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 rooms | 6/- to 9/- | 3/9 to 4/6 | 5/2 to 6/5 | 4/- to 5/- |
| Four rooms | 7/6 to 10/6 | 4/6 to 5/6 | .. | 5/6 to 6/9 |
| Five rooms | 9/- to 13/– | 5/6 to 6/6 | .. | .. |
| Six rooms | 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:—
| Zone. | |||
| Central. | Middle. | Outer. | |
| One room | 4/6 | 3/9 | .. |
| Two rooms | 7/- | 6/- | .. |
| Three rooms | 8/9 | 7/6 | 6/6 |
| Four rooms | .. | 9/- | 7/9 |
| Five rooms | .. | 11/- | 9/6 |
| Six rooms | .. | 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
