Miss Burdett Coutts, occupy three blocks of building, which stand upon a freehold site, bounded by Charles Street and Crab-tree Row, on the southeastern side of Hackney Road. They are undertaken for the purpose of providing comfortable dwellings for the poorest of the industrious classes in their neighbourhood, at rents suited to their limited means. The walls are built of common brickwork throughout. The corridors and staircases are of stone. The ceilings only are plastered, and ornamentation generally is avoided. The buildings contain dwellings of one, two, and three rooms, furnished with cupboards, cooking apparatus, &c. Lavatories and baths are provided on each floor: club-rooms, wash-houses, and large dryingplaces occupy the topmost storey. The buildings are five storeys high; they are substantially built of the plainest and least expensive materials ; the living-rooms average 13 feet x 10 feet 6 inches. The bed-rooms average 13 feet × 8 feet 3 inches. The club-rooms average 34 feet X 15 feet, and the wash-houses 32 feet X 8 feet 6 inches.

All the rooms are 8 feet 6 inches high, except the club-rooms, which are 11 feet high. The tenements are situated on either side of an internal corridor, divided in the middle of its length by an open area, which separates the rear portion of the buildings into two wings. Each wing contains an open stone staircase, which gives access to the corridors, and ensures a constant supply of fresh air to the tenements. Adjoining each staircase are two sculleries—one for the use of the men, the other for the women. Each of these is similarly arranged, and both are replete with every comfort and convenience; and a plentiful supply of water for every purpose, besides the baths and washing-basons, is supplied by cisterns in the attic. In the centre of each staircase a dust-shaft is provided, with a receiver in each corridor.

A resident Superintendent keeps the accounts, and acts as General Manager; and a Porter attends to the cleanliness of the staircases, corridors, and lamps. The rents, which are paid in advance, are collected every week, and not more than one week's arrears are allowed.

As Miss Coutts's principal object in undertaking so large a work was to provide homes for the very poorest of the industrious classes, it was considered desirable to fix the rents at a rate low enough to ensure the dwellings being taken by these classes, and yet sufficiently high to yield a net return of about three per cent. upon the cost. It is right that this should be generally known, as experience proves that if a better class in point of means had been admissible, a much higher percentage than this could have been obtained. The tenements which consist of three rooms realize each 4s. or 5s. per week, according to their size; those tenements which consist of two rooms realize each 3s. 6d. per week; and those of one room, occupied by widows and persons without children, realize, according to their size, 2s. 6d. or 2s. per week. The buildings are always full; there are more applicants for residence than can be accommodated. The tenants are most orderly in their conduct, and regular in the payment

of their rent; and the general result of this good work, so far as it has proceeded, may be regarded as highly satisfactory.

One block of buildings (the east block) has been completed, and occupied sufficiently long to yield an accurate statement of its receipts and expenses for an entire year. The following particulars of its accommodations, original cost, &c., are taken from memoranda kindly furnished by my friend Mr. Henry Darbishire (the architect of the building), and may consequently be perfectly relied on as accurate.

The east block measures 176 feet by 32 feet 7 inches, and contains 52 tenements; viz., 19 tenements of three rooms, 28 tenements of two rooms, and 5 tenements of one room. The total cost, exclusive of land, was £10,170; of this amount £800 were absorbed by the outlay for foundations, which were of an unusually expensive character, owing to the defective nature of the ground apportioned for the site. The total revenue for the first fifty-two weeks after the completion and occupation of the building was £449 6s., arising from 2,578 weekly payments. The following account of the receipts and expenses for one year shows a balance of receipts over expenditure of about £293 11s. :

COLUMBIA SQUARE, EAST.

Summary of Receipts and Expenses for the Fifty-two Weeks completed

When the other buildings are completed, the whole forming a Square, to be called Columbia Square, it is calculated at least 175 families will be accommodated.

On perusal of the items of the foregoing summary of accounts, I wish to draw special attention to the outlay for rates, poor-rates, and taxes, all of which, in a Government building, would not have to be paid, and

consequently the interest on capital expended would be proportionably increased.

This building of Miss Coutts, forming Columbia Square, has led to other benevolent minds turning their attention to this most deeply interesting subject; and I shall now place before the reader a plan, showing that a larger income is easily obtainable, which, if proved, will warrant Government guaranteeing four per cent. on the Building Stock, to which in the earlier portion of this paper I alluded; and I trust I shall make it so clear that Government would incur no risk by such a guarantee, as to lead either to the Chancellor of the Exchequer taking up the matter himself, or that some influential member of the Government, or of the House of Commons, will urge it as a measure fraught with benefit to the poorer classes; whilst a better interest would accrue to those investing money in such acknowledged Government Stock than in Consols, the security meanwhile being equal in every respect.

The following particulars relate to the accommodation, cost, revenue, and expenditure, of a building which a gentleman (with whom I am personally acquainted, but whose name I do not feel myself privileged to quote without his permission) proposes to erect in Westminster, for the poorest portion of the working classes.

The price to be paid for the land is determined.

The cost of the building is assumed, as tenders for its erection have not yet been received; but the assumed amount stated agrees with an estimate which was supplied some time ago by a contractor who tendered for a similar building in the same neighbourhood, and it will not be exceeded.

The rents of the tenements are to be the same as those charged in Miss Coutts's dwellings in Bethnal Green.

