Volume 1

Report of a committee of the council of the Statistical Society of London, consisting of Lieut.-Colonel W.H. Sykes ... Dr. Guy, and F.G.P. Neison, Esq., to investigate the state of the inhabitants and their dwellings in Church Lane, St. Giles's. Read ... 17th January. 1848.

  • Royal Statistical Society (Great Britain)
Date:
[1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of a committee of the council of the Statistical Society of London, consisting of Lieut.-Colonel W.H. Sykes ... Dr. Guy, and F.G.P. Neison, Esq., to investigate the state of the inhabitants and their dwellings in Church Lane, St. Giles's. Read ... 17th January. 1848. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    REPORT OF A COMMITTEE OF THE COUNCIL OF THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, CONSISTING OF LIEUT.-COLONEL W. H. SYKES, V.P.R.S., DR. GUY, AND F. G. P. NEISON, ESQ., TO INVESTIGATE THE STATE OF THE INHABITANTS AND THEIR DWELLINGS IN CHURCH LANE, ST. GILES’S. [Read before the Statistica] Society of London, 17th January, 1848.] It is only necessary to premise, that the inquiry of the Committee is consequent upon communications made to the Council by one of its members, respecting the state of the houses and their inhabitants in Church Lane, St. Giles’s, which involved such startling circumstances, that the Council deemed it a duty to have them verified and attested, not less for the sake of the public, than to add to those stores of information for the collection of which the Statistical Society was founded. Your Committee, pursuant to their appointment on the 18th of December, met in Church Lane, on Thursday, the 23rd December, at 1 p.m. :—- Present—Colonel Sykes and Dr. Guy, and Mr. Balfour, Agent of the Committee. Church Lane is situated in the Parish of St. Giles; it is 290 ft. long, 20 ft. wide, and contains 32 houses. It runs parallel with New Oxford Street, and is bounded at the west end by the backs of the new houses in Broad Street, and opens at the east end into George Street. There are several back courts, one of which measures 48 ft. long by 10 ft. broad, and contains seven small houses, the entrance to this court being by a narrow passage 2 ft. broad and 20 ft. long. These houses are of wood, and contain two rooms. Another court is 36 ft. by 24 ft., and contains six small houses. The houses in Church Lane consist of a parlour or ground-floor, of two rooms, a first floor, of one or two rooms, and a second floor, of one room. To the first land¬ ing on the stairs of some of the houses, one or two small wooden rooms are attached behind, occasioning considerable risk from fire. The houses have cellars under the ground-floor, but as there is no drainage whatever from them, they are not tenanted, with the exception of two; but some of them are used as day-rooms. The narrow entrance passage into each house terminates in a back yard 5 or 6 ft. square. The lane is lighted by three gas-lights. Water is supplied three times a week, but there is neither pump, tank, cistern, nor water-butt, B