Plymouth. The corporation has bought and cleared an area of 71,760 feet, of which over one-third was thrown into streets and the rest allocated for building new dwellings.

Portsmouth.

An area of 3,136 square yards was cleared at a cost of £4,000, and the site, after rearrangement, was sold for £640, with the stipulation that 12 houses, in accordance with the Borough Surveyor's plans, should be erected.

Salford. In addition to clearing certain areas, 183 unhealthy cottages were closed under a local Act, without any cost to the ratepayers.

Sheffield. In May, 1894, the council obtained a provisional order for acquiring 23,908 square yards of slums at an estimated net cost of £60,000. The area has been divided into four sections to be dealt with gradually.

Southampton.-Schemes have been carried out for clearing certain areas, and erecting a municipal lodging house and artizans' flats.

Stretford. The property on the condemned area has been sold, and is now replaced with modern dwellings.

PART II.-CLEARANCE OF SMALL SLUMS.

Loans for the purposes of Part II have been obtained by the following towns outside London :—

Proceedings have been also taken by 421 authorities for closing 4,478 buildings unfit for human habitation, but of these no less than 2,861 were opened again, while few of the others were demolished. It appears that 37 dwellings were "represented" by householders during the year 190ɔ.

The London County Council have undertaken four schemes under Part II, at Brookes Market (Holborn), Mill Lane (Deptford), Ann Street (Poplar), and Falcon Court (Borough), involving the clearance from 34 acres, 450 one-room, 438 two-room, 369 three-room dwellings, 10 lodging houses, or a total of about 1,750 rooms inhabited by 1,855 persons, at a cost of £69,750; that is about £40 per room, or £38 per head, and £21,460 per acre. Half the net cost will be paid by the respective borough councils.

London Borough Councils.-Twelve schemes under Part II have been undertaken by the local vestries of London (now borough councils) at Green Street and Gun Street (Southwark) Norfolk Square (Islington), Moira Place (Shoreditch), London Terrace (St. George's in the East), Queen Catherine Court (Ratcliffe), King John's Court (Limehouse), Fulford Street and Braddon Street (Rotherhithe), Brantome Place, Prospect Terrace, Chapel Grove, and Eastnor Place (St. Pancras), involving the displacement from eight acres of 4,042 persons, at a cost of £178,728, or £22,216 per acre. In four cases the London County Council contributes one-third, and in the other cases half the cost. Eight local authorities in 1900 closed 133 unhealthy dwellings, apart from improvements.

Manchester.-The area, known as Chip Town, or Chester Street, was represented under Part II in 1891, and the property acquired almost, if not entirely, by private agreement, was demolished and 368 persons displaced, at a cost of £15,141, or £2 13s. 5d. per yard on the area of 5,761 square yards.

Pott Street area, with 127 houses and 299 persons, costing £14,621, or £2 10s. 3d. per square yard on the area of 5,819 square yards, was also acquired.

Harrison Street area cost £5,147 for 79 houses, containing 250 persons, or £1 9s. 11d. per square yard for 3442 square yards. In addition to erecting new buildings, the council have paid the owners of unsanitary back-to-back houses, closed by order of the local authority, a gratuity of £15 for converting back-to-back houses into through-houses by partial demolition.

RE-HOUSING OF PERSONS DISPLACED FROM SLUM AREAS.

It has already been shewn that nearly all local authorities and railway companies are required to provide or secure the provision of a certain number of new dwellings in place of those demolished by them in connection with improvement schemes, whether under the Housing Act or local Acts. These dwellings are supposed to be erected "within the limits of the area or in the vicinity thereof," and they are expected by some people to house the dispossessed slum dwellers. It may be said at once that this latter expectation is never realised, for the following reasons:

D

(1) The slums have always been cleared before the new dwellings have been erected, and in the meantime the tenants have had to find accommodation elsewhere. In London it is now the rule to do the clearance and building at the same time, but the practical difficulty still exists.

(2) Those who are turned out of the slums do not need to live in that particular locality, so they often take up their new abodes far from it. Out of 6,000 persons on the area adjoining the new street from Holborn to the Strand, only 774 belonged to a class whose work rendered residence on the spot a necessity.

