29 NOVEMBER 1924, Page 11

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

THE SLUM AND THE EMERGENCY HOUSE [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SiasYour stirring article on The Slum and the Emergency House " will surely be welcomed by every political party. That the Central Government should take this work upon itself is a vital point. How possible it is for a great sanitary reform to be " speeded up " is proved by our action in Jerusa- lem in 1918, when we gave its people a far better water supply than we enjoy in many parts of England. Mr. Massey, writing his account to the Times, said, " One of the biggest blots upon the Turkish Government of the city was the total failure to provide an adequate water supply. What they could not, or would not, do in their rule of 400 years His Majesty's Royal Engineers accomplished in less than two months."

In the spring of 1918, the Royal Engineers, without stoppage or hitch, supplied Jerusalem with water in a few weeks ! A preliminary survey was made on February 14th, a scheme submitted within four days—and then an apology was made that owing to shortage of transport and abnormally bad weather work could not be commenced until April 12th. From a group of spring heads on the hills many miles of pipes had to be laid, and a powerful pumping plant erected, but in spite of all difficulties pure water was being delivered to the people of Jerusalem on June 18th. Later we are told that the consumption of water has become ten times what it was in the previous year, and that the disease rate is rapidly falling. The Royal Engineers did not merely put up standpipes for the people to fetch their water. Any householder had only to apply to the military Governor for water, and a sanitary officer inspected the cistern, ordered it to be cleansed, and saw that it was done. A certificate being granted as to the cleanliness of the cistern, the engineers ran a pipe to it, and it was filled, no matter what its capacity. We are told that two were promptly filled with between 60,000 and 70,000 gallons. The Royal Engineers are now, presumably, as active and efficient as they were in 1918. Is it not possible to direct their attention to home service, until our own homes can boast as good a water supply as we have given to Jerusalem ? May we not even assert that it would pay us to do so ? How many English villages are without anything approaching a decent water supply ? Many cottages do not even possess a shallow well. In London the lack of water is frequently a disgrace to civilization. There are hundreds of houses let in floors as tenements to respectable working people where there is no water supply whatever, nor any sanitary convenience, except in the basement. The mother of perhaps four or five children, living on the top floor, has to toil to the basement for every bucket of water she needs, and to carry all dirty water downstairs to empty it. Does anyone doubt that in these cases—as in Jerusalem—the consumption of water would increase tenfold if a supply was easily accessible, or that this increased cleanliness would reduce the disease rate ? It is just among these large poor families, where an epidemic of measles or influenza spreads like the plague, that we find water difficult to obtain. No baths, not even a tap of cold water handy for the delicate mother of young children- working-men's wives are often delicate, though that word is seldom applied to them, and the Insurance Act has revealed that their sickness rate far exceeds the actuarial estimate. The standard of cleanliness depends very much upon the ease with which it can be obtained ; it may be that few of us would bathe our children every day if we had to carry all the water up and down several flights of stairs. That is what we expect of our slum mothers, and we shake our heads sadly over the children, whose beauty is veiled by a screen of dirt, and who wither and die from dirt-engendered disease. Even worse are the rural districts ; hundreds of cottages have only a " dipping hole "—a mere puddle dug at the side of a ditch, others have wells at some distance from the house, where the mother must stand in all weathers and turn a windlass thirty or forty times for every bucket of water.

We have thousands of unemployed men, trained and un- trained—cannot they be set to work until we have a water supply, as in Jerusalem, in every home in " England's green and pleasant land " Y—I am, Sir, &c., ERNESTINE M„tws.