The Dwelling House

by George Vivian Poore

The Strand

I have previously alluded to the high mortality of the Strand registration district, and my remarks on one occasion were contemptuously dismissed, with the criticism that it was unfair to judge of the state of London by the health of the slums.

It becomes necessary therefore to say that the Strand registration district includes the Temple, St. Clement Danes, the Precinct of the Savoy, St. Mary-le-Strand, St. Paul, Covent Garden, and St. Martin's in the Fields.

Its southern boundary extends from the Temple Stairs to Whitehall Court, along the Thames Embankment. From Whitehall Court, the western boundary runs through the 'Horse Guards' and through the middle of Buckingham Palace to the top of Constitution Hill. It includes the whole of the Green Park, but none of the houses abutting on it, with the exception, I believe, of Stafford House. From Stafford House the northern boundary runs south of Pall Mall, and includes Clarence House, St. James's Palace, the War Office, Marlborough House, and Carlton House Terrace. Thence the boundary runs up the Haymarket, along the north side of Leicester Square and Long Acre to Drury Lane and by Sardinia Street and the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields to Chancery Lane, the south end of which constitutes its eastern boundary.

This district includes parts of four royal palaces and also Somerset House, Horse Guards, Admiralty, War Office, National Gallery, and National Portrait Gallery. In it are to be found five churches (Temple, St. Clement, St. Mary, St. Martin, St. Paul, Covent Garden), Exeter Hall, and more than twenty of the largest and best known theatres and music-halls. The Constitutional and National Liberal Clubs are within its boundaries, and its numerous huge hotels are famous throughout the world.

The worst parts of the district are in the north-east, but one must mention that it does not include the Seven Dials or the north half of Drury Lane. Clare Market, the south end of Drury Lane, Drury Court and Bedfordbury, are the slums of the Strand registration district. It is not a poor district. The percentage of persons 'in poverty' in London as a whole is given by Mr. Charles Booth as 30·7, while that for the Strand is only 23·9.

Many of the labourers employed in Covent Garden Market and in the theatres earn very good wages, but Mr. Booth specially mentions the fact that in some of the lowest districts house rent is very dear. Wages is a relative term, and the potential prosperity of a person is only to be determined by subtracting from the earnings the cost of the necessaries of life, inclusive of house rent.

It is obvious, however, that the prime necessary of life (fresh air) is not to be had in the Strand at any price.

It may be well to add that the Strand sanitary area is not co-terminous with the Strand registration district, which we have been considering. The chief difference is that the former includes St. Anne's, Soho, and excludes St. Martin's in the Fields.

This district of the 'Strand,' which I have chosen because it is the most unhealthy district in London, and in some respects the worst in the whole country, is, so to say, the pulpit from which the British have preached sanitation to the whole world. In it we find the offices of the Registrar-General and the London County Council; the Temple, where Sanitary Bills are drafted, and the Law Courts, where the sanitary law is administered; the Royal College of Physicians; the Examination Hall where candidates for diplomas of Public Health and Medicine are examined, and also the offices of the 'Lancet' and the 'British Medical Journal.' The Royal College of Surgeons, the Local Government Board and Imperial Parliament, if not within, are only just outside its limits.

It is doubtful if any district in London or any other city is better provided with open spaces than the Strand. St. James's Park and the Green Park are both partly within its limits. It has the Embankment and the Thames to the south, the Temple Gardens to the east, Lincoln's Inn Fields to the north-east, and Trafalgar Square in the centre. It is wonderfully provided with what are miscalled 'lungs,' but it is evident that lungs are of little good if the blood only circulates in them occasionally on a Sunday. It is well to bear this fact in mind, because our municipal governors sometimes talk as if the provision of 'open spaces' at exorbitant and extravagant cost could compensate for overcrowding in the dwelling, with a lack of light and air therein.

It is in the Strand, more than in any other district, that houses have been built of great height and enormous cubic capacity without any curtilage whatever. I have attended 'banquets' at more than one hostelry in this district where 150 or 200 persons have been fed in a room having no outside windows of any kind, and where, late in the evening, the guests have been provided with a little fresh (!) air by opening glass partitions communicating with a huge 'coffee-room' or table d'hôte room. These rooms are made by enclosing what ought to be open courts in the centre of these huge hotels, and their utilisation is only possible because of the perfection to which the science of artificial illumination has been brought. There can be no health without daylight, and sunlight, and fresh air, but the electric light is good enough to make money by.

To a greater or less extent, throughout London the height of the houses has been gradually raised, and the available curtilage has been built upon. This is seen in the dwellings of the rich, and there is no doubt that the conditions which lead to overcrowding are all intensified in the poorer quarters.