The main fact emerging from them is that a population of 726,096 persons in London are living in 124,733 overcrowded tenements of less than five rooms.
The accumulated testimony of the most experienced and capable observers during half a century is clear and precise that overcrowding is disastrous to the physical welfare of the individual. The conditions of life are not much better in one- and two-roomed tenements, and the conclusion is thus forced upon us that, speaking broadly, a fifth of the population of London are at present living in circumstances where physical well-being is impossible, and where even a moderate standard of public health is unattainable.
For some time back, fears as to the physical deterioration of certain classes of the population have found public expression, and to such a point did these misgivings come that, in 1903, a Committee was appointed by the Lord President of the Council to inquire into the subject throughout the kingdom.
The idea of physical deterioration being at work found expression sometimes in the reports of the Medical Officers of Health even far back. Thus, in 1869, the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington wrote:—
“In Paddington overcrowding in its worst forms cannot be said to exist, but there is an over-concentration of building which will some day be considered a disgrace to our civilisation. It may safely be predicted that besides a high infantile death-rate a concomitant deterioration of race will result…. This high (infantile) death-rate is not the only check to population. Another and more painful form of evil manifests itself in the sickly and puny race around us. Young men and young women are unable from low vitality to cope with their contemporaries in the labour market, where prolonged muscular exertion is required. We find in this class the seeds of debility and disease.”
In 1871 he gave a table with particulars of five hundred heads of families of the wage-earning class engaged in industrial occupations living in tenement-houses in certain streets near the Great Western Railway terminus. “Sixty-four per cent. were born in country places. This,” he added, “confirms my statement in former reports that large numbers of men born in cities have poor constitutions and deficient vital stamina, who cannot cope with their competitors from the country, nor command the best labour markets of the world. In the struggles of town-life large numbers are prematurely crushed out at early periods of their existence.”
And he added: “This deterioration of race has for some time been recognised by Medical Officers of Health.”
Unfortunately the conditions of life conducive to deterioration did not cease to exist in 1871, as evidenced by the figures of the censuses of 1891 and 1901, of the population living in overcrowded tenements of less than five rooms.
The Committee reported in 1904, but while both the Report and the evidence are of great interest, it cannot be said that they advanced the question much.