The importance of housing and the need of improvement had by 1909
received public recognition in England for nearly 70 years, a period
coinciding almost exactly with the systematic study of sanitation or
public health. The active movement definitely began about 1841 with
voluntary effort in which Lord Shaftesbury was the most prominent and
active figure. The motive was philanthropic and the object was to
improve the condition of the working classes. It took the form of
societies; one was the "Metropolitan Association for Improving the
Dwellings of the Industrial Classes," incorporated in 1845 but founded
in 1841; another was the "Society for Improving the Condition of the
Labouring Classes," originally the "Labourers' Friend Society," of which
the Prince Consort became president. That fact and the statement of the
Society concerning improved housing that "the moral were almost equal to
the physical benefits," sufficiently prove that public interest in the
subject and a grasp of its significance already existed at that date.
Legislation followed not long after and has continued at intervals ever
since.
_Legislation._--Twenty-eight Housing and Health Acts, passed between
1851 and 1903, are enumerated by Mr Dewsnup, whose monograph on _The
Housing Problem in England_ is the fullest account of the subject
published. The first was the Shaftesbury Act of 1851 for the
establishment of lodging-houses for the working classes; the last was
the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1903. The Shaftesbury Act
had in view the provision by local authorities of good lodging-houses
for the better class of artisans, and particularly of single persons,
male and female, though families were also contemplated. It was
accompanied in the same year by another act, not included in the list
of twenty-eight, for the regulation and control of common
lodging-houses, from which Mr Dewsnup reasonably infers that the
object of Lord Shaftesbury, who inspired both acts, was the separation
of the casual and disorderly class frequenting common lodging-houses
from the more regularly employed and respectable workers who were
sometimes driven to use them for lack of other accommodation. At any
rate this early legislation embodied the principle of differential
treatment and showed a grasp of the problem not always visible in
later procedure. The most important of the subsequent acts were those
of 1855 and 1866, both intended to encourage private enterprise in the
provision of working-class dwellings; the Torrens Act of 1868
(Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Act) for the improvement or
demolition of existing buildings; the Cross Act of 1875 (Artisans' and
Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act), for extending that process to
larger areas; the Public Health Act of 1875; the Housing of the
Working Classes Act of 1885 following the report of the Royal
Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, of which King
Edward, then prince of Wales, was a member; the Housing of the Working
Classes Act of 1890; the Public Health (London) Act of 1891. The acts
of 1875 (Public Health), of 1890 and of 1891 are still in force. The
story of this half-century of legislation (which also includes a
number of Scotch and Irish acts, local private acts and others bearing
on the question) is one of tentative efforts first in one direction
then in another, of laws passed, amended, extended, consolidated,
superseded. Many of the enactments, originally of limited application,
were subsequently extended, and the principal laws now in force apply
to the whole of the United Kingdom. Two main objects can be
distinguished--(1) the treatment of existing dwellings by demolition
or improvement; (2) the construction of new ones. The second head is
further subdivided into (a) municipal action, (b) private action.
These objects have been alternately promoted by legislative measures
conceived and carried out on no systematic plan, but gradually and
continuously developed into an effective body of law, particularly
with regard to the means of dealing with existing insanitary
dwellings. The advancing requirements of public health are clearly
traceable in the series of enactments directed to that end. The
Nuisances Removal Act of 1855 took cognizance of premises in such a
state as to be "a nuisance or injurious to health," and made provision
for obtaining an order to prohibit the use of such premises for human
habitation. In the same act overcrowding obtained statutory
recognition as a condition dangerous or prejudicial to health, and
provision was made for compelling its abatement. The campaign against
bad housing conditions thus inaugurated by the legislature was
extended by subsequent acts in 1860, 1866 and 1868, culminating in the
Cross Act of 1875 for the demolition (and reconstruction) of large
insanitary areas and the extremely important Public Health Act of the
same year. The constructive policy, begun still earlier in 1851 by
Lord Shaftesbury's Act, was concurrently pursued, and for some years
more actively than the destructive; but after 1866 the latter became
more prominent, and though the other was not lost sight of it fell
into the background until revived by the Royal Commission of 1885 and
the housing legislation which followed, particularly the Housing of
the Working Classes Act of 1890, amending and consolidating previous
acts.
The laws in operation at the beginning of 1909 were the Public Health
Acts of 1875 and 1891 (London), as amended by subsequent minor measures,
and the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890, amended in 1894,
1900 and 1903. The Public Health Acts place upon the local sanitary
authority the obligation of securing, under by-laws, the proper
construction, draining and cleaning of streets, removal of house refuse
and building of houses, including structural details for the prevention
of damp and decay, the provision of sanitary conveniences and an
adequate water-supply; also of inquiring into and removing nuisances,
which include any premises in such a condition as to be a nuisance or
injurious to health and any house so overcrowded as to be dangerous or
injurious to health. For the purpose of carrying out these duties the
local authority has the power of inspection, of declaring a building
unfit for human habitation and of closing it by order. The Housing Acts
give more extended power to the local authority to demolish insanitary
dwellings and clear whole areas or "slums," and also to construct
dwellings for the working classes with or without such clearance; they
also retain the older provisions for encouraging private enterprise in
the erection of superior dwellings for the working classes. The
procedure for dealing with insanitary property under these Acts is too
intricate to be stated in detail; but, briefly, there are two ways of
proceeding. In the first the local authority, on receiving formal
complaint of an unhealthy area, cause an inspection to be made by their
medical officer, and if the report in their opinion justifies action,
they may prepare an "improvement scheme," which is submitted to the
Local Government Board. The Board holds an inquiry, and, if satisfied,
issues a provisional order, which has to be confirmed by a special act
of parliament, under which the local authority can proceed to demolish
the houses concerned after paying compensation to the owners. This
procedure, which is authorized by part i. of the act of 1890, is
obviously both cumbrous and costly. The second way, provided for by part
ii. of the act, is much simpler and less ambitious; it only applies to
single houses or groups of houses. The medical officer in the course of
his duty reports to the local authority any houses which are in his
opinion unfit for human habitation; the local authority can then make an
order to serve notices on the owners to repair the houses at their own
expense. Failing compliance on the part of the owners, an order for
closing the houses can be obtained; and if nothing is done at the end of
three months an order for demolition can be made. Buildings injurious by
reason of their obstructive character (e.g. houses built back to back so
as to be without through ventilation and commonly called "back-to-back"
houses) can be dealt with in a similar manner. Small areas containing
groups of objectionable houses of either kind may be made the subject of
an improvement scheme, as above. Where areas are dealt with under
improvement schemes there is a certain obligation to re-house the
persons displaced. Building schemes are provided for under part iii. of
the act. Land may be compulsorily purchased for the purpose and the
money required may be raised by loans under certain conditions. The
provisions thus summarized were considerably modified by the "Housing,
Town Planning, &c., Act," passed at the end of 1909. It rendered
obligatory the adoption (previously permissive) of the housing
provisions (part iii.) of the act of 1890 by local authorities,
simplified the procedure for the compulsory purchase of land required
for the purpose and extended the facilities for obtaining loans. It
further gave power to the Local Government Board to compel local
authorities to put in force the act of 1890 in regard both to existing
insanitary housing and the provision of new housing. Power was also
given to county councils to act in default of rural district councils in
regard to new housing. The procedure for dealing with insanitary houses
by closing and demolition under part ii. (see above) was rendered more
stringent. The general intention of the new act was partly to facilitate
the administration of the previous one by local authorities and partly
to provide means of compelling supine authorities to take action. Its
town-planning provisions are noted below.
_Effects of Legislation._--The efficacy of laws depends very largely on
their administration; and when they are permissive and dependent on the
energy and discretion of local bodies their administration varies
greatly in different localities. That has been the case with the British
housing and health laws, and is one cause of dissatisfaction with them.
