ordinarily of three floors, ground, first, and second floors, with sometimes attics, and sometimes kitchens, which I need not here take into account; and each floor consists of the well-known two rooms, the front room being about fifteen feet by twelve feet, and the back room the same size minus the width of the staircase, or about nine feet by twelve or thirteen feet. The ground-floor front room is curtailed by the width of the entrance passage, and on that level there is a back door behind the stairs. Each floor is occupied by a separate family; the back yard, with its water supply, waste grating, watercloset, and dustbin, being common to all occupants. On each floor, the front room is the sitting or living room, and the back room is the bedroom. If the family consists of a married couple, with either no children or only very young ones, the children may be accommodated for sleeping on a small separate bedstead in the back room with the parents; or otherwise, there may be in the sitting-room a press or sofa bedstead, for their accommodation. Indeed, even when this is not necessary for the accommodation of children, it is very often found that people of this class, who are living as they consider comfortably, keep up the sofa bedstead in the sitting-room for the occasional accommodation of a guest.' Again, take the opinion of the Secretary to the Operatives' House Building Company, who says: "If they took the cases mentioned of the better artisan class living in houses of six or eight rooms, they would find that those houses were invariably built for the accommodation of one

family. The houses now occupied by artisans in apartments in dense neighbourhoods, were all so built originally, and were formerly actually occupied by single families of a rather higher social grade, while those now being built in the environs of London, were built as though they were intended to be occupied by one family. That the ordinary houses were, for the most part, very unsuited for the occupation of several families might be inferred from a general consideration of their plan. Those houses consisted of basement, ground, first, second, and third floors-sometimes. The basement was generally the only portion fitted with the proper means for cooking; the parlours were small rooms, usually fitted with dwarf cupboards and small grates, adapted only for sitting-rooms; the first floor partook more or less of the drawing-room character, with, perhaps, marble chimney-pieces; and the floor above, built and fitted as bedrooms, were even more unsuited to the proper performance of the domestic duties of a family. The inconveniences in this respect increased the higher they went up. Such was the ordinary accommodation of well-to-do artisans. There were no conveniences for getting clean water upstairs, and removing dirty water to downstairs -a task which usually fell to the artisan himself, when he returned home from his day's work;-and on one day of the week, certainly for the greater part of the year, he had to submit to the inconvenience of a vapour bath, from wet linen hung in the room to dry. Such was the ordinary state of life of the artisan class. The

conveniences for cooking were extremely limited, and when they considered how necessary it was to a man's health that his food should be wholesomely cooked, and his means economised as much as possible, they must feel the importance of providing proper accommodation. He did not think those people ought to be called Quixotic who attempted to give the artisan class places to live in where their wives could perform the multifarious offices of domestic life without so much labour as they usually entailed.'

These then are the existing homes of many, many thousands of the industrial classes, and it must be remembered that such homes are perpetually built wherever builders can find vacant ground, thus continuing the ONE plan they have, with all its objections. Amongst the objections that most prominently strike one, are the following :

1. The inconvenience of fetching water from a distance.

2. The inconvenience of removing waste or dirty

water.

3. The distance to the watercloset, and its use by different families.

4. The inconvenience in removal of cinders, &c., to the dustbin.

5. The absence of any convenience for washing up plates, dishes, &c., thereby compelling the use of the living-room for that purpose, and so preventing that room being kept dry and tidy.

6. The absence of coal receptacles in close proximity.

7. The great labour and time expended in the present mode of getting and getting rid of water, washing up,' fetching coals, and removal of dust and cinders.

I think all will admit that where cleanliness necessitates a great amount of labour among the working classes, dirtiness and untidyness are found to exist, and that therefore the first essential to be sought in altering their existing dwellings is to give them to their hand,' as they would express it, all those appliances which will lessen that labour. I am certainly afraid that if the middle or upper classes had to struggle against all the inconveniences I have enumerated, they would also succumb to dirt and untidyness. But whether this be so or not, one thing is certain, which is this, that to give the working classes every convenience is a great step towards the elevation of the masses.

In the two chapters that follow, I propose to explain how existing houses might be altered so as to meet all the objections I have mentioned. Then I shall devote a chapter to the very important question of cost.

I will now conclude the present chapter, as I feel that my readers, both lay and professional, will agree with me fully to this extent that the case is proven as to the present houses, and that it would be one of the greatest boons to civilisation and to the improvement of the enormous masses of town working men and their families if some plan could be devised to alter existing houses, this being the only way to deal quickly and effectually with so vast a question.

CHAPTER IV.

EXPLANATORY OF TWO DESIGNS REGISTERED UNDER THE TITLE B. FLETCHER'S MODEL PLAN FOR ADAPTATION OF DWELLING-HOUSES FOR LETTING IN FLATS.'

HAVING now expounded the view that the conversion of existing houses to the purpose of 'model dwellings,' is a scheme which may in many cases present advantages superior to that of the erection of an entirely new building specially for the purpose, as where owners of house property may desire to benefit the poorer classes without incurring any very considerable outlay, and at the same time obtain a good rate of interest on the capital invested, I may proceed to the development of my ideas as to the means by which these ends may be best arrived at. For this purpose I have had taken the plans of a house situated in a street leading out of the Hampstead Road, which may be accepted as a fair type of a very common class of house property in London, and have devised such alterations as, with the least outlay, appear necessary to render each floor suitable for letting as a separate set of apartments, comprising in itself all the conveniences of a dwellinghouse of the poorer class. These alterations I hope. by the following explanations, and with the aid