The Slums of Westminster

WE have before us the Joint Report of the Corn- mittees of Housing and Public Health in West- minster, under the chairmanship of Admiral Sir Henry Bruce—" on the statements which have appeared in the Press and elsewhere" with regard to the slums in this Borough. Some "self-constituted and irresponsible bodies" (thus is the Westminster Housing Association characterized, although it numbers Lord Balfour and two ex-Viceroys among its members, while Mrs. Walter Runciman is its chairman and Mr. J. C. C. Davidson its treasurer) have dared to shake the City Fathers of Westminster out of their slumbers. This pamphlet is full of the stings of an infuriated bumbledom.

The Spectator, of course, comes in for severe reproof. "On the whole," we are told, our articles have been "one- sided and exaggerated." The conclusion of our article of July 2nd is quoted, with the passage we have now under- lined omitted : "And is the City Council doing its duty ? Under the Act of 1925 it has full power to deal with and remedy the unhappy conditions which exist. Why does it not act ? Why does it let children die who might live ? " We draw the City Council's attention to the passage under- lined. Why do our remarks "exceed the bounds of decency and the limits of journalistic licence ? "

We repeat, why does not the Council take more drastic action to remedy the state of its slum areas, instead of spending its time, and the ratepayers' money, in attacking those who for no possible or conceivable reason except the public welfare are criticizing their heartless ineptitude?

The Westminster Survey Group have published an admirable report on the conditions prevailing in Victoria Ward. This Survey (in contrast to the counterblast of Admiral Sir Henry Bruce) was carefully written, moderate in tone, and specific in the charges made of insanitary conditions and overcrowding in the area described. For instance :— " No. —, Aylesford Street. This basement is very damp and the tenants have to keep a dog to protect themselves from sewer rats. The whole family of nine people sleep here, the father and sons in one room, and the mother and daughters in the other room. They also have one upstairs room for living in."

"No —, Alderney Street. Two rooms. Man and wife, boy six, girl three, brother-in-law sixteen. These are damp basements, with boards laid on mud without concrete foundation, or ventila- tion. There are sewer rats, so numerous that within twenty-four hours of the laying of a new board, it was eaten through, the tenant states. There is a bad smell from the manhole, the lid of which does not fit properly. The children are terrified of the rats and refuse to go to bed."

"No —, Glamorgan Street. Eight rooms. Four families, sixteen adults and eight children, i.e., twenty-four people. In the two basement rooms : Man and wife, sons, twenty-one, nineteen and seventeen sleeping in the living room, a girl of fifteen and a boy of ten sleeping in the bedroom with their parents, the boy in the parents' bed." No —, Gray's Inn Court. Two rooms : Grandmother, man and wife, girls aged fourteen, thirteen, and seven, boys aged ten, three, and one."

The Survey was published four months ago. These things are either true, or they are not. Yet all that the Council can say with regard to the twenty-two specific allegations of human misery of which the above are samples, is : "We have instructed the Medical Officer of Health to have these houses inspected and to report to us thereon." What a tame rebuttal of statements which have horrified decent people all over England !* We have no space for a defence here of the Survey Group or the Westminster Housing Association (who can certainly justify their "sensational statements of no practical value" as the Council describes their work),

* Since writing the above, we have received a copy of the Medical Officer's Report here alluded to. We have not space to review this report now, but we find that it confirms in general the impression produced on us by the Survey. It points out minor inaccuracies (which may be due to lapse of time) but leaves the general position unchanged.

but we must say a further word concerning our own position.

_ We have already dealt with our " indecent " demand that the Council should wake up. The next passage in our four articles to which the Report takes exception is that in "Westminster recently a poor woman was delivered of a child in a room where her daughters slept. Only the eldest woke, for she bit the bedclothes and managed to stifle her cries." This need not have happened, we are told, for if the woman's home conditions had appeared unsuitable, she would have been urged to go to one of two Maternity wards of the Council. No doubt. We stated the facts as they occurred, to show to what straits overcrowding sometimes reduces poor women. In the next, sentence we say : "Do we comfortable people understand what lack of privacy means, and darkness, damp, shortage of sanitary conveniences ? It is vitally important that everyone should imagine as well as form a cold intellectual concept of the slum question."

