Page:Dwellings of working-people in London.djvu/14

 Sydney Waterlow), the late Lord Mayor of London, who has identified himself so honourably with the movement for providing better habitations for the poor, and who can tell the House more than I can with respect to this subject. In April 1872, in a letter which he wrote to the Daily News, he described the existence in London of large waste places, and explained what a mistake it was that they should exist, for the sake not only of the people who live in them, but of the owners of the adjoining property. This is what he describes in April 1872.

'Commercial Street—Shoreditch to Whitechapel—was opened in 1852; Southwark Street in 1862; and in both streets large plots of land still remain uncovered. The new Farringdon Road is another case in point. It was opened in 1858, and very little of the surplus land has yet been built upon. The frontages are from one end to the other almost a dreary waste; the loss in the interest of the money alone amounts to nearly the whole of the principal; so that even were the land to be now sold for double what it would have fetched in 1858, the Corporation would only just recoup the loss sustained by this 14 years' waiting. Meanwhile other and more serious losses have been going on. The district has lost the whole value of the parochial rates and taxes which would have been paid on inhabited houses; it has lost the increased value on the surrounding property which increased trade would have brought.'

Now if any hon. member will walk through Farringdon Street and near the Holborn Viaduct he will still see large spaces of this kind surrounded by buildings, these spaces lying waste, to the injury not only of the Corporation or other persons who may own the land, but of the occupiers of surrounding property, the shopkeepers, the ratepayers, and above all of the working classes who are living over-crowded in the neighbouring parts of London.

I have a letter which was kindly addressed to me by the Surveyor of the Trustees of Mr. Peabody, which shows that there also exist other sites, some of the class I first mentioned, some of the class I last mentioned, and some partly of the one class and partly of the other, which though they exist cannot be obtained by those anxious to build for the working classes. I think I am justified in reading this statement to the House, coming as it does with all the authority of the Peabody Trustees. The letter says:—