The condition imposed as to re-housing, and which was so rigorously insisted on, did not by any means achieve the desired result.
According to Mr. Lyulph Stanley[153] in 1884: “Not one single person of all the poor displaced in the carrying out of the Gray’s Inn Road improvement, powers for which were obtained in 1877, had been re-housed by the Board.”
The Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel, in his evidence in 1881, also showed that many of those in the houses which were to be pulled down were not working men at all.
“Many of the people do not come into the Whitechapel District for the purpose of getting employment. They have other motives; they come from all parts of the country; a great many are tramps, and come up for the purpose of begging, some for stealing, and some to obtain the advantage of the charities which exist in London, and many of them to get out of the way and hide themselves.”
By this time, moreover, the possibilities of getting accommodation further afield was beginning to come into view.
“With the facilities for coming by the early trains and the various tramways that we have now at a cheap rate, the rents of many of the inhabitants of Whitechapel would not be increased by moving from it.”
That the obligation to re-house was imposed alone upon the public authorities and upon railway companies was rather inequitable. In many districts the destruction of houses, and the unhousing of the inhabitants, was carried out on a far larger scale by private owners, and no such obligation was imposed upon them. The policy, therefore, was decidedly onesided, and was very costly to the ratepayer who was in no way responsible for the proceedings of the private house-owner who had caused all the trouble.
The Committee reported in June, 1882. They expressed their opinion that—
“Nothing would contribute more to the social, moral, and physical improvement of a certain portion of the working classes than the improvement of the houses and places in which they live.”