Medical Officer of Health of the Whitechapel District Board of Works. All inspection of Cooper's Court, Whitechapel, had just been made, and he reports that the walls and ceilings of these houses were found in 'such a dirty and dilapidated condition as to render them unfit for habitation; the ventilation was very defective, there being no fittings to the windows to allow of their being opened. The public privies, which are built of wood, were in a dilapidated condition. This court contains 13 houses, in which there are 35 rooms; two of them were indecently occupied, three were overcrowded and indecently occupied; and three were overcrowded. The ground-floor room at No. 6 was indecently occupied and over-crowded. It was occupied by a man, his wife, and seven children, one of whom was a son 15 years of age. This room contains about 630 cubic feet of space, which allows only 70 feet for each.' I may add, that I believe the cubical air-space for each person should be at least five times as much, or about 350 cubic feet.[1]
I have not mentioned in my description of these houses the common lodging-houses. I shall have a little more to say about these by-and-by; but in one respect, namely in cleanliness, they contrast most favourably with the houses surrounding them, because they were placed under police inspection by Lord Shaftesbury's Acts, which secure that they shall be thoroughly cleansed and whitewashed twice a year at certain fixed times. But then many of the structures used as common lodging-houses are such bad and ancient buildings, and they are generally so over-crowded, that it is certainly high time for the Legislature to interfere again.
I do not think that anything can be done with large numbers of the present buildings occupied either as the dwellings of families, or as lodging-houses, but to sweep them away and put up something better in their place. To fortify my case as completely as possible, I must quote one more extract from a Medical Officer's Report.
Dr. Whitmore, the Medical Officer of Health for St. Marylebone, thus describes some tenements in Marylebone Lane. 'One of these contains 19 rooms, which would appear to have been originally constructed with the most especial
- ↑ Mr. Hubbard (M.P. for the City of London) referred in his speech in the debate to this case, pointing out that a landlord who lets a room to a number of persons five times as numerous as it is qualified to hold, doubtless obtains far more than the legitimate rent. The rent paid by the occupants, on the other hand, would suffice to obtain better accommodation if it existed, and to pay a fair profit to the landlord who had provided it.
