shown by the dense population housed on the areas of some prisons, reformatories, and other public institutions This also applies to large blocks of artisans' dwellings, in which the relationship of the houses to each other is immensely improved and the inmates are a picked class.

Overcrowding per Acre.

CHAPTER XV

OVERCROWDING

THERE are two kinds of overcrowding: (1) Too many houses built on any given area of land; (2) too many people living in any one room or house. These are two distinct evils. In London the great evil is overcrowding of poor per room and per house; in Manchester it is overcrowding and bad arrangement of houses on a given area. Both these evils are frequently found in the same town, and both must be attacked if the problem is to be solved.

Taking, first, the overcrowding of houses and areas, we must arrive at some definition which will enable us to understand this sort of overcrowding. We find the true test is to ascertain the number of persons per acre. The late Sir Benjamin Richardson held that no city could be in a properly healthy condition which had more than twenty-five people to the acre. Adopting this as our standard, what is the condition of affairs in some of our cities? Let us take York as our first example. We find that this city has an average of 20-5 persons to the acre, which is a slight improvement on the health standard mentioned, and compares very favourably with Manchester and Birmingham, where the population per acre is 42.0 and 41.1 respectively. But these figures are very deceptive. if we forget the fact that they represent an average population distributed over the whole number of acres which form the extent of the city. In York, as in all cities, this population is very unevenly distributed, as a glance at the various districts of the city, given in Mr. Rowntree's book on York, will show. 1

One of these districts, a busy working-class centre, has as many as 349 persons to the acre, another 246, and yet another 237. The same applies to Manchester where in one poor district (Hulme) 141 persons live on each acre, whilst the average for Rusholme, a wealthy suburb, stands at only 15 per acre. 2

In the metropolis we find such districts as Shoreditch and Paddington with 180-2 and 106.1 persons to the acre

1 Poverty: a Study of Town Life, Chap. VI.

2

Housing Conditions in Manchester and Salford, p. 17.

respectively, whilst Lewisham and Hampstead have only 18-1 and 36.1 per acre. Even if we regard the matter from the point of view of the number of houses to the acre it seems to make little difference.

This congestion of people per acre which we find in central districts is unfortunately not illegal, and hence the delay and difficulty in combating the evil. All that we can do is to exert a steady pressure in the right direction, not closing and demolishing insanitary houses without at the same time finding outlets to newer and less crowded districts.

The causes of this form of overcrowding are fairly obvious; there is first the increasingly high price of all urban land, and in many cases its extreme scarcity for building purposes. Side by side with this cause is the supplanting of residential by commercial houses. It has, indeed, been stated that the cause of overcrowding in London is the conflict for room, which is always going on between the inhabited house and the business premises. Commercial forces tend to focus themselves at the business centre of every large city, a fact more noticeable in New York and Chicago, than in London. Hence the "monstrosity" of the "sky-scraper of the "sky-scraper" in American cities. Those who are unfortunately compelled to live in the inner ring of any of our large towns have to pay dearly for the questionable privilege. The burden of rent often falls most heavily on those who can least afford to bear it. Many of the working classes have necessarily to live near their occupation in the heart of the city, and as a result they have to suffer the many disadvantages which such a life entails.

Overcrowding in houses is an evil attended with even worse results than overcrowding on acres.

Overcrowding

in Houses.

The Census Commissioners (1901) defined a house

as

All the space within the external and party walls of a building is to be considered a separate house by however many families living in distinct tenements or apartments it may be occupied.

Here, however, we are helped by some sort of legal definition of overcrowding. "We may be tolerably certain," says the Census Commissioners of 1891, that the rooms in tenements with less than five rooms will not in any but exceptional cases be of large size, that ordinary tenements which have more than two occupants

per room, bedrooms and sitting-rooms included, may safely be considered as unduly overcrowded." That this definition is by no means complete will be understood when we realize that it contains nothing as to the size of a room, a very important consideration. Thus, if a tenement or cottage consists of two bedrooms and a kitchen the census authorities would only describe it as overcrowded if there were more than six persons living in it, no matter how small the rooms.

Again, overcrowding does not exist merely when two or more families inhabit a house originally intended for one. Tenements containing two or three rooms, which may provide sufficient accommodation for three or four people, are often inhabited by six, or ten, or even more, with the two-fold result that there is gross overcrowding, and that there are insufficient sanitary and other conveniences. Thus, in a paper read before the Section of Epidemiology and State Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine, on 24th October, 1913, on Working-class Home Conditions in London, Miss W. McC. Wanklyn said—

What is not at first perceived is that many of our houses only pretend to be houses, and in reality are nothing of the kind. They are tenements. The veneer of house-front conceals that about half of our huge population is housed in tenements, which are not proper tenements at all but only individual rooms.

“The familiar term, ' Houses let in lodgings' simply means that houses designed, constructed, and intended for the use of one family, are actually occupied, without material alteration, as the dwelling-place of two or more separate families."

The late Professor Huxley considered that each adult requires at least 800 cubic feet space for himself, that is, the space represented by a small room of 10 ft. square in area and 8 ft. in height. Many years ago the late Dr. Edmund Parkes showed that, calculated on a physiological basis, the human adult required 1,000 cubic feet space, because, in order to maintain the air in a sufficient state of average purity in a dwelling room it was necessary to supply 3,000 cubic feet of air per hour, and the air in this climate could not be changed more frequently than three times in an hour.

In the model by-laws of the Local Government Board, 400 cubic feet of air space is required for every person over 10 years of age, in any room, not exclusively used as a sleeping apartment, and 200 cubic feet for children under 10 years. In rooms used exclusively for sleeping the amounts are 300 and 150 respectively. But

Army Regulations require 600 cubic feet per head for men in barracks, and the Metropolitan Police require 450 and the Poor Law 500 cubic feet per adult. It has to be remembered that to keep the air pure and uncontaminated a system of ventilation much more perfect than is found even in better-class houses is required; and it is a well-known fact that ventilation is more and more neglected the lower we go down in the social scale.

The census test of overcrowding is, in fact, quite inadequate to measure the full extent of the evil, and there is a great need for the adoption of a more accurate one. Even taking this standard, however, the census authorities find that one-tenth of the total urban population of England and Wales are overcrowded. This means that nearly 3,000,000 are overcrowded. A closer examination of these figures will prove both interesting and instructive.

The Report of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries on the Wages and Conditions of Employment in Agriculture (vol. I, 1919) contains some very interesting information about Housing in Oxfordshire. the housing in Oxfordshire, and in particular gives the results of an inspection of upwards of 1,000 cottages, made with a view to ascertaining the extent and degree of overcrowding.

The conditions of nine districts have been ascertained; in four the supply is said to have been sufficient; in two barely sufficient; in the remaining three insufficient. The investigator found a good many "bad" cottages, i.e., those with one room downstairs and two up. There was also a substantial proportion of cottages with two decent rooms down and two upstairs-the Chipping Norton district, though the supply is said to have been insufficient in 1914, being particularly well favoured so far as the quality of the cottages is concerned.

In some districts many of the cottages are built with good stone walls, 2 ft. thick, and the rooms are frequently 10 ft. by 12 ft., and sometimes much larger; and an instance is given of some very good cottages at Holton with three rooms up and three rooms down, which are let at the very moderate rental of 3s.

The results of the examination of the 1,040 houses are worth recording

76 or 7.3 per cent. had only one bedroom; 604 or 58 per cent. had two bedrooms;