THE RURAL PROBLEM 19 



secondly, many of the cottages are often uninhabitable, 

 being old, in bad repair, and far too small for the average 

 family ; thirdly, the dearth of cottages is so marked a 

 feature of village life that most labourers have no choice 

 of a dwelling, but are compelled to put up with anything 

 they can get. 



Overcrowding is as prevalent in the country districts of 

 to-day as in the worst slums of our towns. The Select 

 Committee above referred to reported in 1906 that the 

 Housing Acts had always been a dead letter in country 

 districts, and that while in the towns, where public opinion 

 is more acute, the Acts have been in comparison more 

 uniformly administered, the authorities entrusted with 

 their administration " in rural districts have, generally 

 speaking, deplorably failed in their obligations." Private 

 inquiries* amply bear out the reports of County Medical 

 Officers of Health and the evidence so abundantly brought 

 before Public Committees of Inquiry. f The Medical Officer 

 of Health for Bedfordshire reported of Biggleswade : " One 

 frequently finds a bedroom is occupied by three or four 

 adult members of the same family of both sexes." In 

 Billericay, in Essex, an inquiry by the Medical Officer 

 revealed 44 cases of overcrowding, and, speaking of this 

 county as a whole, he reported " that there is a general 

 want of cottages with three bedrooms, and, in consequence 

 of this, overcrowding from time to time occurs, immoralitv 

 is fostered, and diseases spread." He also complained that 

 " there are no better houses into which the tenants can 

 remove." This complaint is repeated ad nauseam in the 

 Medical Reports. "The occupier has been given notice to 

 quit, but there is nowhere for him to go." J " Many cases 

 of overcrowding were observed, and considerable difficulty 



* An investigator reports the following case on the Dorset coast. A 

 damp old house with 2 small, ill-ventilated bedrooms, a draughty small 

 kitchen, and an out-scullery, inhabited by an old father and mother, a 

 grown-up son and his wife and her illegitimate child, a widowed daughter 

 with 4 young children, a very young unmarried girl and her illegitimate 

 child, making 12 persons in all. No vacant rooms are to be had 

 anywhere in the neighbourhood. 



t See also Our Village Homes, by Hugh Aronson, 1913; and The 

 Cottage Homes of England, by W. Walter Crotcb, 1908. 



X Crowland, Lincolnshire. 



C2 