But in the aggregate they have effected very great improvement. Public
action has chiefly taken effect in sanitary reform, which includes the
removal of the worst housing, through demolition or alteration, and
general sanitary improvements of various kinds. In some large towns the
worst parts have been transformed, masses of old, narrow, crowded,
dilapidated and filthy streets and courts have been swept away at one
blow or by degrees; other parts have been reconstructed or improved. The
extent to which this has been accomplished is not generally recognized.
It is not easily demonstrated, and to realize it local knowledge,
observation and memory are needed. The details of the story are hidden
away in local annals and official reports; and writers on the subject
are usually more concerned with what has not than with what has been
done. Both the Public Health and the Housing Acts have had a share in
the improvement effected. The operation of the former is slow and
gradual, but it is continuous and far more general than that of the
latter. It embraces many details which are not usually taken into
account in discussing housing, but which have as much bearing on the
healthiness of the home as the structure itself. The Public Health Acts
have further had a certain preventive influence in laying down a
standard for the erection of new houses by the ordinary commercial
agencies. Such houses are not ideal, because the commercial builder
studies economy and the question of rent; but the standard has risen,
and building plans involving insufficient light and air, such as once
were general, have now for several years been forbidden almost
everywhere. Supervision of commercial building is, in fact, vastly more
important than the erection of dwellings by public or philanthropic
agencies, because it affects a vastly larger proportion of the
population. The influence of the Public Health Acts in improving the
conditions of home life cannot be estimated or summarized, but it is
reflected in the general death-rate, which fell steadily in the United
Kingdom from 21.1 per 1000 in 1878 to 15.4 per 1000 in 1907.
_Insanitary Areas._--The operation of the Housing Acts is more
susceptible of being stated in figures, though no fully comprehensive
information is available. The original Shaftesbury Act of 1851 for
erecting municipal lodging-houses appears to have been practically
inoperative and little or nothing was done for a good many years. In
1864, however, Liverpool obtained a private act and entered on the
policy of improvement by the demolition of insanitary dwellings on a
considerable scale, following it up in 1869 by re-housing. In 1866
Glasgow, also under a private act, created an Improvement Trust,
administered by the city council, and embarked on a large scheme of
improvement. These seem to have been the earliest examples. The
Torrens Act of 1868, which embodied the improvement policy, did not
produce much effect. According to a parliamentary return, during the
years 1883-1888, proceedings were only taken under this act in respect
of about 2000 houses in London and four provincial towns. More
advantage was taken of the Cross Act of 1875, which was intended to
promote large improvement schemes. Between 1875 and 1885 23 schemes
involving a total area of 51 acres and a population of about 30,000
were undertaken, in London; and 11 schemes in provincial towns. By far
the most important of these, and the largest single scheme ever
undertaken, was one carried out in Birmingham. It affected an area of
93 acres and involved a net cost of L550,000. Altogether between
L4,000,000 and L5,000,000 were raised for improvement schemes under
those acts. After the Housing Act of 1890 the clearance policy was
continued in London and extended in the provinces. During the period
1891-1905 loans to the amount of about L2,300,000 were raised for
improvement schemes by 28 provincial towns in England and Wales. The
largest of these were Leeds (L923,000), Manchester (L285,000),
Liverpool (L178,000), Sheffield (L131,000), Brighton (L112,000). The
Leeds scheme affected an area of 75 acres, which was cleared at a cost
of L500,000. In London the area cleared was raised to a total of 104
acres; the gross cost, down to March 31, 1908, was L3,417,337, the net
cost L2,434,096, and the number of persons displaced 48,525. Glasgow
has under its Improvement Trust cleared an area of 88 acres with a
population of 51,000. At the same time the policy of dealing with
houses unfit for habitation singly or in small groups by compelling
owners to improve them has been pursued by a certain number of local
authorities. In the six years 1899-1904 action was taken each year on
the average in respect of about 5000 houses by some 400 local
authorities large and small outside London. Representations were made
against 33,746 houses, 17,210 were rendered fit for habitation,
closing orders were obtained against 4220 and demolition orders
against 748. These figures do not include cases in which action was
taken under local acts and Public Health Acts. In Manchester, between
1885 and 1905, nearly 10,000 "back-to-back" houses were closed and
about half of them reopened after reconstruction. Hull, an old seaport
town with a great deal of extremely bad housing, has made very
effective use of the method of gradual improvement and has transformed
its worst areas without appearing in any list of improvement schemes.
In recent years this procedure has been systematically taken up in
Birmingham and other places, and has been strongly advocated by Mr J.
S. Nettlefold (_Practical Housing_) in preference to large improvement
schemes on account of the excessive expense involved by the latter in
buying up insanitary areas. In the six years 1902-1907 Birmingham
dealt with 4111 houses represented as unfit for habitation; 1780 were
thoroughly repaired, 1005 were demolished; the rest were under notice
or in course of repair at the end of the period. Among other towns
which have adopted this policy are Liverpool, Cardiff, York,
Warrington and two London boroughs.
_Building._--On the constructive side the operation of the Housing
Acts has been less extensive and much less general. In London alone
has the erection of working-class dwellings by municipal action and
organized private enterprise assumed large proportions. Philanthropic
societies were first in the field and date from a period anterior to
legislation, which however, stimulated their activity for many years
by affording facilities. Fourteen organizations were in operation in
London prior to 1890 and some of them on a large scale; others have
since been formed. The earliest was the Metropolitan Association for
Improving the Dwellings of the Industrial Classes, whose operations
date from 1847; it has built 1441 tenements containing 5105 rooms. The
largest of these enterprises are the Improved Industrial Dwellings
Company (1864), which has built 5421 tenements containing 19,945
rooms; the Peabody Fund (1864) with 5469 tenements containing 12,328
rooms; the Artisans', Labourers' and General Dwellings Company (1867),
with 1467 tenements containing 3495 rooms, and 6195 cottage dwellings;
the East-End Dwellings Company (1885) with 2096 tenements containing
4276 rooms; the Guinness Trust (1889) with 2574 tenements containing
5338 rooms. The Artisans' Dwellings Company alone has housed upwards
of 50,000 persons. In addition to these there are the Rowton Houses
(1892), which are hotels for working men, six in number, accommodating
5162 persons. So far as can be estimated, private enterprise has
housed some 150,000 persons in improved dwellings in London on a
commercial basis. The early activity of the building companies was
largely due to the policy of the Metropolitan Board of Works, which
adopted extensive improvement schemes and sold the cleared sites to
the companies, who carried out the re-housing obligations imposed by
the law. Since the London County Council, which replaced the Board of
Works in 1889, adopted the policy of undertaking its own re-housing,
their activity has greatly diminished. The buildings erected by them
are nearly all in the form of blocks of tenements; the Artisans'
Dwellings Company, which has built small houses and shops in outlying
parts of London, is an exception. The tenement blocks are scattered
about London in many quarters. For instance the Peabody Fund has 18
sets of dwellings in different situations, the Metropolitan
Association has 14; the Artisans' Dwellings Company has 10; the
Guinness Trust has 8. In 1909 an important addition to the list of
philanthropic enterprises in London was put in hand under the will of
Mr W. R. Sutton, who left nearly L2,000,000 for the purpose of
providing improved working-class dwellings. The erection of tenement
blocks containing accommodation for 300 families was begun on a site
in the City Road. In only a few provincial towns has private
enterprise contributed to improved housing in a similar manner and
that not upon a large scale; among them are Newcastle, Leeds, Hull,
Salford and Dublin.
