Only a few traces (of the slums) now remain, but using Knipe's town map of 1883 and the O.S map of 1884, together with the runs of street guides, there is no difficulty in establishing lists of the courts and tenements. A few of the smallest yards may have been missed, but it becomes clear that at the end of the First World War there existed at least 400 tenements of substandard class. The occupancy averaged over four per tenement, giving a minimal total of 1,600 persons. The 1921 census gave a population of 9,882, and the inhabited dwellings were 2,570. Thus 15% of the dwellings were of a slum type and housed over 16% of the population.

Life in the courts followed a repetitive pattern of events. Sunday mornings were often marked by a sharp smell of burning feathers and some kitchen walls festooned with drying clapnets after a successful co-operative poaching venture; later in the morning would come a scurrying of housewives to the adjoining bakery where meals were cooked for twopence. Saturday afternoons were useless for doctors visiting; the men would be out at the football or on their allotments, the womenfolk would often be discovered sitting in zinc bath tubs in front of the kitchen fire.

(Text and Figures Till, E.C., 1990., A Family Affair- Stamford and The Cecils 1650-1900., A. H. Jolly)

Population Figures

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