The slum : its story and solution / by Harry Barnes.

  • Barnes, Harry, 1870-1935.
Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The slum : its story and solution / by Harry Barnes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/446 (page 11)
    In our progress we must wade not through blood, but filth. Muddy England is a euphemism applied to the time when the first steps were taken to that antithesis of the slum, the adequate dwelling for the separate family. It is a labyrinth into which we are about to plunge, a labyrinth demanding some Ariadnean thread. Unco-ordinated and unrelated as the efforts of the past appear, they are not really so. Consciously or unconsciously they move according to plan ; they pursue the course of a river, swollen by tributaries, marked by shoals and rapids, changing direction from mile to mile, yet somewhere wind¬ ing safe to sea. It is not easy to locate with exactitude its source. A thin thread, it may disappear into mediaeval haze, and it is not till the nineteenth century that it gathers into flood. Efforts are governed by the law of acceleration, and that way encouragement lies. A few years in one century may do what generations have failed to accomplish in another. • « « • • • Our journey will take us through two periods, each with four stages. The First Period This is one in which sanitary measures, only indirectly affecting the dwelling, were predominant. It would be more correctly termed a period of health rather than housing effort. As a boundary-stone between the two periods the year 1875 may be conveniently placed. In that year the Public Health Acts were consolidated, the framing of bye-laws regulating the construction of buildings became an integral part of Public Health administrations, and the Cross Act for dealing with insanitary areas was passed. In