class="smcap">Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

I do not wish to be understood as saying that these defects are, in London at least, remediable. That unfortunately is not the case. That they are defects which ought to be avoided in places where land is less costly than in London is very evident.

Fig. 3.—Typical London House.

1. The main defect is due to the fact that the cubic capacity of the house is far too great for the area upon which it is built. The house is, in fact, a tower of five storeys, 60 feet high from basement to roof, and containing 37,000 cubic feet, standing on an area of 1,512 square feet. A house of this shape entails enormous labour upon servants. It has been said, that in raising the body vertically we do an amount of work equal to moving the body twenty times the distance horizontally. The climb from basement to the top storey is therefore equal to walking 1,000 or 1,200 feet along the level, and when a footman weighing 11 stone, and carrying 28 pounds weight of coals, climbs from the coal-cellar to one of the top rooms, the work done is rather more than four foot-tons. I do not know when high-service water supplies became general in London houses, but it is evident that when the only water-supply was in the basement, the inconvenience of these high houses must have been very great. Gas-pipes, hydraulic lifts, electric wires, speaking-tubes, and high water supply have so lessened the personal service required in these domestic towers, that they have become popular, and by increasing the overcrowding in our cities they now constitute a very serious sanitary danger. In America the houses with steel frames have been run up to a height of 250 feet and over, and have converted the streets into sunless, draughty cañons, in which locomotion is a matter of great difficulty, because the width of the street bears no due proportion to the cubic contents (and population) of the houses flanking it.

2. The house being flanked on either side by other houses, the front and back walls are alone available for admitting light and air, and the depth of the house is unduly great in proportion to its width. The noise of the neighbours is not always a trivial drawback.

3. One storey, and the largest, is below the street level, an arrangement which, from a sanitary point of view, is unjustifiable, and ought never to be imitated in the country.

4. There is no back door, which is a very serious defect in a house. The result is that the coals have to be got in, and the ashes and garbage to be got out, under the dining-room windows, and that while these tedious processes are in doing the traffic in the main street is very much impeded.

It is said that eels get used to skinning, and so the Londoner becomes very blind to the failings of the house which he inhabits.

The house of which the plan and sections are shown in the figures is not, be it observed, one of the dwellings of the poor, of which we hear so much, but one of the dwellings of the well-to-do, or even rich, fetching probably 350l. a year rent. It would need four servants, one of whom would sleep below ground level in the pantry; and in addition to the servants, eight persons might squeeze into such a house.

The basement below ground level is really a cellar dwelling, against which we inveigh, when we find it in Whitechapel. It is very dark, and requires artificial light nearly every day in the year. A butler sleeps in a dingy 'pantry' among the tea-cups and other gear, which he possibly sorts upon his unmade bed before he lays the cloth for breakfast.

This basement (Fig. 2) contains four sinks and two closets, each with its trap, and in each of the three areas are trapped gullies so placed that any gases which escape from them are more likely than not to find their way into the house.

The only way into the kitchen is through the scullery. The scullery sink is turned away from the window, and the smell of cooking and of cabbage water must inevitably find its way into the basement. A water-closet has been wedged into the back area between the windows of the kitchen and the servants' hall; and the larder, while it is without adequate light or ventilation, has a trapped gully at its door to serve as a seed-bed for mould fungi which will infect the food.

There is only one staircase, and this must serve as a shaft for the culinary and other fumes of the basement to rise in. It is entirely without independent ventilation until the half-landing above the drawing-room is reached. In fig. 1 there is another staircase window on the second floor, but this, be it observed, has been blocked by a water-closet in the house, as altered by the plumbers. This is a very serious thing to have done, and, in my judgment, is not in any way compensated by the changes recommended. The staircase has a skylight at the top, but skylights, being never opened in London because of 'the blacks,' are of very little use for ventilation. On the ground floor a water-closet abuts on the morning-room windows, while in the area beneath these windows is another water-closet, previously mentioned.

The first floor contains two fine drawing-rooms and a staircase window, and being without 'sanitary apparatus' is wholesome, except for the fumes which may ascend or descend the well-staircase. On this floor the light and decoration will render one oblivious of the basement. On the second floor the staircase window has been blocked, and there is an impossible bath-room, without adequate light or ventilation, which nothing can make wholesome, and which ought to be abolished absolutely. On the top floor the staircase ends in an unventilated cul-de-sac formed by four bedrooms, a dark 'box-room,' and a water-closet which is wedged in between two bedrooms.

This house has, if one may say so, been over-plumbered. There are five closets, five sinks, and a bath-waste (eleven trapped waste-pipes) for a maximum of twelve people. The closet on the second floor, and the one in the basement between the servants' hall and kitchen, should be abolished, and the fixed bath on the second floor should be removed. A bath-room wants light and air, and should always be against an outside wall. Persons should never take houses with extemporised bath-rooms poked in 'anywhere.'

In order to be fairly wholesome this house wants a fan-light over, or a glazed panel in, the front door, to serve the purpose of a window and ventilator, and a window over the W.C. between morning-room and study. In this way there will be the possibility of a through draught at the foot of the stairs. The staircase window on the second floor should be re-opened, and a window put above the W.C. on the top floor (the