Britain’s Overcrowded Tenements
Three hundred thousand Londoners live in one-room tenements with three or more occupants. The death-rate of the London districts in which a million people are housed not so well as horses, is four times higher than normal. But London is not the only plague spot of England. In seven other cities the number of preventable and unnecessary deaths reaches a yearly total of 20,000, a black list of those slain by vile living conditions and overcrowding that equals the losses of the British in South Africa from wounds and disease. In Scotland twenty-three per cent of the families live in one-room tenements, and in Glasgow one-third of the families have no more than one room to huddle in. Conditions are no better in the smaller cities of Scotland. Kilmarnock has only 28,000 population, yet 35 per cent of its families dwell in single-room tenements. One eighth of the total population of Scotland do not know the decency of a two-room home. Eight million people of the United Kingdom have an average family income of no more than $5.00 a week, and in the cities they must pay at least a fourth of this for rent of pigsties miscalled tenements.— Providence Journal.