And the Medical Officer of Health for Clerkenwell wrote (1856):—
“In thousands of instances in this district, living, cooking, sleeping, and dying … all go on in one room….
“If a poor man gets married he is pretty sure to have a large family of children, and at the present rate of mortality several will die of zymotic disease.
“Hence, when a death occurs, the living and the dead must be together in the same room; the living must eat, drink, and sleep beside a decomposing corpse, and this in usually a small, ill-ventilated room, overheated by a fire required for cooking, and already filled with the foul emanations from the bodies of the living and their impure clothes.
“This is an everyday occurrence in Clerkenwell, and constitutes a formidable evil.”
So great was the pressure for accommodation of some sort or kind, that even the cellars and kitchens in the basements of the houses were occupied as dwelling-places and overcrowded.
In St. James’, “the worst feature of the overcrowding was the very common practice of residence in cellars or kitchens. In the majority of cases the places are quite unfit for human residence.
“… A cellar in St. Giles’,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for that district in 1858, “has been the by-word for centuries to express a wretched habitation unworthy of humanity.
“Dating from the time of Charles I., the underground dwellings of our district attained the acme of their miserable notoriety from the pen and pencil of Fielding and Hogarth.
“… The Building Act of 1844 contained stringent clauses against the use of such rooms unless they possessed requisites of area and ventilation, such as were out of the question in the cellars of St. Giles’.