During the last years of the First World War, Lloyd George inaugurated a national campaign to build ‘Homes fit for Heroes’. Neville Chamberlain, chairman of the government’s Unhealthy Areas Committee wrote in his report of 20 April 1921 that ‘The City of Leeds is perhaps confronted with the most difficult problem to be found in any of the provincial towns, owing to the enormous number of back-to- back houses. There are 72,000 of these of which 33,000 are the oldest and worst, built in long continuous blocks opening directly to the street. They are crammed together at the rate of 70 to 80 per acre, and it is difficult to suggest any method of dealing with them satisfactorily short of complete clearance.’ The majority of the working classes of Leeds lived in back-to-back houses which were cheap to rent, easy to heat, and provided separate single-family dwellings. In these streets close knit communities had developed, providing comfort and support for each other during hard times. Inside, the houses were sparsely furnished and lacked inside toilets, bathrooms and piped hot water. Many of these homes had a cellar where food and coal were kept and some had coppers where the water was boiled on wash day. They hardly represented ‘Homes fit for Heroes’!
Something radical had to be done. The Addison Act of 1919 required local authorities to survey their inhabitants’ housing needs and offered government subsidies towards building costs. Leeds council responded energetically. The entry of the council into the provision of municipal housing and its extensive slum clearance activities were therefore a dramatic feature of the period between the First and Second World Wars. The Medical Officers of Health for the city helped to identify the worst properties where outbreaks of various infectious diseases were prevalent. Many of these were located in the yards and folds off Kirkgate, Briggate and Vicar Lane, on The Bank, and in Holbeck. These were the first to be targeted for demolition. The owners of these properties were issued with compulsory purchase orders, compensation payments were made and the insanitary houses demolished. By 1930 the council had erected 7,000 houses but the rents were comparatively high, so this did nothing to improve the plight of the slum-dwellers. In 1927 a back-to-back could be rented for under 5s a week, including rates, whereas even the cheapest council property cost over 16s. When Revd Charles Jenkinson became chairman of the council’s Housing Committee in 1933, things changed markedly – 14,000 houses were demolished and 15,000 houses, cottages and flats constructed. By 1939 there were 24 estates ranging in size from 33 to 3,500 houses. The key to the successful implementation of the slum clearance programme was to make the replacement houses affordable for the poorer families. Jenkinson introduced a differential rent scheme, whereby every tenant with sufficient income to pay the full economic rent of their council house was required to do so, while those with inadequate incomes were granted rent relief – in some cases they paid nothing. For the first time people had the opportunity to transfer directly from the slums to new council housing. Unfortunately, the Second World War interrupted this groundbreaking initiative.
After the end of the conflict building materials were expensive and in short supply, making it difficult to build new houses at an economic rate. Eventually, however, the slum clearance programme restarted. Leeds City Council created a new register where the houses and streets that were to be demolished were marked in colour on copies of the 1939 Ordnance Survey Maps for Leeds. The register also lists the date when compulsory purchase orders were first posted to the owners of these properties, and the day when the final demolition orders were issued. Thanks to the generosity of Leeds City Council the Thoresby Society now has this register in its collection. The register has been scanned and this information is now available online.
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Over more than a century, the Society has built up a number of special collections, notably its archive, map and image collections, which have recently been re-catalogued to make them more accessible. These collections are housed in the Society’s library, based at the Leeds Library, 18 Commercial Street, Leeds LS1 6AL.