couraged and bettered, and no amount of collective accommodation for men only or women only would touch that great question. The two-roomed dwelling was the very minimum family accommodation possible; but it must be recognized that family life entirely carried on in two rooms could not be regarded as the standard of "home" in which the bulk of the young population of the nation should be reared and trained as future citizens, however humble their walk in life. As both of these rooms might, sooner or later, require to be used as bed-rooms, they must further consider how the second room may have removed from it such provision as might be made elsewhere. Food storage, cooking and warming, ablution and clothes washing might be so removed to a combined kitchen, larder, scullery and wash-house, and so they reached a three-roomed self-contained dwelling. The possibility of installing a food cupboard, a cooking range, a draw-tap and sink and a washing copper in the same room must be admitted. The combination of kitchen, larder, scullery and wash-house had this great disadvantage-that the room being applied to so many purposes it could not well be used for any other. The separation of this into two rooms, a scullery and a kitchen, enabled the kitchen to be freed from the other purposes and to be usable as a livingroom, this in turn dispensing with a bed-room being so used, as must of necessity otherwise be the case. Here, then, they reached the four-roomed self-contained family dwelling. In proof of the fact that progress is being made in this direction, Dr. Sykes quoted some extremely interesting figures drawn up by Dr. J. B. Russell, the well-known medical officer of health of Glasgow, showing that during the last quarter of a century there had in that city been a steady increase in the percentage of the population living in two, three and four rooms, and a corresponding decrease in the percentage of those in one room and also in the case of those living in five rooms and upward. The number of people living in four-room dwellings, as well as those in three-room dwellings, showed a continuous and increasing proportion, the greatest gain of all being ultimately in the three-room dwellings. But the remarkable point was that, whereas in the decennium 1871-81 the proportion of persons living in two-room dwellings increased 3.2 per cent., and the proportion in three-room 2.8, in the decennium 1881-91 the proportion in two-room dwellings only increased 2.8, whereas the proportion in three rooms rose 3.7 per cent. Above all towered the notable fact that the proportion of persons living

in one-room dwellings fell between 1871 and 1897 from 30.4 to 18.0 per cent. of the total number of the population, and it was significant that the increase of proportion appeared to be converging toward the three and four-roomed dwelling. Unfortunately, no such valuable comparative figures were available for England and Wales, or any English towns, Dr. J. B. Russell's method having only been adopted at the last census in 1891, but he presented a table showing the percentage of population in one, two, three and four rooms in the whole of England and Wales, in the rural districts, in the urban districts, in St. Luke's, one of the most crowded, and in Lewisham, one of the least crowded districts in London. Comparing the St. Luke's figures with those of Glasgow, Dr. Sykes pointed out that the former had about the same proportion of population housed in three rooms, and a slightly larger proportion in four rooms, a very much larger proportion in five rooms and over, and a much smaller proportion in two rooms, but a somewhat larger proportion in one room. Comparing Lewisham with St. Luke's, the great difference was that in Lewisham 53.8 per cent. less of the population lived in one and two rooms and 55.8 per cent. more in five or more rooms than in St. Luke's. That, no doubt, was due to the difference between the classes inhabiting a semi-rural and choice residential suburban area as compared with a crowded central area in a large city. After a reference to the difficulty of accurately estimating the normal proportion of urban population living in several-roomed houses, Dr. Sykes proceeded to consider whether it was possible to reduce

THE NUMBER OF ROOMS

in the ideal self-contained large family dwelling of four roomsnamely, two bed-rooms, a kitchen and a living-room, a scullery, wash-house and larder, and a water-closet, with yard or balcony. If the family were very small one bed-room might suffice, and the number of rooms be reduced to three, constituting what might be regarded as the ideal self-contained family dwelling. Could any further reduction be made, and how? At some sacrifice of family life and independence in the construction of buildings containing numerous dwellings, another room might be lopped off by setting the larder in the kitchen wall, opening to the air, and constructing a scullery and wash-house for the common use of several families, and where that form of construction was adopted the water-closets

were treated in a similar manner. In some cases the scullery was also separated from the wash-house, the scullery being placed close to the dwellings and the wash-houses collected together at a distance. That class of dwellings might be better known as associated dwellings, in contra-distinction to self-contained dwellings. It was important that the water-tap and the water-closet should be as nearly accessible to the dwellings they served as possible, in every case on the same floor of the building, and that such provision should be made for every twelve occupants or less. The water supply and drainage should strictly conform with official regulations, for in buildings in which the number of occupants was multiplied the danger incident to defects was proportionately increased. Proceeding to refer to

