ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the 1930s, Bethnal Green, encompassing 759 acres, registered as the fifth smallest Metropolitan borough.1 With the 1931 Census showing a population of 108,194, making for an average population density of 142.4 persons per acre, the second highest of the 29 Metropolitan boroughs that comprised the London Administrative County, Bethnal Green exhibited many of the features of overcrowding associated with Shoreditch.2 A rate of 1.35 inhabitants per room, the third highest in the London Administrative County, as well as 6.9 per cent of its population living more than 3 to a room, a figure twice the average of 3.4 per cent recorded by the New Survey of London Life and Labour's Eastern Area study (1931), reflected its adverse state of congestion.3