_Municipal Building_ has been more generally adopted. The following
details are taken from Mr W. Thompson's _Housing up to Date_, which
gives comprehensive information down to the end of 1906. The number of
local authorities which had then availed themselves of part iii. of
the Housing Act of 1890, which provides for the erection of
working-class dwellings, was 142. They were the London County Council,
12 Metropolitan Boroughs, 69 County Boroughs and Town Councils, 49
Urban District Councils and 12 Rural District Councils. The dwellings
erected are classified as lodging-houses, block dwellings, tenement
houses, cottage flats and cottages. Lodging-houses have been built by
12 towns, of which 8 are in England, 3 in Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen
and Leith) and 1 in Ireland (Belfast). The total number of beds
provided was 6218, of which Glasgow accounts for 2414, London for
1846, Manchester and Salford together for 648. Four other towns have
built or are building municipal lodging-houses for which no details
are available. The other municipal dwellings erected are summarized as
follows:--
+------------------+-----------------+-------------+
| Kind of Dwelling.|No. of Dwellings.|No. of Rooms.|
+------------------+-----------------+-------------+
| Blocks | 12,165 | 27,523 |
| Tenement Houses | 2,507 | 6,068 |
| Cottage flats | 2,004 | 5,747 |
| Cottages | 3,830 | 17,611 |
+------------------+-----------------+-------------+
| Total | 20,506 | 56,949 |
+------------------+-----------------+-------------+
It appears from these figures that municipal building has provided for
a smaller number of persons in the whole of the United Kingdom than
private enterprise in London alone. The principal towns which have
erected dwellings in blocks are London (7786), Glasgow (2300),
Edinburgh (596), Liverpool (501), Dublin (460) and Manchester (420).
The great majority of such dwellings contain either two or three
rooms. Tenement houses have been built in Liverpool (1424), Manchester
(308), Sheffield (192), Aberdeen (128), and in seven other towns on a
small scale. Such tenements are generally somewhat larger than those
built in blocks; the proportion of three- and four-roomed dwellings is
higher and only a small number consist of a single room. Cottage flats
have been built in Dublin (528), West Ham (401), Battersea (320),
Plymouth (238), East Ham (212), and on a small scale in Liverpool,
Birmingham, Newcastle and seven other places. The majority of the
cottage flats contain three or more rooms, a considerable proportion
have four rooms. Cottages have been built in 67 places, chiefly small
towns and suburban districts. Of the large towns which have adopted
this class of dwellings Salford stands first with 633 cottages; three
London boroughs, all on the south side of the Thames, have built 234;
Manchester has 228, Sheffield 173, Huddersfield 157, Birmingham 103.
The number of rooms in municipal cottages ranges from three to eight,
but the great majority of these dwellings have four or five rooms.
Some further details of municipal housing in particular towns are of
interest. In London, the work of the London County Council down to
March 31, 1908, not including three lodging-homes containing 1845
cubicles, is given in the official volume of London Statistics,
published by the Council, as follows:--
_Buildings Erected and in Course of Erection._
+----------+--------+--------------+----------------+
| No. of | No. of | Cost of Land | No. of Persons |
|Dwellings.| Rooms. | and Building.| in Occupation. |
+----------+--------+--------------+----------------+
| 8,373 | 22,939 | L2,438,263 | 26,687 |
+----------+--------+--------------+----------------+
With regard to the cost, it is to be noted that the actual cost of the
land purchased for improvement schemes was very much greater than that
stated, having been written down to an arbitrary figure called
"housing valuation." The financial accounts of L.C.C. dwellings for
the year ending March 31, 1908, are thus summarized:--
_London County Council Dwellings, Accounts 1907-1908._
+--------+--------------+-------------+-----------+--------+
| Gross |Deductions for| |Expenditure| Net |
| Rental.| Empties, &c. |Net Receipts.| including |Returns.|
| | | | Interest. | |
+--------+--------------+-------------+-----------+--------+
|L180,169| L19,455 | L160,714 | L157,141 | L3,573 |
+--------+--------------+-------------+-----------+--------+
It appears from this that if the actual commercial cost of the land
were taken the housing of the Council would be run at a considerable
annual loss. The occupations of the tenants are stated in the
following proportions: labourers 789, clerks 312, policemen 251, shop
assistants 202, warehousemen 183, printers 182, charwomen 182, tailors
155, cabinetmakers 146, canvassers 122, cigarette makers 118, widows
116, tram drivers 110, postmen 107, packers 97, engineers 87,
dressmakers 41, coachmen 31, motormen 26, milliners 19. These
proportional figures show that though a considerable number of
labourers have been housed, the great majority of the occupants of
London municipal dwellings are of a superior class. The mean weekly
rent in London County Council dwellings is 2s. 10(1/2)d. per room
against 2s. 4d. in dwellings erected by other agencies. The most
important feature of the County Council's policy in recent years has
been the acquisition of suburban sites for the erection of cottages.
There are four such sites, two on the south, one on the north and one
on the west side of London; the total area is 349 acres, and the total
accommodation contemplated is for 66,000 persons at an estimated cost
of L3,105,840; the present accommodation is for about 8000. In
addition to the housing provided by the County Council, fourteen
London Borough Councils and the City Corporation had at the beginning
of 1909 erected or adapted 3136 dwellings containing 7999 rooms.
In Liverpool, down to 1907, about L920,000 had been spent in clearing
insanitary areas and building new dwellings; the demolition of about
8000 houses and purchase of land cost about L500,000; and the erection
of 2046 dwellings, containing 4961 rooms, cost about L350,000. The
size of the dwellings and the number of each class are: 1 room, 193; 2
rooms, 965; 3 rooms, 719; 4 rooms, 167. The great majority are in
tenement houses of three storeys. The mean weekly rent is 1s. 6(1/2)d.
per room, but a large number are let at less. The net return on the
total outlay is just over 1%, on the building outlay it is 2(2/3)%.
The principal classes of persons occupying the dwellings are labourers
675, carters 120, charwomen 103, firemen 93, porters 80, hawkers 64,
sailors 45, scavengers 40. These all belong to the poorest classes,
living by casual or irregular work. Liverpool has, in fact, succeeded
more than any other town in providing municipal dwellings in which the
really poor can afford to live.
In Manchester 956 dwellings have been built at a total cost for
building and improvement of L451,932; of the whole number 420 are in
blocks, 308 in tenement houses and 228 in cottages. The rents are much
higher than in Liverpool; in the tenement houses the mean weekly rent
is about 6d. per room more than in Liverpool. The gross profit on the
block dwellings is 1(1/3)% on the capital outlay, on the tenement
houses 3%, on the cottages 2(2/3)%. "The total loss during the last
seven to ten years, including loan charges, has amounted to about
L54,240" (Thompson).
In Glasgow the corporation has built under improvement schemes 2280
new dwellings containing 4013 rooms and 241 shops. The dwellings,
which are all in blocks and centrally situated, are occupied chiefly
by artisans; only 28% have been reserved for the poorest class of
tenants. The total amount taken from the rates on this account in 30
years is L600,000. Dwellings valued at L400,000 for building and
L300,000 for land give a net return of 3.06% on outlay; dwellings
valued at L280,000 for land and building return 3.03% on outlay;
leaving the sinking fund charges to be defrayed out of rates.
In Edinburgh insanitary areas have been bought for L107,023 and new
dwellings containing 1032 rooms have been built for L87,970. Nearly
all the dwellings are of one or two rooms only. The rents charged
average about 2s. a week per room; actual rents received average 1s.
4d. per room and they have to be subsidized out of the rates to the
extent of 2s. 3d. per room to meet the cost of site.
In Dublin provision has been or was in 1909 shortly to be made for
housing 5394 families or 19,000 persons; of which 1041 families, or
about one-fifth, are housed by the Corporation, the rest by companies
and private persons. Altogether it was estimated that L500,000 would
be spent under the act of 1890. Fifteen streets, containing 1665
houses, have been declared unhealthy areas by the medical officer, and
between 1879 and 1909 more than 3000 houses were closed as unfit for
habitation.
