He mentions some instances too horrible to quote, and says: “Such were instances that came within my own knowledge of the manner and of the degree in which persons may relapse into habits worse than those of savage life, when their domestic condition is neglected, and when they are suffered by overcrowding to habituate themselves to the lowest depths of physical obscenity and degradation.”
In St. Luke “the houses swarmed with their human tenants.” In Bethnal Green “our crowded streets and courts are becoming more crowded.” In St. Pancras “in many houses the overcrowding is very great, each room being occupied by a family.”
In Islington, so overcrowded were some of the houses that the Medical Officer of Health had met with as little as 220, 190, 170, down to 135 cubic feet of air available for each occupant of a room.
In Rotherhithe “almost all the houses were overcrowded with inmates.”
In Westminster, the Medical Officer of Health gave (in 1858) fifty examples of overcrowding in his district. In one house, in a room 13 feet long by 9 wide, and 7 feet high, there were 5 adults and 3 children; and in a lower room in the same house, 10 feet long by 9 wide, and 8 high, there were 4 adults and 5 children.
There are no statistics whatever showing even approximately the number of cases at that time in which a single room was occupied by a family, but it is certain that vast numbers of families had to be content with that limited accommodation. Nor was that even the worst—for, in very many cases, more families than one lived in a single room, or the single family took in one or more lodgers.
Life under such circumstances must have been, and was, awful. The Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles’ wrote:—
“The houses whose rooms are occupied by single families were last year in a condition of squalor and overcrowding which it is difficult to conceive surpassed….
“In Lincoln and Orange Courts, the most glaring violation of the laws of health and of the requirements of civilised life was found. For instance, there are several small rooms in the backyards of Church Lane…. Each of the rooms measures about 10 feet by 8, and between 6 and 7 feet high. Each of them serves a family for sleeping, cooking, and all domestic needs.
“… The air of these rooms was unbearable to a visitor, and to open the window was only to exchange one foul emanation for another.”