality is better founded. Some landowners take great pride in the state of their property, and excellent cottages may be found in model villages and elsewhere in many parts of the country; but much rural housing is of an extremely insanitary character. A good deal of evidence on this head has of late years been published In the reports of medical inspectors to the Local Government Board. And local authorities are very reluctant to set the law in motion against insanitary dwellings. On the other hand, they have in some cases hindered and prevented building by too rigid insistence on by-laws, framed with a view to urban housing and quite unsuited to rural conditions. A few rural authorities have taken action with regard to building schemes under Part III. of the Housing Act. A list of 31 in 17 counties is given in "Housing up to Date"; 13 applications were refused and 13 granted by the respective county councils and others were dropped. Details are given by the same authority of 54 houses built by 17 rural district councils. Public action may thus be said to amount to nothing at all. Landowners, however, have borrowed under the Improvements of Lands Acts upwards of L1,250,000 for building labourers' cottages; and this is probably only a fraction of the amount spent privately.

In Ireland a special condition of affairs exists. A series of about a dozen acts, dating from 1881 and culminating in the Labourers (Ireland) Act of 1906, have been passed for promoting the provision of labourers' cottages; and under them 20,634 cottages had been built and some thousands more authorized previous to the act of 1906, which extended the pre-existing facilities. The principle is that of the English Housing Acts applied to rural districts, but the procedure is simpler and quicker. The law provides that a representation may be made to the local authority by three ratepayers or resident labourers that "the existing house accommodation for agricultural labourers and their families is deficient having regard to the ordinary requirements of the district, or is unfit for human habitation owing to dilapidation, want of air, light, ventilation or other convenience or to any other sanitary defects," whereupon the local authority shall make an improvement scheme. It may also initiate a scheme without representation, or the Local Government Board may do so in default of the local authority. The scheme is published, an inquiry held, notice given and an order made with very much less delay and expense than under the English law. Land is purchased by agreement, or compulsorily and the money for land and building raised by loan. Loans amounting to about 3(1/2) millions sterling had been raised down to 1906. The great majority of the cottages built are in Munster and Leinster. They must have at least 2 bedrooms and a kitchen, and the habitable rooms must be 8 ft. high. One of the most remarkable features is the low cost--about L150--at which these cottages have been built, including land and the expenses of procedure.

_Recent Developments._--It is clear from a general review of the subject that the problem of housing the working classes in a satisfactory manner has proved more complex than was at one time realized. Experience has falsified hopes and led to a change of attitude. It is seen that there are limits to drastic interference with the normal play of economic forces and to municipal action on a large and ambitious scale. A reaction has set in against it. At the same time the problem is being attacked on other sides and from new points of departure. The tendency now is towards the more effectual application of gradual methods of improvement, the utilization of other means and the exercise of prevention in preference to cure. Under each of these heads certain movements may be noted.