The very same day the Commissioners sent to me about this sudden accession of work in Southwark, they asked me whether I could also take over one hundred and sixty houses in Lambeth. I had known that this lease was falling in to them, and I knew that they proposed rebuilding for working people on some seven acres there, and would consult me about this. But I had no idea that they meant to ask me to take charge of the old cottages pending the rebuilding. However, we were able to undertake this, and it will be a very great advantage to us to get to know the tenants, the locality, the workers in the neighbourhood, before the great decisions about rebuilding are made. In this case I had the advantage of going round with the late lessee, who gave me names, rentals and particulars, and whose relations with his late tenants struck me as very satisfactory and human. On this area our main duties have been to induce tenants to pay who knew that their houses were coming down (in this we have succeeded), to decide those difficult questions of what to repair in houses soon to be destroyed, to empty one portion of the area where cottages are first to be built, providing accommodation elsewhere so far as is possible, and to arrange the somewhat complicated minute details as to rates and taxes payable for cottages partly empty, temporarily empty, on assessments which had all to be ascertained, and where certain rates in certain houses for certain times only were payable by the owners whom we represent. LETTER OF 1903.—The past year has brought one very large expansion of our work, larger than that of any previous year; and it is started on independent lines, in a way which gives hope for future growth. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners wrote to tell me in the autumn that an area in South London containing twenty-two acres, and with between five hundred and six hundred houses on it, was falling in to them at the expiration of a long lease, and they asked me to undertake the management of the property. Bearing in mind what they themselves had said as to providing for the continuity of such work, and with a deep desire not to lose near touch with my own old tenants, workers and places, if I spread my time over still larger areas, I set myself to think whether this new work might not be started from a new centre, and have been fortunate enough to be able to recommend a lady of great power and experience, who consents to undertake this new property, with direct responsibility to the Commissioners.