“In one street in St. George-in-the-East so crowded are the public-houses that there are 27 licensed houses out of 215 houses.”
And these facilities are intensified by the great number of hours during the day in which licensed houses keep their doors open to all comers.
Parliament has done but little to mitigate this terrible evil. Happily, however, other influences are at work.
The Royal Commissioners in their Report in 1899 said:—
“Most persons who have studied the question are of opinion that actual drunkenness has materially diminished in all classes of society in the last twenty-five or thirty years. Many causes have contributed to this. The zealous labour of countless workers in the temperance cause counts for much. Education has opened avenues to innumerable studies which interest the rising generation. The taste for reading has multiplied manyfold within a comparatively brief period. The passion for games and athletics, which has been so remarkably stimulated during the past quarter of a century, has served as a powerful rival to ‘boozing,’ which was at one time almost the only excitement open to working men.” And then followed this weighty statement: “Yet it is undeniable that a gigantic evil remains to be remedied, and hardly any sacrifice would be too great which would result in a marked diminution of this national degradation.”
And the Chairman of the Commission (Viscount Peel), the Archbishop of Canterbury, and seven Commissioners in a Minority Report stated that—
“The broad facts remain unchallenged of the prevalence of the evil arising from drink.”
That drink and insanitary housing constitute a vicious circle should by no means deter the most vigorous efforts being continued to improve the conditions of housing and to raise the standard of the public health.
There was widespread testimony through the latter half of the decade that the public health in London was improving. Thus the Medical Officer of Health for the Bow District in Poplar wrote in 1895: “We have only to remember what London used to be, and consolation can be found in the comparison. Epidemics are not so frequent, disease is not so virulent, and those attacked stand greater chances of recovery through better and more skilful treatment.”
And the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington in 1896: “There has been a steady diminution in water-borne disease since efficiently-filtered Thames water has been substituted for the numerous wells and pumps of former days.”