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.

    16/192 page 4
    2.—The Problem of Overcrowding. The question as to whether there is a sufficiency or insufficiency of housing accommodation depends mainly on our definition.of overcrowding. “We may be tolerably certain,” say the Census Com- missioners of 1891, “ that the rooms in tenements with less than five rooms will not in any but exceptional cases be of large size, and that ordinary tenements which have more than two occupants per room, bedrooms and sitting-rooms included, may safely be considered as unduly overcrowded.” According to this definition there were, in 1901, 392,414 overcrowded tenements in which were living 2,667,506 persons. Thus 8.2 per cent, of the whole population of England and Wales was returned officially as overcrowded in the last census. This is a desirable decrease on the census of 1891, where 481,653 tenements were overcrowded, in which were living 3,258,044 persons, or 11.2 per cent, of the total population; which justifies the Commissioners in 1901 in remarking, “ However the tenement figures 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.”* We are also told that 3,186,640 persons occupy three-room tenements, and 2,158,644 two-room tenements; whilst not less than 507,763 live in dwellings of only one room in England to-day. * Census Commissioners of 1901, pp. 40, 42.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3