The Councillors and Aldermen of Westminster are described in the Joint Report of their Committees, in a paragraph of which Pecksniff might be proud, as ; "Seventy men and women of all classes, sacrificing their leisure and often their business hours, devoting their time, their thought, and their energies gratuitously, for the benefit of their fellow-citizens, without any other reward than the feeling they are giving of their best to the public service." We will do the Councillors justice, and admit that they are doing something besides answer- ing criticisms and engaging in controversy, but we do not think they are doing enough. The Report tells us of sites acquired and building in progress, but it attempts no comprehensive survey of the needs of Westminster. In another article we shall deal with "what is and what might be" in this rich Borough in the hope, and with the expectation, that the City Council do not really resent plain speaking. For the present, however, we must confine ourselves, unwillingly enough, to the charges that have been made against us.

The last quotation from our articles on the slums last summer is the following :— " But while men and women are living in the very shadow of death (here in Westminster, near to our offices, there are basements two storeys underground, where there is terrible mortality from tuberculosis), it is wicked nonsense to say that we must wait twenty years before such conditions are ameliorated."

The Joint Report comments :— " We are not aware of any persons living in Westminster in base- ments two storeys underground where there is a terrible mortality from tuberculosis."

Indeed ? Are the Council aware of the double base- ments in John Street, Adelphi ?

"If the Spectator will furnish us with the addresses of these basements," the Joint Report continues, "it will not have to wait twenty years before the conditions are ameliorated. In fact it will not have to wait twenty minutes before the officials of the Coimcil will have taken the matter in hand. If the statement is true, it is little short of moral criminality on the part of the Spectator not to have notified the circumstances and the addresS of the premises to the Council the very moment they came to its knowledge."

But what have the Council done with the reports already made to them, except fulminate invective through their Admiral ? We regret, however, that we used the phrase "terrible mortality from tuberculosis," for that is a matter of opinion, and tends to obscure the issue. We withdraw this expression unreservedly, but we would draw the attention of the Council to these two points 1. There are persons living two storeys underground in John Street. - - - 2. The mortality for the Strand -ward is LPN -per thousand for tuberculosis, the highest in Westminster. • The greater part of the pamphlet is brusque and personal. ror instance, the statement of Dr. Salter, M.P., that the Council have been deliberately breaking the law for years past and refusing to 'put the Public Health Act in operation, is characterized as "A lie which is all a lie." Can the gallant Admiral convince us that Dr. Salter was not *expressing an cillinion, but was lying ?

We do not ourselves believe that' the Westminster City Council have been deliberately refusing to put ; the Palle Health Act in operation. We feel that neither . .

they nor the general public sufficiently understood the viretched conditions prevailing in parts of Westminster until lately. Let us have done with idle recrimination. The - Siaeciatoi has 'been attacked for its legitimate criticisms and has answered vigorously.

Let Us forget personalities. If aught we have said has , been exaggerated, we will freely correct it. The slums of Westminster are 'a.' disgrace to us all. They have grown through Many 'causes. - They are not confined to West- minster. Much of what the Joint Report says about the difficulties created by the building trade may be true. We admit, again, that it is exceedingly easy to talk of great development schemes with their consequent increase in the rates, without sufficiently considering the burden they impose on the small man. To this section of the pamphlet we have not been able to do justice.

But overriding every other consideration is the plain human fact that we have thousands of people living in disgusting basements in Westminster, that there is over- crowding, rats, Vermin; all sorts of 'breeders of anarchy and illness. We know•the complexity of the slum qUes- tion, but we are also alive to its dangers. We know some- thing of the probable cost of clearance, but we have tried also to estimate the burden of the continuance of these evils in our midst, and we beg the borough of Westminster to set an example to the rest of England and to end as soon as may be the shame of these pigsties next door to our palaces.