"A home partakes of the life of the dwellers in it. They mould and incorporate it with their being, and it helps to mould and fashion them. The 123,000 owners of an undivided and indivisible quarter of a hovel in Finsbury, and the other hundreds of thousands in like case elsewhere in the town, are curtailed of the essential parts of the rights of humanity by the miserable accident that their locality refuses them reasonable standing room. Family life is an impossibility for a whole family collected in the single room 12 to 15 feet by 6 to 10. In a multitude of instances those tenanting a single room are several families, not one. They have to distribute the floor by square inches, and grow up with less regard to decency than a cat or a dog." And in another letter written a few days later, Mr. Marchant Williams added:-- "It was only the other day that I discovered in one of these streets (near Fitzroy Square) a house containing nine rooms, each of which accommodates on an average eight persons! "... The rents in the most crowded parts of my district amount as a rule to about a third or fourth of the maximum wages earned by the tenants." He mentions a case, a riveter:-- "He had recently abandoned the room in which he, his wife, and six children had lived for two years." "I have more than once when going my rounds been accosted by a landlord in a state of abject terror, lest I might be arranging to rob him of some of his victims. The landlord's defence invariably is that he is obliged to levy high rents because the tenants frequently run away by night and leave no trace behind them of their whereabouts." More and more did the feeling grow that something must be done to ameliorate the conditions under which the working classes and poorer people were living, and on the 22nd of February, the Marquess of Salisbury, in the House of Lords, moved in an Address to Her Majesty for the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the housing of the working classes.[163] "The attention of persons of every class, of every creed, and school of politics, has been turned to this question," he said. H.R.H. the Prince of Wales said:-- "I feel convinced that your lordships, in common with all classes of Her Majesty's subjects, will be gratified to learn that the noble Marquess has asked for a searching inquiry into this great and momentous question with regard to the housing and the amelioration of the dwellings of the poor and of the working classes, and that Her Majesty's Government have decided to issue a Royal Commission for that purpose. "As your Lordships know I take the keenest and liveliest interest in this question. "I can assure you, my Lords, that I am deeply flattered at having been appointed a member of this Royal Commission." The Government accepted the motion, and a Royal Commission was forthwith appointed and immediately began its work.