Housing : the facts & the future / by Harry Barnes.

  • Barnes, Harry, 1870-1935.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Housing : the facts & the future / by Harry Barnes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/464 page 12
    Let us drop the term “ house,” it is too ambiguous ; a room i a room ! how many rooms are there ? Let us reckon in rooms, we are still not out of the wood. We cannot get all the figures, and if we could they again are only counted once in ten years, and in between we must estimate. London keeps some count of rooms between the Census dates, but as far as I know no other place does, and if they did is the term “ room ” less ambiguous than the term “ house ” ? is a room just a room ? Are scullerys and bathrooms to be called rooms ? Are boxrooms going to be counted in ? Must there be a certain number of square feet in area and a certain number of cubic feet in contents before it is to be called a room ? Let us suppose all these difficulties have been removed, there is still another question: how many rooms is each person to have before he is to be reckoned as being housed ? If that is decided and we know the number of people, and the number of rooms that are rooms, it might be thought we were near our answer. So many persons and so many rooms per person, it is just a simple sum ; but is it quite so simple ? If persons only were to be considered it might be, and where people are in hotels and in institutions the calculation is appropriate, but un¬ fortunately for our task we are not dealing with persons only, but with groups of persons known as families. Here is a new factor that is very up¬ setting to our calculations. How many families are there ? How many persons in each family group ? Groups of persons demand groups of rooms. Are our rooms grouped ? and if so, in how many groups ? Will the groups of rooms fit the groups of persons ? If not there may be enough rooms for them as persons, but not enough for them as families. It is all very tiresome.
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image