“The evil of overcrowding is annually increasing, and if means be not adopted to check it, the overcrowding will soon become of an alarming extent….
“Houses formerly occupied by single families are let out in separate tenements, and every room now contains a distinct family; and to such an extent is this separate letting of rooms carried out, that from information given me there is not a single street in the parish of Whitechapel that is not more or less a nursery of pauperism in consequence of this sub-division of tenements.”
Away in the west, in Fulham, there had been a “flood of immigrants,” chiefly of “the lower and labouring classes.” The population had increased 30 per cent., and the Medical Officer of Health wrote (1865):—
“In watching the enormous accession of population to the Fulham district, one cannot otherwise than observe the constant tendency to overcrowding amongst the labouring people, whilst there seems every possibility of this human tide increasing. The tremendous demolition of the houses hitherto occupied by the working classes more immediately in London itself has dislodged thousands of families, whilst no systematised provision has been made for their reception.”
In Westminster the Medical Officer of Health wrote in 1865:—
“The dwellings of the poor were never in a worse or more unsatisfactory state than they are at present from the large number of houses that have been already demolished. The poor are now driven into the most wretched apartments, and which, in consequence of the increased demand, can only be obtained at the most extravagant rates. They are consequently compelled to herd together in one room, usually barely sufficient for half of those it is now made to hold.”
The south side of the river was much in the same plight as the north; but there, there was more room for expansion.
The Medical Officer of Health for St. Saviour, Southwark, wrote in 1865:—
“The numerous improvements which continue to be made in and about the heart of London have so increased the value of house property that overcrowding has been almost inevitable.
“… In a vast number of instances families numbering four to seven persons, ill or well, live, cook, wash, and sleep in rooms the dimensions of which are not greater than is now demanded for each sick person in the workhouse.”