_Co-operative Building._--Municipal and philanthropic housing by no
means exhaust the efforts that have been made to provide working-class
dwellings outside the ordinary building market. Their special function
has been to substitute better dwellings for pre-existing bad ones,
which is the most costly and difficult, as well as the most urgent,
part of the problem in old towns. But in the provision of new
dwellings alone they have been far surpassed by organized self-help in
different forms. Down to 1906 there had been built 46,707 houses by
413 co-operative societies at a cost of nearly L10,000,000. They are
most numerous in the manufacturing towns and particularly in the
north-western district of England. Of the whole number 8530 were owned
by the societies which built them; 5577 had been sold to members, and
32,600 had been built by members on money lent by the societies. These
figures do not include the particular form of co-operative building
known as co-partnership housing, which will be mentioned later on, or
the operations of the so-called building societies, which are really
companies lending money to persons on mortgage for the purpose of
building. The difference between them and the co-operative societies
which do the same thing is that the latter retain the element of
co-operation by lending only to their own members, whereas the
building societies deal in the open market. Their operations are on an
immense scale; at the end of 1908 the invested funds of the registered
building societies exceeded L72,000,000. An agency working on this
scale, which far exceeds the operations of all the others put
together, is obviously an important factor in housing. The number of
houses built must help to relieve congestion, and since they are built
to suit the owners or tenants they cannot be of the worst class. They
also represent a form of thrift, and deserve notice on that account.
The Small Dwellings Acquisition Act of 1899, which has not previously
been mentioned, was intended to facilitate the building or purchase of
small houses by their tenants by means of loans advanced by local
authorities. Down to 1906 about L82,000 had been so advanced by 5
county boroughs, 17 urban councils and 1 rural district council.
_Housing by Employers._--No comprehensive information is available on
this head, but it has not been an important factor in towns, being
chiefly confined to agricultural, mining and suburban manufacturing
districts. The former two belong to the subject of Rural Housing,
which is separately discussed below; the third has an interest of its
own on account of its connexion with "model settlements." The building
of houses for their workpeople by industrial employers has never been
widely adopted in this country, but it has attracted considerable
attention at two different periods. Sir Titus Salt was a pioneer in
this direction, when he built his woollen mills at Saltaire, on the
outskirts of Bradford, and housed his workpeople on the spot. That
plan was maintained by his successors, who still own some 900
excellent and cheap cottages, and was adopted by a few other
manufacturers in the same neighbourhood. Saltaire was a model
settlement with many institutions for the benefit of the mill-hands,
and as such it attracted much attention; but the example was not
generally followed, and the interest lapsed. Recently it has been
revived by the model settlements at Port Sunlight, near Liverpool,
started about 1888, Bournville near Birmingham (1895), and Earswick,
near York (1904), which are of a much more elaborate character.
Elsewhere, employers setting down works in some new locality where no
provision existed, have had to build houses for their workmen; but
they have done so in a plain way, and this sort of housing has not
assumed large proportions.
_Conditions in 1909._--It has been said above that great improvements
have been effected, and of that there is no doubt at all. Both quantity
and quality are more satisfactory than they were, though both are still
defective. The conditions vary greatly in different places, and no
general indictment can be sustained. The common practice of citing some
exceptionally bad cases, and by tacit inference generalizing from them
to the whole country, is in nothing more misleading than in the matter
of housing. Local differences are due to several causes--age,
population, occupations and means of the people, public opinion and
municipal energy. The first three chiefly determine the difficulty and
extent of the problem, the last two influence its treatment. The
difficulty is greatest in towns which are old, have large populations
and a high percentage of poor. Such pre-eminently are the large
seaports, where much casual labour is employed. London, Liverpool,
Glasgow, the Tyne, Hull, Sunderland are examples. Old inland towns
having a large trading as well as an industrial element present the same
features. Such are Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and
Bradford. In all these, and some others like them, the past has left a
heavy legacy of bad housing by malconstruction and dilapidation, which
has been increased by growth of population and overcrowding. They have
attacked it with varying degrees of energy according to the prevalent
local spirit and with varying results.
_Overcrowding._--The one condition which permits of precise and
comprehensive statement is overcrowding. A standard has been officially
adopted in England based on the number of persons to a room in each
dwelling; and the facts in relation to this standard are embodied in the
census returns. It is a much better criterion than that of "density" or
number of persons per acre, which is very deceptive; for an apparently
low density may conceal much overcrowding within walls and an apparently
high one may be comparatively guiltless. The room-density is the
important thing in actual life. Some light is also thrown on this
question by the number of rooms contained in each dwelling, and that is
also given in the census. The standard of overcrowding is more than two
persons to a room. In 1901 there were in England and Wales 2,667,506
persons or 8.2% of the population living in a state of overcrowding
according to this definition. Their distribution is extremely irregular
and capricious. In rural districts the proportion was only 5.8%, in
urban districts 8.9%; but these summary figures give no idea of the
actual state of things in different localities. In both rural districts
and in towns the proportion of overcrowding varies in different
localities from less than 1% to over 30% of the population. The towns
are the most important and we shall confine attention chiefly to them. A
list of 84 having a population of 50,000 and upwards, exclusive of
London, is given by Mr Dewsnup. The overcrowding ranges from 34.54% in
Gateshead and 32.42% in South Shields to 0.97% in Northampton and 0.62%
in Bournemouth. Of the whole number exactly one-half have less than 5%;
15 have less than 2% and 22 have 10% or more. Neither size nor character
has much to do with the variation. Bournemouth, at the bottom of the
list with 0.62%, is a residential place and health resort with a
population of about 50,000; so is Tynemouth, which is nearly at the top,
with 30.71%. The two largest towns, Liverpool and Manchester, are 26th
and 32nd on the list, with only 7.94% and 6.28% respectively, or
considerably less than the average; and on the other hand none of the
first 17 towns with the highest proportion of overcrowding are of the
largest size. Again, with regard to character, Leicester and
Northampton, which are almost at the bottom of the list, with 1.04% and
0.97% respectively, are both purely industrial towns. The most striking
facts are that the six towns, which alone have more than 20% of
overcrowding, namely Gateshead (34.5), South Shields (32.4), Tynemouth
(30.7), Newcastle (30.4), Sunderland (30.10), Plymouth (20.1) are all
old seaports, that four of them at the head of the list are on the Tyne
and the fifth on the Wear. This points strongly to special local
conditions and it is borne out by the facts with regard to rural
districts. Northumberland and Durham show a great excess of overcrowding
over other counties; and some of their rural districts even surpass any
of the towns. The highest of all is the district of Tynemouth, with
38.18% of overcrowding. The explanation lies in a special combination of
large families and small houses prevalent in this area. All the rural
districts are seats of coal-mining, and miners are the most prolific
section of the population. They also live in small houses of a
traditional and antiquated character, often of one storey only or built
back to back. Many are built by colliery proprietors. Large families
and small houses also prevail in the towns. Some of them contain
coal-pits and the rest of their industrial population is engaged chiefly
in engineering and shipbuilding works, occupations also usually
associated with a high birth-rate. The men live as near their work as
possible and the practice of living in flats or occupying part of a
house prevails extensively.
In London the number of persons living in overcrowded conditions in 1901
was 726,096 or 16.0% of the population. The proportion varied from 2.6%
in Lewisham to 35.2% in Finsbury, but in 23 out of the 29 boroughs into
which the county is divided it exceeded the urban mean for the whole
country, and in 9 boroughs having an aggregate population of 1,430,000
it was more than double the mean. Conditions in London are evidently
untypical of English towns.
In the light of the census figures it is clear that no large proportion
of the English industrial population is living under conditions of
serious overcrowding, outside the special districts mentioned and that
the expression "house famine" cannot be properly applied to England or
English towns in general. In the House of Commons, on the 16th of August
1909, the president of the Local Government Board, Mr John Burns, gave a
list of the number of unoccupied houses and tenements in each of the
London boroughs and in the eight largest provincial towns, including
Glasgow; the total was 104,107. By a further analysis of the census
returns Mr Dewsnup shows that a great deal of the overcrowding is of a
comparatively mild character and that it is due to a relatively small
excess of population. Bradford, for instance, is credited with 40,896
overcrowded persons, representing the high percentage of 14.61 of the
population; but in the case of nearly 20,000 the excess over the
standard is very slight, and the proportion of gross overcrowding comes
down to 7.55%. Moreover, this serious overcrowding is produced by no
more than 2.79 of the population, so that its cure presents no
insuperable difficulty. The argument is confirmed by the very
substantial diminution which actually took place between 1891 and 1901.