(3) The cost of land in central districts is so great that only a small area can be acquired, and this necessitates the erection of block dwellings, so as to get a large number of rooms on the site. The cost of building and maintaining block dwellings, apart altogether from the cost of sites, is very heavy-double that of cottage dwellings-so it is necessary to charge rents which are out of the reach of slum dwellers, or beyond their inclination to pay.

(4) Slum dwelling is a disease, and most of the persons dispossessed resent the regulations with regard to overcrowding, cleanliness, and sanitation which are naturally enforced by the local authority in new dwellings. Thus, even if the new dwellings were let at lower rents, the old residents on the area would be disinclined to go in them.

(5) Owing to the house famine, there is a strong pressure of demand for house accommodation on the part of respectable labourers and artizans, who have as much necessity for a decent home as those in a lower grade.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that in nearly all new dwellings erected under re-housing schemes, the actual tenants are representative of the ordinary working classes of all grades, with only a sprinkling of the former tenants of the slum area. It is plain, however, that where sufficient new accommodation is provided, the net result is the lifting-up one grade of all the persons affected-perhaps, after all, a more common-sense course than suddenly lifting the worst tenants into the best houses. Thus, assuming four grades of houses in a given district-"good," "very fair," "indifferent," and "bad"— if 1,000 new dwellings are erected, 1,000 tenants from one or all of these classes are found moving into them. Even if they all come from the good "houses," it is clear that these are not allowed to remain empty, but are filled by a corresponding migration from dwellings not so good. In this way the 1,000 worst dwellings would ultimately be left empty but for the house famine. As it is, however, the improvement only extends to a lessening of overcrowding corresponding to the 1,000 new dwellings, and thus we see by the census returns there is a steady lessening of overcrowding in the worst kinds of dwellings. A careful examination of the following table will show the great cost, not only for each acre cleared and each person displaced, but also for each person re-housed.

In the case of London the last column, "Cost of Sites," does not indicate the actual cost, but the valuation of the sites for housing purposes, and up to July, 1900, land with a commercial value of £230,000 was written down for housing purposes to £95,000.

In the case of Shoreditch, the Vestry erected the dwellings.

*Net Cost, £158,045. || 1,500 on Millbank Estate. § Under Part III.

CHAPTER VII.

WORKMEN'S DWELLINGS PROVIDED BY LOCAL

AUTHORITIES.

The workmen's dwellings built by local authorities may be divided broadly into two groups—

(1) In connection with the various clearances mentioned in Chapter VI, it has been the practice to require new dwellings to be erected to house at least a part of the displaced population, on or near the area. Such has been the case at Aberdeen, Birmingham, Birkenhead, Brighton, Carlisle, Cork, Croydon, Darwen, Devonport, Douglas, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Greenock, Hull, Keighley, Kingston, Leigh, Liverpool, London, Middlesbrough, Nottingham, Plymouth, Salford, Sheffield, Shoreditch, Southampton, Stretford, and Wigan. The money required for the purpose of building was in most cases included in the loans mentioned in Chapter VI. These dwellings exist under somewhat different conditions to other municipal houses (page 25).

(2) In other cases, land and dwellings have been provided under Part III of the Housing Act of 1890, mainly with a view to increase the general accommodation of districts where there has not been a sufficient supply of healthy houses. A recent Government return shews that up to March 31st, 1900, Part III had been adopted by 94 local authorities—viz., the London County Councils, 46 town councils, 41 urban district councils, and 6 rural district councils. Thirty of them were then carrying out schemes.

The dwellings erected have been of five types, as follows—

(1) Common lodging houses, with either bunks or cubicles;

(2) Block dwellings, four or five storeys high, either associated with appurtenances common to several tenants, or self complete except approaches;

(3) Tenement houses of three storeys, containing several dwellings in each house, and of two types as in preceding;

(4) Cottage flats in two storey self-contained dwellings;

(5) Cottages of various sizes, self-contained, and generally provided with gardens.

Types of each class will be described hereinafter.

London, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Hornsey, and Richmond are described more fully in another chapter, and details as to all dwellings are given in the tables in the following chapters, but a few words about the general work of each district are here given.