"NARRATOR:" "A great deal these days is written about the slums." "This film is going to introduce you to some of the people really concerned." "First, Councillor Lauder," "Chairman of the Stepney Housing Committee, will tell you something of the problem of slum clearance." "LAUDER:" "The problem of the slum faces us because in the early days, rows upon rows of ugly, badly designed houses were hastily put up to provide accommodation for the ever-increasing army of workers which poured in from the country to the towns." "Here are some pictures of typical slum architecture." "This roof is sagging because the rafters have decayed." "No amount of new tiles will put it right." "When these houses were erected, anyone could build a factory right outside your front door." "Many of the houses are so old that they have to be shored up to prevent them falling down altogether." "Sometimes the mortar falls away from the brick and the walls bulge out." "Here are examples of sheer neglect." "These walls probably haven't been attended to since before the war." "And the woodwork has gone unpainted for generations." "Many houses have not got water laid on." "People have to manage as well as they can with a tap in the yard, and sometimes at the end of the street." "Few houses have provision for the drying of washing and the clean clothes have to be hung up in the narrowest of back yards." "When it's wet, the clothes have to be dried in the passage." "Here is a typical interior of a decayed house." "And here, the lath and plaster have given away altogether." "This lavatory and sink has to do for four families." "NARRATOR:" "And now for the people who have to live in the slums." "Here is Mr Norwood." "These two rooms which I am in now," "I have to pay 10 shillings a week for it." "And I haven't the room to swing a cat round." "I've also got five other neighbours alongside of me, with the same predicament as I am in meself." "And I'm not only overrun by bugs, I've got mice and rats." "With the washing, my missus has to send out every little bit of washing there is." "Every drop of water, we have to go out in the yard for it, to fetch it." "If we want to wash the baby, we have to use the dish and use it in the same room as where I am." "As for cooking, we have to use the gas stove alongside of the bed where we sleep." "And we eat and drink in the other room where the children also lay." "Coming into these rooms, I've had no luck since I've been in them." "First, I lost one youngster in one." "Then I lost another youngster and another one seven weeks after." "NARRATOR:" "This is what Mrs Hill has to say." "This house is getting on my nerves." "We're shored up in every room." "There's the staircase that you can't walk up it unless you fancy you're seasick." "One leg you want longer than the other." "And the upstairs is coming downstairs, where it's sinking." "We went to see the new houses and they are lovely." "But here, it gets on your nerves for everything's filthy." "Dirty, filthy walls and the vermin in the walls is wicked." "So, I'll tell you, we're fed up." "If anybody comes to see you, they say they feel bilious when they get down the stairs, because it's all crooked." "These are the stairs I told you about, that you want one leg bigger than the other to come up." "And when you scrub 'em, the water pours down the sides instead of coming on the stairs." "And what with the hole in the wall," "I can't tell you how we have to manage." "There is that we just clear up for daytime to keep the dirt out of our mouths and that's all." "You go up the stairs and you don't know whether you're coming down again or not." "Same with the passage." "That's all the same, on the crook." "In fact, everything in the house is on the crook." "There's not a straight thing in it." "What with the shoring up of the passage, and the stairs, and the coal cupboard, in fact, we got no convenience whatever." "As you can see, you're frightened to let the children up the stairs in case they fall down." "And you're frightened of them going on the landing in case the landing comes down into the passage." "So I can tell you how we are fixed." "NARRATOR:" "And here is Mrs Graves." "Well, I've been here for 24 years." "And this last one, it has been a misery to me." "My boards give way in the front room so I take my bed down and put it in the back." "I went to bed early." "I had a baby very bad." "In the morning, instead of getting up for the children for school, as being awake all night," "I let the children lay, as the baby went to sleep for the first time." "So, our little black dog kept running about." "So, I must have dozed off with the baby." "Thinking it was a dog on me head, I looked up." "Instead of that, it was a big rat." "I screamed and ran out and left the baby." "I have to put the dirt into my bath." "Fetch it through the kitchen window and out through the kitchen." "You cannot get it out of the passage on account of the shoring up." "We have no cupboard for food, not even to put a bit of bread in." "We leave anything on the table the nighttime, we have the rats." "NARRATOR:" "And here is Mr Burner." "I reckon the conditions of living in these little slums is a bit hard for the wife." "And besides myself and the children, putting them up in the one room." "There's little..." "(CHILD EXCLAIMING)" "Of course, a lot of people don't understand what it is living in one room." "The cooking conditions is very hard, especially on the wife." "She has to do the cooking, it's all done on a gas ring." "And means of frying, there's no frying in that." "If anyone comes to a baked dinner, it's in the oven." "And then we light the fire outside." "It's too warm in the room." "Of course, we can only buy enough food for the one day, as there's no conditions or anywhere to keep the food overnight." "As it wouldn't do the food any good to keep it, being as all the breath of the five of us in the one room will turn it bad." "The washing conditions, we have a little bit." "That is in the back yard." "It's not too great, but we get over that." "Of course," "I don't suppose people realise what it really is to be tied up in the one room and cannot get anything any better." "We are only hoping that the council liven their ideas up and get their minds made up to get the flats ready so that every working class man will have a hygienic flat to live in." "Where the cooking conditions is better, the living accommodation is better, the sleeping accommodation is better, and what's more, you have a bath." "LAUDER:" "The more enlightened public authorities have been applying themselves to the task of slum clearance with energy." "Public authorities have now the power to pull down slums and put up in their place new and fine houses." "But the ever present problem which slows down the most energetic authority is where to put people while their hovels are being pulled down and new houses built for them." "NARRATOR:" "A great deal of thought from architects, engineers and other experts has gone into the design of buildings