The facts are so striking that they deserve to be presented in tabular
form:--
_Percentage of Population Overcrowded._
+------------------+--------+--------+
| | 1891 | 1901 |
+------------------+--------+--------+
| England and Wales| 11.23 | 8.20 |
| | | |
| Gateshead | 40.78 | 34.54 |
| Newcastle | 35.08 | 30.47 |
| Sunderland | 32.85 | 30.10 |
| Plymouth | 26.27 | 20.19 |
| Halifax | 21.31 | 14.49 |
| Bradford | 20.61 | 14.61 |
| Huddersfield | 19.89 | 12.88 |
| London | 19.70 | 16.01 |
| Leeds | 16.46 | 10.08 |
| St Helens | 15.72 | 10.86 |
| Birmingham | 14.27 | 10.32 |
| Burnley | 12.74 | 7.14 |
| Sheffield | 11.58 | 9.50 |
| Bolton | 11.22 | 6.50 |
| Liverpool | 10.96 | 7.94 |
| Oldham | 10.13 | 7.42 |
| Salford | 9.39 | 7.54 |
| West Ham | 9.34 | 9.27 |
| Wolverhampton | 9.31 | 4.67 |
| Swansea | 9.25 | 5.57 |
| Stockport | 8.50 | 4.98 |
| Manchester | 8.25 | 6.28 |
| Bristol | 8.03 | 3.55 |
| Hull | 7.86 | 6.12 |
| Blackburn | 7.05 | 3.92 |
| Birkenhead | 6.80 | 5.02 |
| Norwich | 4.91 | 3.34 |
| Brighton | 4.56 | 3.07 |
| Cardiff | 4.31 | 2.92 |
| Preston | 4.13 | 2.64 |
| Nottingham | 3.62 | 3.65 |
| Croydon | 2.76 | 2.74 |
| Derby | 2.69 | 1.18 |
| Leicester | 2.22 | 1.04 |
| Portsmouth | 1.74 | 1.19 |
+------------------+--------+--------+
To what is this remarkable movement due? It is far too general to be
attributed to the operation of the Housing Acts; for, though they have
helped in some cases, a great diminution has occurred in many places in
which no use has been made of them. Towns of all kinds and in all parts
of the country exhibit the same movement in some degree; those which had
little and those which had much overcrowding, the worst and the best. In
London the percentage fell by 3.7, and the number of persons overcrowded
was reduced by 103,669 in spite of an increase of population of 324,798.
In Gateshead a fall of 6.2%, in Newcastle one of 4.6% took place; while
at the other end of the scale Leicester and Derby reduced their already
very low proportions by more than one-half. Nottingham is the only
exception in the whole list. And in 28 out of the 35 towns the decrease
of overcrowding was absolute as well as relative in spite of a large
increase of population. London has been cited. The other large towns may
be tabulated with it, thus:--
+------------+------------+------------+
| |Increase of | Decrease of|
| Town. | Population.| Overcrowded|
| | | Persons. |
+------------+------------+------------+
| London | 324,898 | 103,669 |
| Liverpool | 166,978 | 2,381 |
| Manchester | 38,504 | 7,545 |
| Birmingham | 44,091 | 14,290 |
| Leeds | 61,463 | 17,252 |
| Sheffield | 56,550 | 1,388 |
| Bristol | 107,367 | 6,105 |
| Bradford | 63,406 | 3,696 |
+------------+------------+------------+
The very divergencies make the uniform diminution of overcrowding the
more remarkable. The large increase of population in Liverpool and
Bristol no doubt means extension of boundaries, which might have the
effect of reducing the proportions of overcrowding, but it cannot
account for the actual decrease of overcrowded persons. The change seems
to be due to three factors all of which have been in general operation
though in varying degrees. They are (1) the centrifugal movement
promoted by improved locomotive facilities, (2) the declining
birth-rate, (3) public health administration. (1) The first is the most
important and the chief element has been tramways, of which a great
extension accompanied by electrification took place in the decade. Thus
the process of urbanization has been modified by one of suburbanization.
Bristol is a prominent case; its overcrowding has been reduced by more
than one-half without any large and costly municipal interference,
mainly through the operation of ordinary economic forces. Tramways have
made the outskirts accessible and builders have utilized the
opportunity. They have built good houses, too, under supervision, and
Bristol, though an old seaport and industrial town with much poverty,
has the lowest general death-rate and the lowest infantile death-rate of
all the great towns. (2) The birth-rate and the size of families are
conditions which affect overcrowding in a very marked degree, though no
attention is paid to them in that connexion. The case of the mining
districts and the towns on the Tyne has been mentioned above; the same
thing is seen in London, where all the most overcrowded districts
(Finsbury, Stepney, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green) have high birth-rates,
ranging from 31.3 to 36.4 per 1000 in 1902-1906. The necessity imposed
on poor parents of putting several children into a cheap and therefore
small dwelling accounts for a large proportion of overcrowding, which
automatically diminishes with a falling birth-rate. The ultimate
advantage of this method of reducing overcrowding is a question on which
opinions may differ, but there is no doubt about the fact. (3) Public
health administration is the third general cause; it attracts no notice
and works very gradually, but it does work. The last annual report (for
1907) of the medical officer to the London County Council says of
overcrowding: "There is reason for thinking that in recent years greater
attention has been paid by sanitary authorities to the abatement of the
nuisance, and Dr Newman states that in Finsbury there has been an
enormous reduction in overcrowding, the reduction having been effected
mainly in the years 1901-1905." The medical officers of the metropolitan
boroughs reported in 1907 2613 dwellings overcrowded in 23 boroughs and
3216 such dwellings remedied in 27 boroughs. It should not be forgotten
that a good deal of overcrowding is voluntary. Families which have not
enough room for their own members nevertheless take in lodgers; and in
some places, of which London is the most conspicuous but not the only
example, foreigners herd together thickly in a very small space.
The improvement shown by the statistics of overcrowding is confirmed by
those relating to the size of dwellings. Between 1891 and 1901 the
percentage of the population living in very small dwellings appreciably
diminished thus--in 1-roomed dwellings, from 2.2 to 1.6%; in 2-roomed
dwellings, from 8.3 to 6.6%; in 3-roomed dwellings, from 11.1 to 9.8%;
while the proportion living in dwellings of 5 rooms and upwards
increased from 54.9 to 60.1%. This again is referable to the suburban
movement and a higher standard of requirements. Six-roomed houses with a
bathroom tend to replace the old four-roomed type. The general report
accompanying the census says: "However the tenement figures for England
and Wales are compared it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the
comparison affords satisfactory evidence of distinct improvement in the
housing of the people during the ten years 1891-1901." In short, the
problem of quantity is only acute in a few places and steadily becoming
less so.
The foregoing facts apply only to England and Wales. In Scotland the
state of things is much less satisfactory. No statistics of
overcrowding are available, but the following comparative table shows
how different the housing conditions are in the two countries:--
_Size of Dwellings, England and Scotland, 1901._
+-----------------+-------------------------+
| |Percentage of Population.|
| Dwelling. +------------+------------+
| | England. | Scotland. |
+-----------------+------------+------------+
| 1 room | 1.6 | 11.1 |
| 2 rooms | 6.6 | 39.5 |
| 3 rooms | 9.8 | 19.9 |
| 4 rooms | 21.9 | 9.1 |
| 5 rooms and over| 60.1 | 20.4 |
+-----------------+------------+------------+
Over 50% of the population of Scotland live in tenements of one or two
rooms; only 8.2% in England. A comparison of the largest towns in the
two countries gives the following result:--
_Percentage of Population._
+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| Scotland. | England. |
+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+--------+
| Town. |1 Room.|2 Rooms.| Town. |1 Room.|2 Rooms.|
+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+--------+
| Glasgow | 16.2 | 38.9 | London | 6.7 | 15.5 |
| Edinburgh | 8.9 | 32.4 | Liverpool | 2.7 | 5.9 |
| Dundee | 11.3 | 51.7 | Manchester| 0.8 | 4.01 |
| Aberdeen | 6.1 | 33.2 | Birmingham| 0.3 | 2.4 |
| Greenock | 11.3 | 47.6 | Sheffield | 0.4 | 4.0 |
| Kilmarnock| 18.9 | 43.3 | Bristol | 1.6 | 5.7 |
+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+--------+
| Mean | 12.7 | 42.4 | Mean | 1.8 | 6.7 |
+-----------+-------+--------+-----------+-------+--------+
The conditions in Scottish towns where very tall tenement houses are
common, resemble those in other countries, in which overcrowding is
far greater than in England. All these matters are comparative, and
the superiority of conditions in England ought to be recognized. Yet,
in Scotland, too, great improvements have been effected. In 1861 there
were 25,959 houses without windows; in 1901 only 130. These facts
throw light on the long standing of the housing question, the change
of standard and the improvement effected.
