Housing / by Percy Alden and Edward E. Hayward.

  • Alden, Percy, 1865-1944.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Housing / by Percy Alden and Edward E. Hayward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    virtuous citizens, but it is only of late years that this fact has been borne in upon the nation as a whole. The result has been a great awakening of the interest displayed in this important ques- tion, an interest which is manifest in the better administration of existing legislative enactments on the part of local authorities. In its present form the housing problem began to be urgent about the middle of last century, when the factory system was working out its significant change in the conditions of Great Britain. The marked exodus from country to town, a movement which as yet shows no signs of abatement, brought the whole question of housing into prominence, and compelled the attention both of municipalities and the legis- tlature; a long and bitter struggle for reform a last resulted in the appointment in 1884 of the Royal Commission on Housing. This was one outcome of that strenuous feeling on social matters, which was a characteristic mark of the whole country in the “eighties.” All sections of the community began to realise that there had arisen, as an indirect result of the very prosperity which a period of industrial invention had created, a housing problem of the first importance and of the greatest complexity. Encouraged by Royalty and strengthened by reformers of all parties, the Housing Commission attacked almost for the first time the problem of the town, with its overcrowded tenements, its squalid rookeries, and its insanitary slums.
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