SIR,—As one who has for very many years been closely
connected with the voluntary movement for the better housing of the poor in this country, and who had the honour to be associated in 1900 with Miss Octavia Hill in creating the Improved Tenements Association, may I be allowed to call the attention of your readers to the fact that December 3rd next will be the centenary of the birth of the greatest of all housing reformers ?
Octavia Hill was born on December 3rd, 1838. Her whole life was devoted not only to " housing but to improving in all sorts of ways the conditions of life of the people of this country, and indirectly of everywhere else. We think now- adays that we are being enlightened and up-to-date in pressing for open spaces, community centres, nursery schools, better recreation bodily and mental for the poor, saving-the country- side, smoke abatement, and so forth, but in every one of these ways and many others Octavia Hill was fighting, from the 'sixties of last century onward, as brave a. battle against indifference and opposition as has ever been fought by man or woman in the interests of intelligence against stupidity, and thereby of good against evil.
Her greatest achievement was in " housing." I will say no more of that here, except to express my conviction that it was not the War by itself which has aroused the public, and therefore parliaments, to a great effort to amend, shameful housing conditions in this country, but Octavia Hill plus the War..
The immediate purpose of this letter is to give as many people as possible the opportunity of discovering in an interest- ing form something more about the life-work of this great Englishwoman. The Octavia Hill Centenary Exhibition, at the Housing Centre, 13 Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, S.W.1, is open, free ' to the public, from November 14th to December 22nd. It provides, in its five sections, evidence of (i) Octavia Hill's Diverse Interests, (2) Her Housing Ideals, (3) Growth of Her Housing Movement, (4) Her Own Life, with her family and friends, and (5) A Loan Exhibition of MSS., letters, speeches, pictures, .-sketches -and personal
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