In Ireland there is more overcrowding than in England, though probably
less than in Scotland, with the possible exception of Dublin, which
has a larger proportion of one-roomed dwellings than any Scottish
town, namely, 24.7%. The percentage of population living in
overcrowded conditions in the principal towns is--Dublin 40.6,
Limerick 31.7, Cork 23.4, Waterford 20.6, Londonderry 16.7, Belfast
8.2.
_Sanitary Conditions._--With regard to the quality of existing housing
reference has already been made to the effect of the Public Health Acts
and the general improvement in sanitation. The only numerical measure is
afforded by the death-rates, which have fallen in England from 20.9 per
1000 in 1871-1875 to 15.4 per 1000 in 1903-1907 and in the United
Kingdom from 21.3 to 15.7 per 1000 in the same period. The condition of
the dwelling must be credited with a considerable share in this fall.
There have, in fact, been great changes and all in the direction of
improvement. The rise and development of sanitation, of house and main
drainage and sewage disposal, the purification of water and provision of
a constant service in the house, the removal of refuse, the segregation
of infectious illness, sanitary inspection--all these, apart from the
demolition of the worst housing and the provision of better, have raised
the general healthiness of the dwellings of the people. In face of these
facts and of the vital statistics, to say that the people are physically
deteriorating through the influence of bad housing is to talk obvious
nonsense, for all conditions have been improving for more than a
generation. If physical deterioration is going on, of which there is no
proof, either it is not caused by bad housing or there is less than
there was. Deterioration may be caused by the continued process of
urbanization and the congregating of an ever larger proportion of the
population in towns; but that is a different question. If the town has
any injurious influence it is not due to the sanitary condition of the
houses, which is in general superior to that of houses in the country,
but to the habits and occupations of the people or to the atmosphere and
the mere aggregation. But much misapprehension prevails with regard to
towns. The most distinctive and the most valuable feature of English
housing is the general predominance of the small house or cottage
occupied by a single family. Only in London and a few other towns do
blocks of large tenement houses of the continental type exist, and even
there they are comparatively few. In England and Wales 84% of the
population live in dwellings of 4 rooms and upwards, which means broadly
separate houses. Now the prevalence of small houses involves spreading
out and the covering of much ground with many little streets, which
produce a monotonous effect; a smoky atmosphere makes them grimy and
dull skies contribute to the general dinginess. The whole presents to
the eye a vast area of dreary meanness and monotony. Thus the best
feature of English national housing turns to its apparent disadvantage
and the impression is gained by superficial observers that the bulk of
our working-class populations lives in "slums." The word "slum" has no
precise meaning, but if it implies serious sanitary defects it is not
applicable to most of our town housing. There are real slums still, but
the bulk of the working class population do not live in them; they live
in small houses, often of a mean and dingy exterior but in essential
respects more sanitary than the large and often handsome blocks to be
seen in foreign towns, which are not put down as slums because they do
not look dirty. A smoky atmosphere is injurious to health, but it must
be distinguished from defects of housing. Ideal houses in a smoky place
soon look bad; inferior ones in a clean air look brighter and deceive
the eye. The worst of the old housing has disappeared; the filthy,
dilapidated, airless and sunless rookeries--the real slums--and the
underground dwellings have been swept away in most cases, and what
remains of them is not so bad as what has gone. But reform has been very
regularly applied. Some towns have done much, others little. The large
towns, in which the evil was most intense and most conspicuous in bulk,
have as a class done far more than smaller ones in which the need
perhaps was less great, but in which also a less healthy public spirit
prevailed. The worst housing conditions to-day are probably to be found
in old towns of small and medium size, in which the ratepayers have a
great disinclination to spend money on anything, and the control of
local affairs is apt to be in the hands of the owners of the most
insanitary property. Nor is this state of things altogether confined to
old places. Some of recent growth have been allowed, for the same
reason, to spring up and develop without any regard to sanitary
principles or the requirements of public health. There is therefore
abundant scope for further reform and in not a few cases urgent need of
it. On the other hand, we have a number of towns, particularly
manufacturing towns, both large and small in the midlands and the north
of England, which have already reached a good general standard of
housing in all essential requirements, and only need the regular and
steady exercise of vigilance by the public health service to remove such
defects as still remain or may reveal themselves with the lapse of time.
_Rents._--Rent is a matter of great importance from every point of
view, and that is now being realized. A quantity of official
information on the subject has been collected and made available by an
elaborate inquiry ordered by the Board of Trade in 1905 and published
in 1908 (Cd. 3864). It relates to working class dwellings in the
principal industrial towns in the United Kingdom, 94 in all: namely,
77 in England and Wales, 11 in Scotland and 6 in Ireland. The
following tables give in a condensed form the chief statistical
results obtained in October 1905:--
_Predominant Range of Weekly Rents._
+----------+--------------------------+------------+------------+
| | England and Wales. | | |
| +-------------+------------+ Scotland. | Ireland. |
| | London. | Provincial | | |
| | | towns | | |
+----------+-------------+------------+------------+------------+
| One room | .. | .. | 2/- to 2/6 | 1/6 to 2/6 |
| Two rooms| 4/6 to 7/6 | 3/- to 3/6 | 3/10 to 4/3| 2/6 to 3/6 |
| Three " | 6/- to 9/- | 3/9 to 4/6 | 5/2 to 6/5 | 4/- to 5/- |
| Four " | 7/6 to 10/6 | 4/6 to 5/6 | .. | 5/6 to 6/9 |
| Five " | 9/- to 13/- | 5/6 to 6/6 | .. | .. |
| Six " | 10/6 to 15/6| 6/6 to 7/9 | .. | .. |
+----------+-------------+------------+------------+------------+
Rents are lowest in Ireland and next lowest in English provincial
towns, considerably higher in Scotland and highest of all in London,
for which further special details are given. It is divided into three
zones (1) central, (2) middle, (3) outer, which have the following
mean weekly rents:--
_London Mean Weekly Rents._
+----------+---------------------------+
| | Zone. |
| +---------+--------+--------+
| | Central.| Middle.| Outer. |
+----------+---------+--------+--------+
| One room | 4/6 | 3/9 | .. |
| Two rooms| 7/- | 6/- | .. |
| Three " | 8/9 | 7/6 | 6/6 |
| Four " | .. | 9/- | 7/9 |
| Five " | .. | 11/- | 9/6 |
| Six " | .. | 13/- | 11/- |
+----------+---------+--------+--------+
In central London--which extends to Stepney in the East, Lambeth m the
South, Islington in the North, and includes Westminster, Holborn,
Finsbury, Marylebone, Shoreditch, most of Bethnal Green, Southwark and
Bermondsey--the rent of a single room may be as high as 6s. or even
6s. 6d. (Holborn) a week. It is here that overcrowding is greatest,
and block-tenements, philanthropic and municipal, most numerous. The
rentals of the block dwellings have not been taken into account in the
foregoing official statistics; they range as follows: 1 room, 2s. 6d.
to 5s.; 2 rooms, 5s. to 8s.; three rooms, 6s. 6d. to 11s. The lowest
rent for which a single room can be obtained in this area is 2s. 6d. a
week. In no English town are rents nearly so high as in London. If 100
is taken as the index number for rent in London the nearest towns to
it (Croydon and Plymouth) only reach 81, and one town on the list
(Macclesfield) is as low as 32. The index number of twenty-one towns
out of the whole is 50 or under, and these include a number of
important industrial centres--Hull, Leicester, Blackburn, Northampton,
Warrington, Coventry, Crewe and others. The index numbers of the great
towns are: Liverpool 65, Manchester and Salford 62, Birmingham 59,
Leeds 56, Sheffield 55, Bristol 53, Bradford 59, Hull 48; that is to
say the level of rents in these towns is little more than half that in
London. This is one more proof of the untypical character of London,
and of the fallacy of generalizing from it to the rest of the country.
