“The area does not enlarge, and yet year after year dense crowds of human beings are packed and squeezed into that limited area. The growth of the population has far outstripped the growth of the house accommodation.
“The immense majority of the immigrants are precisely of that class which most largely increases the dangers of disease by thickening the population. You are largely burdened with the pauperism of other and wealthier districts. The burden is doubly grievous; for it taxes your property, your labour, and gives strength to the elements of disease amongst you.
“It is probable that there is no spot in London more crowded with life than many places in Holywell or St. Leonard’s.
“Typhus—a disease more terrible than cholera—has made itself at home in the parish.”
And the Medical Officer of Health for Fulham wrote (1857):—
“… The daily necessities of the labourer’s family draw so heavily on his earnings as to leave only a very small sum for the payment of rent, and hence the most limited house accommodation is sought for and endured….”
The most powerful cause of all, however, was, undoubtedly, the overpowering instinct of self-preservation, or, in other words, the need of working, no matter under what conditions, for the only means of obtaining food for themselves and their families. That, as a rule, necessitated their being near the work to be done—and rather than lose that work any conceivable hardship or abomination would be put up with.
Another of the great causes of overcrowding was high rent.
“It must not be imagined,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for the Strand (1858), “that this system of overcrowding is altogether a direct consequence of a state of poverty. It certainly does not appear to be so, for among the Metropolitan Districts the Strand ranks seventh in order of wealth.