“A part of a room to let.”  This notice was posted a short while ago in a window not five minutes’ walk from St. James’s Hall.  The Rev. Hugh Price Hughes is authority for the statement that beds are let on the three-relay system—­that is, three tenants to a bed, each occupying it eight hours, so that it never grows cold; while the floor space underneath the bed is likewise let on the three-relay system.  Health officers are not at all unused to finding such cases as the following:  in one room having a cubic capacity of 1000 feet, three adult females in the bed, and two adult females under the bed; and in one room of 1650 cubic feet, one adult male and two children in the bed, and two adult females under the bed.

Here is a typical example of a room on the more respectable two-relay system.  It is occupied in the daytime by a young woman employed all night in a hotel.  At seven o’clock in the evening she vacates the room, and a bricklayer’s labourer comes in.  At seven in the morning he vacates, and goes to his work, at which time she returns from hers.

The Rev. W. N. Davies, rector of Spitalfields, took a census of some of the alleys in his parish.  He says:-

In one alley there are ten houses—­fifty-one rooms, nearly all about 8 feet by 9 feet—­and 254 people.  In six instances only do 2 people occupy one room; and in others the number varied from 3 to 9.  In another court with six houses and twenty-two rooms were 84 people—­again 6, 7, 8, and 9 being the number living in one room, in several instances.  In one house with eight rooms are 45 people—­one room containing 9 persons, one 8, two 7, and another 6.

This Ghetto crowding is not through inclination, but compulsion.  Nearly fifty per cent. of the workers pay from one-fourth to one-half of their earnings for rent.  The average rent in the larger part of the East End is from four to six shillings per week for one room, while skilled mechanics, earning thirty-five shillings per week, are forced to part with fifteen shillings of it for two or three pokey little dens, in which they strive desperately to obtain some semblance of home life.  And rents are going up all the time.  In one street in Stepney the increase in only two years has been from thirteen to eighteen shillings; in another street from eleven to sixteen shillings; and in another street, from eleven to fifteen shillings; while in Whitechapel, two-room houses that recently rented for ten shillings are now costing twenty-one shillings.  East, west, north, and south the rents are going up.  When land is worth from 20,000 to 30,000 pounds an acre, some one must pay the landlord.

Mr. W. C. Steadman, in the House of Commons, in a speech concerning his constituency in Stepney, related the following:-