ABSTRACT
Private enterprise did not find it profitable to provide adequate housing for the working classes. Investment was channelled into factories and the suburban and country villas to which factory owners repaired at the end of the working day. The gross excess of demand over supply of cheap rented accommodation resulted in the horribly verminous and insanitary tenements which alarmed observers in the 1870s and 1880s. In London the problems of overcrowding were particularly acute. The need for action had been recognized since the 1840s, though effective measures were few. In 1851 the Earl of Shaftesbury (1801–85) introduced the pioneering Labouring Classes Lodging Houses Act which attempted, largely unsuccessfully, to raise money for the erection or lease of houses for the use of the poor. The Acts of 1868 and 1875 promoted by the Liberal W.M. Torrens (1813–94) and by Richard Cross (1823–1914) for the Conservatives both accepted the principle that houses must be kept in good repair; the Cross Act enabled demolition of grossly unsatisfactory property to be effected and solid dwellings erected in their place. The Cross Act, however, was permissive only (13b) and met with mixed success at best. Joseph Chamberlain used it in Birmingham, but more to clear the city centre for prestige buildings than to re-house the poor. Other authorities were deterred by the cost and only ten of the eighty-seven entitled to make use of it had actually done so by 1881. Many observers pointed out that those dispossessed when their houses were pulled down could not afford the rent on better property, and so merely moved into other overcrowded property. The problem was just shifted a mile or two away (13 c & f).