The expenses are also calculated from the returns of those dwellings. The proposed building will occupy two sides of a square.

Its total frontage will be 256 ft. 6 in., and its width 31 ft. 6 in. The accommodation will consist of 78 tenements of two rooms, 12 ft. x 10 ft., and 12 ft. × 8 ft., at 2s. 6d. per week; and 10 tenements of two rooms of rather larger dimensions, at 3s. 6d. per week; besides 21 tenements of one room, giving a total of 109 tenements. There will be 20 lavatories, with every suitable convenience in each; and 10 coppers and wash-tubs will be provided in a laundry.

Supposing the building to be fully occupied throughout the year, the gross income will be £920 14s. The annual expenditure, including superintendence, repairs, poor, general, sewers, drainage, gas, and water rates, chimneysweep's wages, and insurance, will be £233; which amount, deducted from the gross revenue, leaves £687 143. as the return upon the original outlay of £13,000.

Deducting £37 14s. as a reserve fund for non-lets or other contingencies, £650, being interest at five per cent., will be secured.

If, as has been shown by the foregoing statement, five per cent. is obtainable on a building erected by private enterprise and benevolence subject to onerous rates and taxes, I think it stands to reason that a similar building, if carried into execution by Government, would save fully a half per cent. outlay annually-as all Government buildings are exempted from rates and taxes, besides not being amenable to expensive regulations in construction, insisted on with regard to private dwellings by the District Surveyor. On these grounds, adding this half per cent. saved, five and a half per cent. may, as a return, be fairly computed. I will now, from that interest, make in an equally fair spirit the probable reduction for the following contingencies:

Loss by portions of the building being at times un

tenanted

0 per cent.

Remuneration to Bank of England for paying semi-
annually the Dividend, and collecting the Transfers 01
Interest to Shareholders of (Government) Building
Guaranteed Stock

4

39

5 per cent.

Leaving a clear profit of a half per cent. to Government, which, in my opinion, might be beneficially employed according to the following suggestions:

Considering that the fare to Brighton and back, above 100 miles, is 2s. 6d., I cannot but imagine that, by a little management, it might be shown to Railway Directors that a line would be benefited by having, on working days, a morning and evening cheap train, calculated somewhat on the foregoing charge, which would convey labourers and artizans to and from their work.

Assuming that, as the Brighton Railway now carries at about the rate of a farthing per mile by Sunday excursion train, a permanent arrangement might be made by which, for a short journey, Railway Directors might be induced to reduce that charge, in consideration of its permanency, onethird, I would propose that sixpenny railway weekly tickets, not transferable, be allotted gratis to the male occupiers of the houses built by Government.

This would cost £65 per annum for the transport of fifty men per diem a distance of three miles, to their work, and a like distance back; and would exactly represent the half per cent. surplus interest alluded to on the £13,000, the outlay on the block of buildings on which I base all my calculations. The fifty men would fairly represent the working bees of that improved hive, and the same calculation of expense would hold good in proportion as such buildings were multiplied.

Besides buildings in the vicinity of railroads, plots of land might easily be obtained by Government at very moderate prices, bordering the river, and an arrangement might be carried out that a steam-tug should go up to London at a fixed hour in the morning, and return at a fixed hour in the evening; and each male occupant of the Government dwelling should have a gratis non-transferable ticket. A couple of lighters, to be towed by the steam-tug, would furnish ample accommodation; and, similarly to the railway expenditure, the half per cent. would go far to cover the expense, as the steam-tug could be employed during the day for other more remunerative work.

The foregoing proposals, if carried out, would give facility for having buildings erected in healthful, enjoyable sites, in place of the dens of wretchedness so ably described by Mr. Standish Grove Grady, in his article (ante p. 131) on "What the Rich are doing for the Poor." The existent evils, in that paper so graphically described as the sad condition of thousands, have long been well known, but no continuous scheme has been adopted to remedy effectually this plague-spot in our social arrangements. Private benevolence must have its limit; and companies formed to build model lodging-houses have difficulties to contend with which I will endeavour to portray, and which the Government scheme I propose would materially lessen.

In the first place, whenever companies raise model lodging-houses there is always the drawback existing that each subscriber feels he has a prescriptive right, not only to constantly inspect the buildings, but, besides offering suggestions, to find fault with the arrangements made by those in whose hands the management nominally rests; and subscribers cavil also at the amount of dividend paid, if not quite commensurate with that which by them is calculated on, although they possess very crude and imperfect knowledge of the expenditure necessary for the maintenance and well-being of the establishment.

According to my proposition, the shareholder would have nothing to do with the building, or buildings; he would simply buy Government Guaranteed Stock bearing a four per cent. interest, which he would receive at the Bank of England semi-annually, and his shares would be always saleable in the Stock Market at a fair value, in common with other Government Securities.

There is a feature in arranging the management of dwellings for the poor which has often escaped attention, but which I from experience know the poor lay much stress on ;-it is "privacy," and the absence of which induces multitudes to prefer miserable accommodation in preference to model lodging-houses. The poorer classes do not like to be intruded upon by visitors; they consider they have paid for their room, or rooms, and that they have an equal right to the quiet possession of the same, as much as those who, more favoured by fortune, possess large and commodious houses. To this "privacy" the poor, doubtless, have a right;