The Medical Officer of Health for St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, wrote:—
“In many of the districts of the metropolis between 60 and 70 per cent. of the population are compelled to live in one small overcrowded room, and in which every domestic operation has to be carried on; in it birth and death takes place; there plays the infant, there lies the corpse; it is lived in by day, and slept in by night.”
In the necessity for house accommodation all sorts of places were being pressed into use, and people driven into “places that are themselves unfit for habitation, not having the elements of life and health about them.”
The Medical Officer of Health for Paddington described, in 1867, how mews had been thus utilised:—
“In fact these back streets, originally built and intended for horses and vehicles, and only those persons without encumbrances who are engaged attending to them, have now become the resort of persons with large families following all kinds of business—rag, bone, and bottle stores, shops of various kinds, including beer-houses, builders, carpenters, smiths, tailors, sweeps, find accommodation here. Inhabiting the rooms above, too small, and unfitted with proper domestic accommodation for a family, live a vast population of all ages. These evils, rather than otherwise, are increasing.”
Into such houses and such rooms the people were by stress of circumstances compelled to go, and, as the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles’ pointed out (1863):—
“A larger rent can be obtained for the same room if it is overcrowded by a large family than if it be hired for only as many inmates as it can properly receive. Hence the interests of landlords are constantly on the one side, the health of the poor on the other….”
What this pressure upon accommodation produced may be gathered from a few figures given by the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel:—
| Houses. | Rooms. | Inmates. | ||
| In Slater’s Court, Whitechapel | 10 | 31 | 170 | |
| In Marlborough Court | 7 | 20 | 82 | |
| In Hunt Court | 8 | 32 | 158 |