Even in the overcrowded towns on Tyneside rents do not run to
three-fourths of the London level. When the towns are divided into
geographical groups the index numbers run thus: London 100, Northern
Counties 62, Yorkshire 56, Lancashire and Cheshire 54, Midlands 51,
Eastern Counties 50, Southern Counties 61, Wales and Monmouth 60.
Rents are always highest in capitals, and Edinburgh complies with the
rule; but it is very slightly in advance of Glasgow, and in Scotland
generally the range is much smaller than in England. Dublin, on the
other hand, is differentiated from the other Irish towns as widely as
London from English ones.
A general and progressive rise in rents has been taking place for many
years. The following index numbers for the great towns are given in
the second series of memoranda published by the Board of Trade in 1904
(Cd. 1761):--
_Relative Working-Class Rents._
1880 86.6 | 1890 89.9
1885 90.1 | 1900 100.0
1895 96.3 |
The tendency to rise is attributable to increased cost of labour, due
to higher wages and less work, increased cost of materials and higher
rates. Weekly working-class rents generally include rates which are
paid by the landlord. Housing reform has contributed to the rise, both
directly and through the rates, on which it has thrown a heavy burden
in various ways. When slums are cleared away and replaced by superior
dwellings the new rents are generally higher than the old and this
fact has proved a great difficulty. Most of the improved housing is
beyond the means of those who need it most, and they seek other
quarters resembling the old ones as nearly as possible. The example of
Liverpool, which has the largest proportion of casual and ill-paid
labour of all the great towns, and has been the most successful in
providing new dwellings of a fair quality, centrally situated and not
in blocks, at really low rates, shows that the problem is not
insoluble; but as a rule too little attention is paid to the question
of rent in housing reform, especially in building undertaken by
municipalities. It is not ignored, but the importance attached to it
by the poor is not realized. To them it is the first consideration
after four walls, a roof and a fire-place; and 6d. a week makes a vast
difference in their calculations. Reform which aims at raising the
lowest classes of tenants by improving their dwellings defeats itself
when it drives them away.
_Rural Housing._--Little has hitherto been said about rural housing. It
is of less importance than urban housing because it concerns a much
smaller proportion of the population, and because in rural life the
influence of inferior housing on health is offset by other conditions;
but it has recently attracted much attention and was made the subject of
inquiry by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1906. The
report laid stress chiefly on the inaction of local rural authorities
under the Public Health and Housing Acts, and on various obstacles in
the way of improving existing houses and of providing more and better
ones at rents which agricultural labourers can afford to pay. The
available facts with regard to rural housing are scrappy and
unsatisfactory. The word "rural" has no precise meaning and it includes
several very different sections of the population; for instance, the
inhabitants of suburbs, mining villages and mill villages as well as the
real agricultural population. Complaint is made of both the quantity and
the quality of rural housing. With regard to quantity it is said that in
spite of migration to the towns there is a dearth of cottages through
dilapidation and demolition without rebuilding. That may happen in
particular localities, but there is no evidence to support a general
allegation. Inquiries issued by the Board of Trade to agricultural
correspondents brought the following replies: insufficient 56,
sufficient 111, more than sufficient 32. Similar inquiries of land
agents and owners resulted thus: insufficient 9, sufficient 11, more
than sufficient 4, variable 6. From which it appears that insufficiency
exists but is not general. The official evidence with regard to
overcrowding is that it is much less acute than in the towns. The
proportion of the rural population in England living in overcrowded
conditions in 1901 was 5.8%; if the rural mining districts, the
exceptional overcrowding of which has been noted above, be eliminated,
the rest cannot be very bad. Moreover, the percentage has appreciably
diminished; in 1891 it was 8.46. The complaint of bad quality is better
founded. Some landowners take great pride in the state of their
property, and excellent cottages may be found in model villages and
elsewhere in many parts of the country; but much rural housing is of an
extremely insanitary character. A good deal of evidence on this head has
of late years been published In the reports of medical inspectors to the
Local Government Board. And local authorities are very reluctant to set
the law in motion against insanitary dwellings. On the other hand, they
have in some cases hindered and prevented building by too rigid
insistence on by-laws, framed with a view to urban housing and quite
unsuited to rural conditions. A few rural authorities have taken action
with regard to building schemes under Part III. of the Housing Act. A
list of 31 in 17 counties is given in "Housing up to Date"; 13
applications were refused and 13 granted by the respective county
councils and others were dropped. Details are given by the same
authority of 54 houses built by 17 rural district councils. Public
action may thus be said to amount to nothing at all. Landowners,
however, have borrowed under the Improvements of Lands Acts upwards of
L1,250,000 for building labourers' cottages; and this is probably only a
fraction of the amount spent privately.
In Ireland a special condition of affairs exists. A series of about a
dozen acts, dating from 1881 and culminating in the Labourers (Ireland)
Act of 1906, have been passed for promoting the provision of labourers'
cottages; and under them 20,634 cottages had been built and some
thousands more authorized previous to the act of 1906, which extended
the pre-existing facilities. The principle is that of the English
Housing Acts applied to rural districts, but the procedure is simpler
and quicker. The law provides that a representation may be made to the
local authority by three ratepayers or resident labourers that "the
existing house accommodation for agricultural labourers and their
families is deficient having regard to the ordinary requirements of the
district, or is unfit for human habitation owing to dilapidation, want
of air, light, ventilation or other convenience or to any other sanitary
defects," whereupon the local authority shall make an improvement
scheme. It may also initiate a scheme without representation, or the
Local Government Board may do so in default of the local authority. The
scheme is published, an inquiry held, notice given and an order made
with very much less delay and expense than under the English law. Land
is purchased by agreement, or compulsorily and the money for land and
building raised by loan. Loans amounting to about 3(1/2) millions
sterling had been raised down to 1906. The great majority of the
cottages built are in Munster and Leinster. They must have at least 2
bedrooms and a kitchen, and the habitable rooms must be 8 ft. high. One
of the most remarkable features is the low cost--about L150--at which
these cottages have been built, including land and the expenses of
procedure.
_Recent Developments._--It is clear from a general review of the subject
that the problem of housing the working classes in a satisfactory manner
has proved more complex than was at one time realized. Experience has
falsified hopes and led to a change of attitude. It is seen that there
are limits to drastic interference with the normal play of economic
forces and to municipal action on a large and ambitious scale. A
reaction has set in against it. At the same time the problem is being
attacked on other sides and from new points of departure. The tendency
now is towards the more effectual application of gradual methods of
improvement, the utilization of other means and the exercise of
prevention in preference to cure. Under each of these heads certain
movements may be noted.
The most troublesome problem is the treatment of existing bad housing.
In regard to this the policy of large improvement schemes under which
extensive areas are bought up and demolished has had its day, and is not
likely to be revived to any considerable extent. That is not only
because it is extremely costly but also because it has in the main done
its work. It has done what could not have been done otherwise, and has
swept away the worst of the old housing _en masse_. To call it a failure
because it is costly and of limited application would be as great a
mistake as to regard it as a panacea. The procedure which seems to be
coming into favour in place of it is that adopted in Birmingham and
advocated by Mr J. S. Nettlefold (_Practical Housing_) coupled with a
more general and effective use of the Public Health Acts. The principle
is improvement in detail effected by pressure brought to bear on owners
by public authority. The embodiment of this principle forms an important
part of the Housing and Town Planning Bill introduced by the Local
Government Board in 1908, which contained clauses empowering the central
authority to compel apathetic local authorities to do their duty in
regard to the closing of unfit houses, and authorizing local authorities
both to issue closing orders and to serve notices on landlords requiring
them "to execute such works as the local authority may specify as being
necessary to make the house in all respects reasonably fit for human
habitation."