VENTILATION,

Dr. Sykes said that some years ago Dr. Arthur Newsholme, in a paper read before the Royal Statistical Society, showed that in London houses constructed in separate dwellings or common-stair dwelling-houses appeared statistically not to have any particular influence upon health except in this respect-that they produced a greater prevalence of those forms of infectious diseases for which there was no hospital provision, such as measles, whoopingcough, etc. The lesson to be learned from these statistical researches was that the staircases and passages of such houses must be so constructed as to be fully and permanently open to the outer air. That necessity was the more obvious when it was pictured that the separate dwelling all open on to the common stair and passages, and that the dwelling-rooms of each dwelling were also all in direct aërial communication with each other and were not separated by a ventilated staircase-well, as in the older type of house. The statistical researches of Dr. Tatham, superintendent of statistics of Somerset House, when medical officer of health for Manchester, into the mortality and morbidity of back-to-back houses furthermore pointed to the necessity for having through ventilation to each dwelling-that is, that a back-to-back type must not be adopted, but that one or more of the rooms must be situated on the opposite front of the building to the other room or rooms, so as to allow of thorough perflation when windows and doors were opened. In this connection it need scarcely be added no water-closet should have direct aërial communication with any room of a dwelling, and especially where the rooms were in direct

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aerial communication with each other, and, furthermore, that that every dwelling should have close access to a modicum of open space, in the form of a yard or balcony, wherein to place refuse or any objectionable matters and for other purposes. In planning, this open space might be made the means of cutting off the watercloset from aërial communication with the dwelling. As to open spaces at the front and rear of the building, it was now accepted that these should be as wide, and might be as wide again, as the height of the house. The erection of baths in corridors and spare corners had not met with successful application, and the only provision that appeared to succeed in large blocks of separate dwellings was the erection of a separate building, fitted with baths and furnished with hot and cold water under the care of an attendant. To that building also might be conveniently added another containing the wash-houses of associated dwellings. The concluding part of the paper was devoted to the question of

CUBIC SPACE,

which divided itself into (1) the cubic capacity or size of dwelling-rooms, and (2) the cubic space per head. Although it had been necessary for the purpose of lucid description to regard a scullery and wash-house as a room, it was not a fit place for living or sleeping in, and could not be included in the term dwellingroom. One of the principal points governing the size of dwellingrooms was the means of ventilation, and the smaller a room the greater the difficulty of ventilating it, so that restriction must be placed upon the reduction of size in new buildings. The standard height now generally adopted was 9 feet and the minimum area 96 square feet, say 12 feet by 8 feet, or 11 feet by 9 feet, or 10 feet by 10 feet, a cubic capacity of something under 900 cubic feet. The cubic space per head was the most difficult point of all to deal with in practice, and must be regarded sanitarily as the most important. In 1851 the Common Lodging-Houses Act was passed, which placed the control of common lodging-houses in the hands of the police, with power to make by-laws. At that period there was no doubt some difficulty in fixing the minimum amount of cubic space per head to be enforced, and it appeared to have been fixed successively at 240, 260, 280 and 300 cubic feet, at which point it stood at present. It would be interesting to know how this amount was reached, and it was a curious coincidence that if they measured a bedstead 6 feet long with a 2 foot gang

way at the bottom and 2 feet wide with a 1 foot gangway at the side, they arrived at an area of 8 feet by 4 feet, the minimum amount of floor space in which it was possible to put an approachable bedstead, and if that be multiplied by 7 feet, the minimum height probably adopted at that period, since cellar dwellings of a less height than 7 feet were illegal, they arrived at a cubic space of 240 cubic feet, and it required but the addition of a few inches to each dimension to raise that space to 260, 280 and 300 cubic feet. It was highly probable, therefore, that that minimum was a purely mechanical calculation in packing, the requirement of the human subject being overlooked; 300 cubic feet still remained the minimum standard of cubic space for sleeping-rooms. It was true that a recent Factory and Workshop Act only provided for 250 cubic feet per head, but a person awake had more control over the condition of the air breathed than a person asleep for perhaps eight hours at a stretch. The Local Government Board's Model By-Laws provided for 400 cubic feet in tenement-rooms, used both for living and sleeping, and the 300 was recommended to be increased in the dormitories of common lodging-houses that might require it. Many years ago the late Dr. Edmund Parkes showed that, calculated on a physiological basis, the human adult required 10,008 cubic feet of space, because in order to maintain the air in a sufficient state of average purity in a dwelling-room it was necessary to supply 3,000 cubic feet of air per hour, and the air in this climate could not be changed more often than three times per hour. The medical profession were now strongly advocating the cure and mitigation of consumption, or tubercular phthisis essentially a disease spread by crowding-by fresh air treatment. Was it out of place to advocate even more strenuously the prevention of the disease by fresh air, by the provision of more cubic space, and especially by raising the present inadequate minimum standard? The adoption of the maximum as a working standard was scarcely practicable, but it was practicable to advance the minimum standard to 400 cubic feet at the very least in all cases, and if the lauded fresh air treatment meant anything, it meant, firstly, a decided step in that direction. A standard of two persons per room was adopted in schemes for re-housing and in census returns for measuring overcrowding. With regard to the latter, it gave no idea of the amount of cubic space per head, inasmuch as the sizes of the rooms were not known. In reference to the former, to design dwellings allowing 500, 600 or 700