On the whole, the healthiest accommodation is usually to be found in well-managed large blocks of workmen’s dwellings. This may be as dear as three rooms for 9s., or it may be as cheap as three very small rooms for 5s. 6d. The great advantages are freedom from damp, freedom from bugs, light and air on the upper floors, water laid on, sometimes a yard where the children can play, safe from the traffic of the street. But there are disadvantages. The want of privacy, which is very great in the cheaper buildings, the tendency to take infection from other families, the noise on the stairs, the inability to keep a perambulator, are some of them. Then there is no such thing as keeping the landlord waiting. The rent must be paid or the tenant must quit. The management of most buildings exacts one or two weeks’ rent in advance in order to be on the safe side. A tenant thus has one week up her sleeve, as it were, but gets notice directly she enters on that week. In some buildings the other people, kindly souls, will lend the rent to a steady family in misfortune. A carter’s wife—one of the cases in the investigation—had her rent paid for ten weeks, while her husband was out of work and bringing in odd sums far below his usual wage, by the kindness of the neighbours, who saw her through. She was in good buildings, paying a low rent, and as she said, “If I’d a-got out of this I’d never a-got in agen.” She paid off the money when her husband was in work again at the rate of 3s. 6d. a week. The three-quarters of a small house or the half of a larger house are likely to be less healthy than “buildings,” because houses are less well-built, often damp, often infested with bugs which defy the cleanest woman, have as a rule no water above the ground-floor, and may have fearful draughts and no proper fireplace. Their advantages are the superior privacy and possibly superior quiet, their accessibility from the street, and, above all, the elasticity with regard to rent. On the whole, the actual landlord is by no means the monster he is popularly represented to be. He will wait rather than change a good tenant. He will make no fuss if the back rent is paid ever so slowly. To many respectable folk, keeping the home together on perhaps 22s. a week, this is an inestimable boon. It is wonderful how, among these steady people, rent is made a first charge on income, though naturally, given enough pressure, rent must wait while such income as there is goes to buy food. Rents of less than 6s. a week are generally danger-signals, unless the amount is for a single room. Two rooms for 5s. 6d. are likely to be basement rooms or very small ground-floor rooms, through one of which, perhaps, all the other people in the house have to pass. One of two such rooms visited for fifteen months measured 8 feet by 12 feet, had doors in three sides of it, and was the only means of exit at the back of the house.