Among the other and less direct means to which attention is being turned
is the policy of getting people away from the towns. The effect of
improved travelling facilities in reducing urban overcrowding has been
noted above. That object was not specifically contemplated in the
building and electrification of tramways, and in the development of
other means of cheap local travel, but the beneficial effect has caused
them to be recognized as an important factor in relation to housing and
to be more systematically applied in that connexion. A newer departure,
however, is to encourage migration not to the outskirts of towns but
altogether into the country by facilitating the acquisition of small
holdings of land. This has been done by private landowners in an
experimental way for some years, and in 1907 the policy was embodied in
the Small Holdings Act, which gives county and borough councils power to
purchase or hire land compulsorily and let it in holdings of not more
than 50 acres or L50 annual value. Failing action on their part the
Board of Agriculture may frame schemes. Power is also conferred on the
Board and on County Councils to establish co-operative agricultural
societies and credit banks. These measures have been adopted from
foreign countries, and particularly from Denmark and Germany. A very
large number of applications for holdings have been made under this act,
but it is too early to state the effects. They will depend on the
success of tenants in earning a livelihood by agricultural produce.
Another new and quite different departure is the attempt to establish a
novel kind of town, called a "Garden City," which shall combine the
advantages of the town and the country. The principal points are the
choice of a site, which must be sufficiently convenient to enable
industries to be carried on, yet with rural surroundings, the laying out
of the ground in such a way as to ensure plenty of open space and
variety, the insistence on building of a certain standard and the
limitation of size. One has been established at Letchworth in
Hertfordshire, 34 m. from London, and so far seems to be prospering. It
consists of an area of 3800 acres, bought from the previous owners by a
company registered in 1903 and entitled First Garden City Ltd., with a
capital of L300,000 in L5 shares. The interest is limited to a dividend
of 5%, all further profits to be devoted to the benefit of the town. The
estate is divided into a central urban area of 1200 and a surrounding
agricultural belt of 2600 acres. The town is planned for an eventual
population of 30,000 and at present (1909) has about 5000. Some London
printing works and other small industrial establishments have been
planted there, and a number of model cottages have been built. In this
connexion another recent novelty has appeared in the shape of an
exhibition of cottages. The idea, originated by Mr St Loe Strachey, was
to encourage the art of designing and building cheap but good and
convenient cottages, especially for the country. Two exhibitions have
been held at Letchworth in 1905 and 1907, and others at Sheffield (1907)
and Newcastle (1908). The two latter were held on municipal land, and it
is proposed by the National Housing Reform Council to hold one every
year.
The "Garden City" has led to the "Garden Suburb," an adaptation of the
same idea to suburban areas. One was opened near Hampstead Heath in
1907: it consists of 240 acres, of which 72 have been reserved for
working-class cottages with gardens. These developments, with which may
be associated the model industrial villages, mentioned above, at
Bournville, Port Sunlight and Earswick, represent an aspiration towards
a higher standard of housing for families belonging to the upper ranks
of the working classes; and the same movement is demonstrated in a still
more interesting fashion by a particular form of co-operative activity
known as Co-partnership Housing. The first complete example of this
method of organization was the Ealing Tenants Limited, a society
registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act in 1901,
though the Tenant Co-operators Limited, formed in 1888, was a precursor
on very nearly the same lines. The essential principle is self-help
applied by combination to the provision of superior homes, and the
chief material feature is the building of houses which are not only of
good design and workmanship, but disposed on a systematic plan so as to
utilize the ground to the best advantage. Land is bought and houses are
built with combined capital to which each tenant contributes a
substantial share; the houses are let at rents which will return 5% on
share capital and 4% on loan capital after defraying all expenses, and
the surplus profits are divided among the tenant members in proportion
to the rents paid by them. Each tenant's share of profits is credited to
him in shares until his share capital equals the value of the house he
occupies, after which it is paid in cash. There is thus common ownership
of the whole group, which forms a little community. This system has
caught on in a remarkable way and has spread with great rapidity. In
1905 a central organizing body was formed called the Co-partnership
Housing Council, for the purpose of promoting the formation of societies
and assisting them with advice; it is supported by voluntary
contributions. In 1909 twelve societies, including the original Tenant
Co-operators, had been formed with a total investment of L536,300. They
are situated at Ealing, Letchworth, Seven-oaks, Leicester, Manchester,
Hampstead (two), Harborne near Birmingham, Fallings Park,
Stoke-on-Trent, Wayford and Derwentwater. The rapidity with which the
movement has developed and spread since the establishment of the
Co-partnership Housing Council indicates great vitality, and since it is
based on thoroughly sound lines it has probably a large future. It is
the most interesting and in many respects the best of all recent
developments. The Report of the Select Committee on Rural Housing
mentioned above suggested that a Co-partnership Housing Society should
be formed in every county in England.
All the enterprises just described have one feature in common, namely,
the laying out of sites on a plan which takes cognizance of the future,
secures a due proportion of open space, variety in the arrangement of
streets and the most advantageous disposition of the houses and other
buildings. They go beyond sanitary requirements and take account of
higher needs. They have lent force to the advocacy of municipal
"town-planning," as practised by several towns in Germany; and provision
was made for this procedure in the Housing and Town Planning Act of
1909. The act contains clauses giving local authorities power to prepare
plans with reference to any land which appears likely to be used for
building purposes within or near their own boundaries; and also to
purchase land comprised in a town-planning scheme and either build on it
themselves or let plots for building in accordance with the plan. The
chief object is to safeguard the future, prevent the repetition of past
defects and encourage a higher standard of housing.
These new developments represent an upward movement at the higher end of
the scale. They cater for the superior ranks of working classes, those
who attach some importance to the aesthetic and moral influence of
pleasant and wholesome surroundings, and are willing to sacrifice
immediate gratifications to a higher end. They embody an aspiration, set
an example and exercise an educative influence. But they have nothing to
do with the housing of the really poor, which is the great difficulty;
and their very attractiveness seems in some danger of drawing attention
from it. Garden cities and suburbs will never house the poor or even the
bulk of our working class population, and it would be a pity if the
somewhat sentimental popularity of romantic schemes led to a distaste
for the plodding effort which alone can effect a real cure of
deep-seated social evils of long standing. All the new schemes and
legislative proposals leave untouched the greatest difficulty of all,
which lies not in the dwelling but in the tenant. It is comparatively
easy to afford better opportunities to those who are willing to take
advantage of them, but how to raise those who are not? The lesson taught
by Miss Octavia Hill's classical experiment is, if not forgotten,
certainly neglected in the presence of more showy efforts. Or perhaps it
would be more true to say that half of it is neglected. Miss Hill was
one of the pioneers in the comparatively modest method of improving and
reconstructing bad houses, which, as we have noted, is now being more
generally recognized and pursued; but that was only half her work. She
improved bad dwellings and made them decent, but she also managed them
on business lines, by a system of inspection and rent collection which
combined a judicious discipline with the stimulus of reward. This was
done by means of personal service, which is the secret of all really
effective work among the poor. Her words written years ago remain true
to-day: "The people's homes are bad partly because they are badly built
and arranged; they are tenfold worse because the tenants' habits and
lives are what they are. Transplant them to-morrow to healthy and
commodious homes and they will pollute and destroy them."
The following is a list of the principal associations formed for the
promotion of housing reform: Mansion House Council on the Dwellings of
the Poor, Rural Housing and Sanitation Association, Workmen's National
Housing Council, National Housing Reform Council, Co-partnership
Tenants Housing Council. They are all of recent date, except the
first. There are also local associations at Liverpool, Oldham,
Rochdale, York, Plymouth, and elsewhere.