I think we may take it for granted that if the well-to-do classes are showing a tendency to overcrowd, this tendency will be found to get progressively more intense as we descend in the social scale. The well-to-do occupiers of flats have to be content with what may be called 'rather close quarters,' but their servants are often squeezed into rooms scarcely bigger than cupboards. It is not conceivable that those who are in a dependent position will have better accommodation than those whom they serve.
Remedies for Overcrowding
The final question is, What can be done to prevent overcrowding of houses and of persons in the house?
I freely admit that very little can be done in big towns, and people must be left to judge for themselves as to whether they will allow their children to run the extra risk of death, crippling disease, or defective development, inseparable from life in a crowded city. The statistics of the Registrar-General (i.e. the Annual Summary and the Decennial Supplement) show clearly what these risks are, but it is necessary to add that some of the local statistics manifest at times an undue desire to minimise the mortality of the district from which they emanate.
A great metropolitan city like London, concerning which we are educated from our cradles to utter big boasts, exercises an enormous influence on public opinion, but it is perfectly clear that she is a dangerous model to follow in the matter of house-construction.
I call to mind the case of a great London builder who bought a country mansion in a park. He was a very able man, but when he carried out some alterations and additions to his new house he found it impossible to cast away his town-bred ideas, and accordingly built underground kitchens and coal cellars, and had the coals put into his cellar through a plate in the pavement just outside the drawing-room window. He had been so long accustomed to build houses with a minimum of area, that when he had an unlimited space at his disposal he failed to utilise or appreciate the advantages of such a boon.
Country places should be careful to avoid the adoption, as by-laws, of regulations originally framed with the idea of mitigating the horrors of the London slums. With regard to these regulations, it must be remembered that 'the trail of the Cockney is over them all,' and it has been shown that regulations, especially as to space round dwellings, which may be beneficial in the Seven Dials become mischievous suggestions when printed and circulated as the by-laws of a country district. It seems almost incredible that the Local Government Board should sanction the adoption of some of these by-laws by country communities.
The exigencies of space in London have led to the construction of underground offices, with the result that at least a tenth of the inhabitants of modern London are cave-dwellers; and in the by-laws from which I have quoted I find no attempt to penalise, or in any way to restrict, the perpetration of similar barbarities in the country.
If there be underground 'offices,' the drains of the house will leave it at a level of some 10 feet below the ground level, and the public sewer must be at least 11 feet underground, and the laying of sewers at such a depth is relatively expensive. As there are extra charges for high level water service, ought there not to be similar extra charges for low level drain service?
The great blot on modern sanitary legislation is the entire absence of any encouragement for the sanitary well-doers.