They stated that “very great hardship would often follow if the provision for the replacement in or near the area of displacement were wholly done away with.”
“The special calling of many of the work people, the hours of their work, the employment of their children, the maintenance of their home life, the economy of living together in a family, the cheapness of food owing to the nearness of the great evening markets, &c., render it very desirable that a large portion should be enabled to re-house themselves in or near their old houses of living, and if no fresh dwellings be provided the evils of overcrowding will at once increase.
“Still, it is equally true that these observations do not apply to the whole population. Many without any special calling may live in one place as well as another. The facilities of transit recently offered by cheap trains, by boats, by tramways, &c., have enabled many to live in the suburbs who can do so consistently with their calling.”
“Your Committee are of opinion that the existing law, which requires that the improvement scheme shall provide for the accommodation of, at the least, as many persons of the working class as may be displaced, may be relaxed, and that the accommodation to be required should vary from half to two-thirds.”
As a matter of fact very few, if any, of the families thus dispossessed returned for the purpose of occupying the new buildings.
Indeed one witness[154] said that—
“Neither the Peabody Trustees, nor—more or less—the other Artizans’ Dwellings Companies would take in the class of people who had been displaced.”
The Committee called attention to the importance of favouring in every way facilities of transit between the metropolis and its suburbs by an extension of cheap workmen’s trains.