for rehousing." "Here is a model of a block of flats prepared by the British Steelwork Association, and based on recommendations by the council for the research on housing construction." "The building has a steel frame, which takes the whole weight." "The walls do not have to support the weight of the building or the roof." "They are made of light standard units which are fitted into position after the framework has been put up." "All the parts of the building are standard." "They can be brought complete from the factory and put into position at once." "Here's another steel frame building designed for the Quarry Hill Estate at Leeds." "The walls, floors and staircase treads are made of pre-cast concrete slabs reinforced by steel." "The walls and floors are made with an air space to keep out noise." "Each flat has a back-to-back range for coal or coke, a gas griller and a gas plug by every fireplace." "This model won first prize in a competition organised by the cement industry." "In this kind of construction, wooden moulds are put up and concrete poured in." "The concrete is reinforced by light steel rods or mats." "The walls carry the whole load." "There is no other framework." "In this particular example, walls and floors are cast in one piece." "Here is another reinforced concrete building now going up at Kensal Green." "The two blocks have been arranged to run roughly north and south so that the rooms get as much morning and evening sun as possible." "Gas is used for cooking, heating and lighting." "The inside of a building is as important as the outside." "The rooms must get as much sun as possible." "The walls must keep out the sound of the people next door." "The kitchen is very important." "It must be easily kept clean and the appliances must be cheap to run." "The gas industry has designed suitable appliances for cheap cooking and for room and water heating, especially to meet the needs of slum clearance schemes." "The general layout of a site is extremely important." "Here's a model of the whole Quarry Hill Estate at Leeds." "It's a good example of blocks of flats laid out with large open spaces, a welfare centre, a shopping centre and all kinds of amenities." "Where there is enough room and where the price of land is not too high, it's possible to build cottage estates and give each house its own garden." "LAUDER:" "When a public authority embarks on slum clearance work, it must take people just as they are." "It is, however, our experience that if you provide people from the slums with decent homes, they quickly respond to the improved conditions and keep their homes clean and tidy." "In Stepney, we are finding that the amount of interest which the people are taking in their new flats is advancing day by day." "(DOG BARKING)" "NARRATOR:" "And now let's have a word with Mrs Reddington." "Well, I'm very pleased to know that... that I've got a nice little flat in Irving House now." "Away from Market Buildings, where there were seven of us in two rooms." "I had to do all my home cooking in the room that we slept and lived, all of us, seven of us." "Now I've got a nice little place of my own." "Three bedrooms, a lovely scullery, a living room and a bathroom." "The bathroom, the best of all, what we wanted." "Away from Market Buildings." "I could not do no washing there." "I had to send it all out." "I couldn't open the windows to let any air in." "Well, I can open all the windows now and let all the nice fresh air in in the morning for the children, as my children are ever so much healthier and better." "NARRATOR:" "And now, Mrs Attride." "MRS ATTRIDE:" "Well, I like the place very much." "I've got two nice rooms, scullery and bathroom, a nice cupboard and a wardrobe and a nice cooker and a portable copper." "NARRATOR:" "All the same, Mrs Attride will never forget the rats in the house she had before." "One night I was up late and I said, "Mike," I said," ""the old general's up here again," I said." "He said, "Oh, nonsense," he said." ""You're crackers."" "So, I said, "No, I ain't." "I can hear him."" "I said, "Quick," I said, "he's on the bed."" "He said, "Right-o," and come up." "So, when he come up, he said, "So he is."" "And you see him on the bed sitting like that, see, looking at him." "He throwed the clothes over the top, and of course he got away again." "When he got away, he got on the floor." "And he got behind my bed, sitting like that, like me." "And he put his two feet around the bed, sitting like that." "So, I said, "He's gone."" "He said, "I don't think so." I said, "He is."" "He said, "No, he's under the bed."" "When he jumped down like that to find him, of course he jumped up, he jabbed him with a broom and he got away from here and he went over on the sideboard, jabbed him again with the broom, broke the broom," "and then he knocked him down on the ground." "Of course, the screams from him was terrible." "So, he had to jump on him and then he picked him and he killed him." "There's two caretakers in this estate." "We have to sweep the stairs daily, see that all balconies are clean and sweep up the courtyards and pick up litter on the lawn." "This takes us in the course of the morning up to about midday." "Then we break away for dinner." "After dinner we have to come back and pick up the remaining litter left on the courtyards by the children and then do all minor repairs, such as unstopping of sinks, unstopping of baths and unstopping of lavatories." "We carry on this work up to about 5:00 in the evening, when we break away for our tea." "After tea, one man comes back on duty." "He has to parade the courtyard, keep all the children in order and see that they don't get up to no mischief." "He has to carry on up till 12:00 at night, when it becomes his duty then to walk round at midnight to see that no music or any noise is being made on the estate, for the quietness of the tenants." "LAUDER:" "Up to the present, only the fringe of the problem of the slums has been touched." "However, there is reason to hope that within the next 10 years, considerable strides will be made towards removing the worst slums." "MAN:" "There was half of this court sleeping outside." "Two, three nights a week." "Couldn't get no sleep." "Five of us got to sleep in one room upstairs, saturated with bugs." "WOMAN 1:" "Also got a girl away through the condition of the place with pneumonia, and also had a boy away." "WOMAN 2:" "Hundreds of them." "Every direction." "And not small ones but large ones,just like beetles." "You couldn't discern whether they were beetles or what." "But they were bugs." "WOMAN 3:" "The rain pours in there, settles in that bit of wood there." "Then after it settles there, it don't come through at the time, when the rain comes, but it comes down a couple of days after and the smell of it's terrible." "WOMAN 2:" "Pay 11 and three a week for two rooms." "And what's worse is when they go to school the next day, if there is any vermin on them." "'Tis no fault of ours." "But still, they don't always look at that, do they?"